Year: 2023

Regular seeds are a great option for growers who prefer to produce their own seeds. It’s also a good choice for those who want to experiment and preserve phenotypes that have not been feminized.

Just like how nature intended, regular seeds have a 50% chance of producing male or female offspring. This is ideal for breeding and producing superior clones.

Breeding

Many growers choose to use regular seeds to preserve a strain’s genetics or create their own cultivars. Since these seeds have not been altered, they will produce both male and female plants. This can be an advantage for some growers who are looking to achieve a certain ratio of male to female plants for breeding and cloning purposes.

Breeders need to work with plants that show both sex in order to pollinate them and create new hybrids. Using regular seeds will give the grower access to more genetic variation and allow them to discover unique phenotypes that may not be possible with feminized seeds alone.

Occasionally, growers will also plant regular seeds in the wild with the intention of re-establishing cannabis’ natural habitat. This allows the plants to be pollinated by male flowers and to produce their own seeds – thereby re-establishing a small pockets of natural cannabis in the wild. It is an intriguing and somewhat counterintuitive process that can yield some interesting results.

Cloning

For gardeners who want to take it a step further than merely breeding their own strains, cloning regular seeds is an important aspect of the growing process. Cloning allows gardeners to keep their best and most robust female plants as mother plants and produce a large crop of buds without the risk of pollination.

Unlike seeds, clones do not need to go through the germination and seedling stage, which can add three weeks to the overall grow time. As a result, clones are more able to withstand stress throughout the growing process and can be more easily taken care of.

Clones must be carefully disinfected before being cut to ensure that they are free of pathogens and other potential contaminants. It is also recommended that clones be cut from the lower and healthier branches to encourage root growth. Once a clone has roots, it can be transplanted into a new pot or growing medium. It is essential to feed clones regularly with a balanced nutrient solution.

Pollination

Typically, plants are hermaphrodites, producing male and female flowers. To produce seeds, a flower needs to be fertilized with pollen from another flower of the same species. This can happen when pollen from a flower’s stamen (anthers) falls on the stigma of another flower, forming a pollen tube that will later carry sperm cells to the ovary of the flower. Fertilization is completed when the sperm cells reach the egg cells inside the ovule, creating a seed. This process is aided by a variety of biotic and abiotic agents, such as wind, water, birds, insects, hummingbirds, bats and other mammals. These are known as pollinators.

Unlike feminized seeds that can be grown without the need to separate male and female plants early into flowering, regular seeds must be separated in order to prevent the production of pollinated buds, which will have minimal cannabinoids and will produce harsh smoke. This process is referred to as sexing.

Genetics

The majority of seed banks only stock feminized seeds nowadays, but regular seeds are still available. Feminized seeds are a better choice for commercial growers, as they produce only female plants and can save a lot of space and money from not having to remove 40% of their crop after sexing.

However, for beginner growers it can be an interesting option to work with regular seeds. The genetics of regular weed plants can be more varied, which gives the grower a wider range of options to experiment with and create their own unique strains.

Regular plants also have a lower chance of going hermaphrodite. This can be beneficial for the grower, as it means that there is a greater possibility of achieving more clones and making more crosses with their plants. However, if the plant is stressed by techniques such as topping, fimming, lollypopping or defoliation it may go hermaphrodite and start producing male flowers.

Before feminized seeds became so popular, growers used regular seed. Regular seeds produce plants that are 50% male and 50% female, requiring the grower to identify and remove all males from their crop.

For those growers who enjoy breeding their own cultivars and want to be involved in the process of creating new strains, then growing regular seeds is an option that should be considered.

Unaltered Genetics

For the grower who wants a completely natural experience, regular seeds are the way to go. They operate exactly how nature intended; every seed has a 50% chance of growing into either a flowering female or male plant. Male plants are extremely useful when it comes to breeding, as they can be separated from the females and their pollen collected.

However, identifying and safely removing male cannabis plants can be quite a challenge for beginner growers. And because all the work is done by nature, growing regular seeds also requires a greater level of patience and knowledge to get the best results. Nonetheless, many growers find the reward of growing their own feminized crop to be well worth the extra effort. As a result, many of them prefer the natural genetics and increased resistance to disease and pests that come with using regular seeds. This can result in a more robust, high-quality crop. The final decision is, of course, up to the individual grower.

Better Genetic Stability

The parent plants that make up regular seeds are backcrossed with each other to create offspring with consistent growth, flowering and psychoactive properties. This process ensures that the genetics of each variety are stable and that growers will experience a consistent harvest every time.

The same cannot be said for feminized seeds. Feminized seeds endure a genetic tampering process that can lead to less than robust descendants. This makes growing feminized seeds a riskier proposition for growers.

Moreover, feminized seeds produce male plants that must be removed from the crop, further reducing yield levels. Identifying and removing males takes skill and knowledge that most novice growers lack. For this reason, if you want to maximize your yields per crop, stick with regular seeds.

