Every veteran cannabis grower knows that a good cultivation practice will always start by using high-quality seeds that will improve results and yields. Another part of the equation is making sure cultivators use feminized seeds, that helps in assuring that the buds and flowers remain female thus ensuring a continuous cycle. If you’re a novice cultivator, you may ask your self how to make feminized seeds?
The method may be a bit complicated if you haven’t done this before but once you get used to it, it becomes a walk in the park. This article is about how to make feminized seeds with DNA genetics that can be helpful for both beginner growers and expert cultivators.
What are Feminized Cannabis Seeds Exactly?
Just like any other regular plants, the cannabis plant is composed of both male and female plants. We all know that in the basic rule of reproduction, only the female plants can produce buds. Thus feminized cannabis seeds grow plants that are exclusively female and has a guarantee that every plant will have a flower.
In the normal process of reproduction. The male cannabis plant pollinates the female plants and that’s how seeds are made. The harvest will have a 50-50 chance of getting male or female seeds. If you’re an experienced cultivator, you’ll know that this process wastes a lot of time, money and effort since you’ll eventually have to dispose of the male plant (unless needed for pollination again) and just work on the female plant.
Why Should You Feminize Your Seeds?
Let’s throw in a scenario so you can better understand the importance of feminizing your cannabis seeds. Think of working on 6 small cannabis plants and in the long run, only 3 of these plants can be cultivated to produce buds. What happens to the 3 other plants? Either you dispose of them or you keep them away from the female plant to ensure the quality of the buds.
If that scenario has been stressful for you even just thinking about it, then you should definitely feminize your cannabis seeds. Male cannabis plants waste spaces and resources and using the feminized types of seeds reduces the risk of unwanted pollination that causes a possibility of growing flowerless male plant.
One of the common fears of using feminized seeds is that they have a high chance of producing hermaphrodites. But what you can do to combat this fear is to make sure you purchase your seeds from a reputable seller.
How to Make Feminized Seeds with DNA Genetics
Feminizing cannabis seeds employs 2 methods: naturally or by applying chemical substances that force a female plant to pollinate. We’ll be teaching you 2 techniques, the Colloidal Silver technique that’s normally used by cultivators and the Rodelization Technique that has an impact on the DNA Genetics of the cannabis plant.
Technique 1: Colloidal Silver
This method uses colloidal silver which is a water-based solution which microscopic particles of silver are suspended. You can either make this one you can purchase this online with a relatively affordable price.
Select a cannabis plant that the characteristics that you want to preserve. Feminizing clones has been the usual practice because the growth flowering and resin characteristics from the mother plant are already known. Pot the clone in a small container and give it a day or 2 to recover and start with the 12-12 light cycle immediately.
You can induce cannabis plants to grow male sex organs as late as 4 weeks into flowering. Though spraying it with colloidal silver a week prior to light cycle change is recommended for clones. If you’re going to use a plant that has been grown from seed, you should wait until the plant has sexed before spraying so you can be sure it’s a female.
Spray the plants with colloidal silver daily and three times if you can manage. Soak them well and do this for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, leave your plants to grow normally. Some cultivators mentioned that they see results for only 5-10 days.
Technique 2: Rodelization
Sinsemilla is an unnatural state for cannabis. It would be very rare to find an unpollinated female in the wild without any human help. When the sinsemilla plants are left to go beyond their desirable maturation stage by a number of weeks, the plant knows it has not been pollinated. As a result, and with the efforts of propagation, it will produce male pollen sacs to try self-pollination.
This can’t be called stress-induced hermaphroditism, instead, they are genuine XX chromosome males. The plant that has all genetic information from the female and no Y chromosome, using the rodelized pollen creates female-only seeds. Now that is one of the wonders of nature.
Growing Feminized Plants
You should treat your feminized plants just like how you would any seed from germination to the vegetative stage and then the flowering stage. You should set up a separate vegetation/ flower space where a number of plants can be grown with a standard number and with uninterrupted production.
Plants that are bred using feminized cannabis seeds are considered homozygous. This can have effects that can’t be easily assessed until the seeds have fully grown. The homozygous characteristic will increase dominant or a recessive trait of the parent so expect that the features you may like or may not like can be amplified.
Cons to Feminizing Cannabis Seeds
When you are using feminized seeds, make sure that you purchase the seeds from a reputable seller. Make sure you know how the breeder feminized his seeds to avoid seeds that might become hermaphrodites in the future. Although you can avoid this by making the feminized seeds yourself.
If you’re working on developing a breeding program, you will need both male and female plants. Sine male plants do not produce buds themselves, it’s impossible to know the genetics they can pass on without breeding them with other female plants. If you’re developing a specific trait profile, you will need to work with male plants.