If you want to grow cannabis, you need cannabis seeds. Without them, you will not get a plant. The question you have to ask yourself is: – Which cannabis seeds should I choose and where can I find these quality seeds?
Table of Contents :
Quality seeds
The life of a cannabis plant starts with a cannabis seed. If stored in cool, dark conditions, a cannabis seed can remain viable for years.
The best seeds are hard, dry and hard to touch. They will be light to dark brown in colour. If the cannabis seed is harvested too early, it will have a green/white appearance and a soft shell. Often these will be small in size and will struggle to germinate. Seeds that are clearly immature are not recommended for cultivation.
Very old cannabis seeds are dry and feel soft when pressed gently. In the worst cases, the shells burst and the powdery crushed contents are released. Old seeds have a low germination success rate.
Can you use the seeds you find in the weed you smoke?
If you regularly buy weed that you smoke or consume in another way, you will definitely find seeds in this weed from time to time. You can try using these seeds.
If you succeed with this method, the result will be that you get a plant that corresponds to the weed you took the seed from.
The problem with this free method is that you don’t know anything about the quality of the seed. Which means you have to have a lot of seeds to end up with one that germinates. You can also end up with a hermies (intersex) plant. That is, a plant that is both female and male.
Since we only want female plants, hermies can be difficult to spot, as you have to study all parts of the plant to discover that the plant is not an intersex plant.
For these reasons, most recommend you buy the cannabis seeds you need from a seed bank with a good reputation.
What effects are you looking for?
The first thing you have to ask yourself is what effect you are looking for: – Are you looking for the highest possible THC or the medical effects CBD can provide? The answer you get determines which cannabis strain you should grow.
Cannabis strains : – Sativa, Indica, Ruderalis and hybrid
There are three main cannabis strains: – Sativa, Indica and Ruderalis. Ruderalis is not grown commercially as the strain contains very little THC and CDB. By combining these three basic strains, we get different hybrid varieties. It is estimated that today there are over 700 hybrid strains to choose from.
Each of these strains has its own distinctive characteristics and effects that you must familiarize yourself with in order to be able to choose the hybrid strain that gives you the effect you are looking for.
Read more: Sativa, Indica, Ruderalis and Hybrid. What is the difference?
Seed types: Regular, feminized and autoflower seed
Once you have decided which cannabis strain you want to grow, you must decide which type of cannabis seed you want to use. Here you can choose between three different seed types:
- Regular seed – ordinary untreated seed. About half of the seeds will be male plants that must be removed to obtain THC containing plants.
- Feminized seed – seed that has been manipulated to produce only female plants. This is the perfect solution for beginners who don’t want to have to identify and remove all the male plants themselves. Most experienced or commercial growers will not use feminized seeds because they only contain one set of genes. Such seeds should never be used in breeding.
- Autoflower seed – seeds that have bred in cannabis ruderalis to make the flowers start blooming by themselves when they are 2-3 weeks old, without you having to think about how many hours of darkness the plants get. Which makes autoflower seed the optimal solution for beginners, as you neither have to think about whether the plant is a female plant or not or how many hours of darkness the plant gets. Since the autoflower plant has inbred cannabis ruderalis, these plants are smaller and produce smaller yields than feminized and regular seed.
Photoperiod seeds
Most cannabis plants are short-day plants, meaning they don’t start flowering until they experience shorter days than nights. Autoflower seeds are the exception here.
Short day cannabis plants typically require day lengths of no longer than 12-13 hours to initiate flowering once they have reached maturity.
If you are growing outdoors, it is important to know the critical photoperiod of your strain and the seasonal day length in your area to plan your harvest for ideal seasonal weather conditions.
Hermier (Intersex)
Whether you buy autoflower, feminized or regular seeds, a small percentage of the plants will be intersex plants, also called hermies. This means that the cannabis plant is both a male and female flower. Such plants can be difficult to find as you have to study all the nodes to determine if the plant is a hermier or not.
“Herming out,” as some call it, is something that generally happens when a plant becomes excessively stressed. Some stressors include:
- Disease
- Bad weather
- Plant damage
- Nutrient deficiencies
Because this occurs when cannabis is under stress, it’s important to monitor plants after they have been exposed to stressors: indoors, high temperatures or light leaks are often the cause; outdoors, a snapped branch might be repaired and then turn into a hermaphrodite.
The industry seems to agree that the best way to avoid intersex plants is to buy the seeds from a reputable breeder who stress tests their genetics to avoid using intersex plants in their breeding program. Well made seeds from experienced breeders will have 1 or 2 plants in a thousand expressing intersex tendencies. Which means that ordinary home growers will never experience an intersex plant if they buy quality seeds from a reputable seed bank.
Indoors or outdoors
When choosing seeds, the choice will largely be determined by whether you want to grow indoors or outdoors.
If you grow indoors, you can grow any strain, as you yourself have full control over the environment in which the cannabis plant grows.
If you grow outdoors, you have no control over how much light, sun, water and pests the plant is exposed to. You must therefore choose a cannabis strain that suits your outdoor environment. Do you live far north in a cold climate, e.g. in northern Norway, an indica strain or an indica autoflower is the safest choice. If you live in a tropical climate, sativa is the natural choice.
Since all cannabis strains, with the exception of the autoflower strains, are short-time plants that need at least 11 hours of darkness to flower, the number of hours of darkness you have is something you have to think about. Some strains need 13-14 hours of darkness each day to flower.
Growing up time
Some cannabis strains take longer to grow than others, so this is something you should research before choosing seeds. Normally this is listed together with the description of the strain when you visit a seed bank.
Space requirements
Some cannabis plants need more space than others. The sativa trunks, which can grow up to 5 meters high and very wide, need the most space. Inca requires less space, both in height and width. They are therefore the favorite of home growers who want to grow indoors. The autoflower strains take up the least space, but they also give less buds. How big the plant will be is normally stated on the pages of the seed bank you choose.
Degree of difficulty
Some strains are easier to grow than others because they are more resistant to mold and pests, so if you are new to growing, you may want to try an easier strain to start. You can normally find information about this on the pages of the seed bank you choose.
Seed bank
The safest choice is to buy your seeds from a reputable seed bank. A seed bank is a place that sells cannabis seeds from a number of different breeders whose quality is guaranteed by the seed bank.
If you choose a recognized seed bank, you are guaranteed to get fresh, high-quality seeds with a good germination capacity. In addition, you know the genetics of the seeds and have a greater chance of getting a good crop.
How much does a cannabis seed cost?
Quality seed from a well-known seed bank is not cheap. The price normally starts from around 10 USD per seed (including shipping) and can go up to a couple of hundred USD for the best premium seeds.
Storage of seeds
The best way to store cannabis seeds is in a dry, dark and cool place, for example in a refrigerator. Place the seeds in a plastic bag to retain moisture around the seeds. Only take the seeds out at room temperature when you are ready to let them germinate. If you store the seeds dry, cold and dark, the seeds will have good germination rates even after several years of storage.