More Vigorous Plants

Unlike feminized seeds that produce 100% female plants, regular seed will occasionally yield male plants. Having the option to work with both male and female plants can be an advantage for some growers. The use of male plants allows for the opportunity to create unique crossbreeds with vigor and consistency that can be hard to achieve with feminized seeds. This can be a huge benefit when searching for particular phenotypes and traits.

Regular seed works exactly how nature intended – there is an equal chance that a plant will germinate as a male or a female. Rather than spending time and resources trying to sex each plant once it has entered the flowering stage, growers can simply work through the genetic lottery until they find the ultimate mother. This approach can save time, resources and a lot of money. Regular seeds also offer better genetic stability as they have not been tampered with by humans during the breeding process.

Easier to Breed

If you’re interested in breeding, regular seeds give you a better chance of growing male and female plants to produce clones. This is important because male plants produce pollen that will spread to females and create new marijuana plant generations.

While feminized seeds promise easy sexing, many experienced growers choose to work with regular cannabis seed. This is because regular seeds operate the way nature intended and have an equal chance of becoming either male or female.

If you’re a fan of old-school cannabis genetics, we recommend checking out Dutch Passion’s selection of regular seed. This includes classics like White Widow, Orange Bud, Blueberry and Mazar. You’ll also find strains from the 1980’s and earlier such as Durban Poison, Euforia and Power Plant. These traditional strains offer enticing aromas and deeply satisfying effects that will please any palate. Our collection of regular sex seeds offers an abundance of options for both beginner and advanced growers alike.

Seed is a miniature embryonic plant surrounded by stored food and protected by a tough covering. It is the product of a fertilized ovule in flowering plants and gymnosperms.

Researchers are studying the genes that control ovule and seed development. Their work will help us understand how seeds evolved.

They store food

Seeds are the characteristic reproductive body of flowering plants and some gymnosperms (conifers, cycads, and ginkgoes). They contain an embryo, a miniature undeveloped plant, stored food, and a protective coat. The embryo has the potential to grow into a new plant, and the food provides it with the energy it needs until it can start making its own food through photosynthesis.

The swollen part of the seed called the cotyledon stores the food needed to fuel germination. Different seeds store their food reserves in different ways, including relying on large deposits of the nutrient tissue, endosperm, or using proteins found in embryonic leaves.

Despite the many functions of seeds, they are all designed to be easily carried by animals and transported to sites where they can grow. To facilitate this, some seeds have hooks or burrs to latch onto animal fur or to rub against rocks. Other seeds are packaged in edible surroundings such as fruits, which provide a convenient way to transport them.

They travel

Seeds have developed adaptations to help them travel from one place to another. Some seeds are shaped like wings or have parachute-like parts that let them float on the wind. These seeds, such as dandelion seeds, may travel many miles before they find a suitable spot for germination.

Other seeds are shaped with barbs or hooks that attract animal dispersers and cling to fur or feathers. These seeds are called hitchhikers and often end up in places far from their parent plant. Some seeds are surrounded by fruit to encourage animals to eat them and allow the seeds to pass through the digestive tract.

In this book, students investigate how different types of seeds travel by using hands-on activities such as dropping seeds into an electric fan and observing the movement of each seed. They can also collect and sort seeds on a fuzzy cloth to see how they stick. After completing the activities, students can compare and contrast the different ways seeds travel to find out which method is most successful in each environment.

They attract animals

Seeds come in all shapes and sizes – some have fleshy appendages to entice animal dispersers; others, like black elder seeds, have hooks, barbs or sticky hairs that catch on fur and feathers; and still others, like dandelions, have wings for wind dispersal. Those that rely on animals for dispersal can be vulnerable to declines in (or even extinction of) those animals. For example, Montoya et al found that fruit bats are essential dispersers of black elder and that forest patches with high densities of flying foxes have significantly more black elder trees than adjacent unforested cells.

Plants lure animal dispersers by producing tasty nuts, fruits or seeds. Once an animal eats a seed, it is digested and passed along to new locations in its faeces. This internal dispersal is called frugivory. Plants also disperse their seeds through water, wind and gravity. Some plants, such as ferns and mosses, lack seeds and depend instead on spores to reproduce.

They germinate

Seeds contain an embryo and a store of food reserves packed inside a protective coat. Once the right conditions are met, a seed will germinate into a tiny plant known as a seedling. The seeds of most plants require the right temperature, water, oxygen and light for germination to occur. Some seeds also require a period of after-ripening before germination can take place.

The first step of germination, called imbibition, occurs when the seed absorbs water through its outer seed coat. This causes it to swell and soften, allowing water to enter its inner cells. The seed cell then starts converting starch to sugar, which provides the energy for germination.

The seed’s radicle and root begin to grow, and the seed coat eventually ruptures. As the radicle and root emerge, they begin absorbing underground water and nutrients. During the germination process, the seed also begins releasing volatile compounds like smoke and carbon dioxide. These molecules help with germination by increasing the rate of metabolic reactions and reducing water loss.