There are many reasons a grower may choose to work with regular seeds, despite the practical advantages in terms of growing space, waste of nutrients and medium.
Breeding Projects
For those who have the desire to make your own custom genetic crosses, starting your own breeding project in the comfort of your own home is easily achievable. For this you will need to invest in regular seeds that will allow you to grow either male or female plants. It is a good idea to start with at least 10 seeds to allow for a much wider variation, and greater choice of male to females. Some seedlings may underperform and be discarded early on, however with 10 seedlings, there is a good potential desired ratio. Labeling your pots with numbers and strain names, will make life much easier when sorting through the different plants, especially when taking cuttings before flowering for preservation purposes.
Pre 98 Genetics
There are plenty of old school genetics that have stood the test of time, and due to the marketplace during that era, were never feminized. It was from around early 2000 onwards, when the advantages of feminized seeds were becoming commercially popular. Many cultivars that existed during the last 50 years are often preserved in regular seed form, either as a first generation or as a stable IBL. Back crossing or producing a new generation of cultivar should only be done with regular seeds, especially when in-breeding.
Advanced Phenotype Hunting
When investing the time and money into a large pheno hunt, it is better to work with regular seeds over-feminized seeds. During this process the male and female plants will need to be separated well before flowering. There will be some impracticalites associated with this method such as wasted hydro system space, use of nutrients, growing medium, dedicated space, and maintenance. Working with a large number of plants to select from will allow you to access the best looking plants, based on height, structure, internodal spacing, aroma, leaf pattern, and overall vigor.
There are also commercial advantages when flowers are sold with a dedicated number such as Gelato #33, Gelato #45, KM11, or O.G #18.
Finding A Mother
Working through a bunch of seeds and narrowing down the best female plants to one keeper, will reward you with the ultimate mother plant, and can often soften the blow of paying three figures for a pack of seeds in some cases. If you truly want to find the best of the best, using regular seeds will allow for the most genetic diversity.
Identifying Preflowers
When a Cannabis seedling has been left to grow for up to 5 weeks under 18/6, the plant will begin to exhibit very small preflowers. Typically these preflowers reveal themselves once flowering is induced, however it is possible to see which sex you have when knowing what to look for.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MALE PREFLOWERS
Male preflowers will look like a small cluster of green, oval-shaped growth. They will be noticeable between the internodal growth and can even look like a female preflower minus the pistil. By this point there is zero need to worry about male pollen sacs and cross pollination, and after several weeks, it will be evident if you have an abundance of tiny male preflowers forming.
CHARACTERISTICS OF FEMALE PREFLOWERS
Unlike the male preflower, the female will produce a tiny white hair known as a pistil. When you see the first white hair, this will indicate the plant is in fact female, and an abundance of pistils will emerge once flowering is induced. Sometimes there can be a very thin and narrow growth, similar to the tip of a blade of grass, that later pushes out a pistil.
Top Tips On Sexing Cannabis Plants
Make sure you are 100% confident that the plant in question is either male or female, prior to discarding from your garden. Male pollen sacs will not be encouraged to open until weeks 3-4 of 12/12, so take the time to be totally sure of your decision making ability.
The conversion rate of female to male plants will be usually around 60/40, so the more seeds you plant then the greater chance you have of finding the elite keeper male or female plants.
Use a magnifying glass or high-powered lens, to get up close and personal with your plants. This will make life much easier considering the flowers can be almost invisible to the naked eye at first.
Take at least one cutting off each plant if you have the space and time. Make sure that you label and number the clones accordingly to the same numbers from the original plants. Taking clones now will save you from reverting the plants back into a vegetative state once they have been harvested.
3 Advantages of Feminized Seeds
Using regular seeds have their own unique advantages, however it is also good to consider the benefits associated with female seeds.
100% of your growing space will be used, without the concern of having to remove 40% of the pots once you have sexed the plants. The same applies to the amount of wasted growing medium, nutrients, and light used when sexing regular seeds from a grow room.
There is a much greater variety of feminized seeds comparison to regular sexed varieties. Over 90% of the commercial marketplace accommodates for the production of all female seeds.
It is also possible to buy feminized autoflowering and CBD rich varieties. Both of these types of Cannabis plants have a huge following and allow a grower to adapt to their environment and needs much better.
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