It’s true that smoking and doing recreational activities with marijuana is extremely fun; however, marijuana breeding brings fun to a new level because you get to create your personal marijuana strain.
By simply taking two varieties of marijuana plants and breeding them together, you can produce offspring that can accommodate perfectly to your liking. Breeding using regular seeds of marijuana is not as complicated as you think it is. Although it involves patience, care, and monitoring, the overall process can be followed and done even by beginners.
This article will serve as a guide to help you understand the essence of breeding and has easy steps to follow for perfecting the creation of your own strain using a regular type of marijuana seeds. Scroll down below to get informed now!
Breeding 101
Breeding may seem to be overwhelming for others who have not yet experienced it. However, breeding can be done even by growers without expert skills. They can easily transform into a breeder equipped with the right skills and mastery from their previous experience. Take note, renowned marijuana strains today are bred by typical growers at home, and some were even just accidentally created.
Breeding does not require a master’s degree or education to be an expert in this field. All you need is qualified experience in growing marijuana, and you are all set.
Breeding plants, especially marijuana, is part of the basic growing process of marijuana. It involves technicalities and is often done for commercial purposes. With the rapid increase of marijuana legalization all over the globe, breeding marijuana has become a trend and popular in the world of cannabis. Even ordinary growers can do it by themselves.
These dioecious plants called marijuana can produce either male, female, or both sexes. These sexes are utilized and very essential in the process of breeding and creating your own strain of marijuana, provided that breeding involves a male and female marijuana plant. It should also have a variety of characteristics for each strain, with, of course, high-quality traits, to create a new strain. If not, you are merely copying the marijuana strain.
The fertilization of female plants by the male plants does not go through the process of sex as humans do. It undergoes the process of pollination, which does not even require the plants to be close to one another. Typically, breeders breed their plants indoors, which generally depends on the grower for pollination.
Guides on Creating Your Own Strain With Regular Marijuana Seeds
To fully understand the process of breeding, the steps below are easy guides in creating a strain of marijuana.
Selection of Traits and Characteristics You Prefer
Before you try breeding and creating your own strain, it is important to understand the characteristics you prefer for your strain. It is also essential that the reason for creating a new strain is included in the consideration. For instance, you desire to expand the supply of the marijuana strain that you restrictedly have, or it could be that you wish to enhance the terpenoids of a classic strain.
There are many reasons and aspects to consider when starting to breed marijuana strains. Make sure that you know exactly what you want and desire to select the best choices of marijuana strains to breed properly.
Identifying the Dominant Genes
The male marijuana plants play an important role in the characteristics of your offspring strain. The dominant genes are male plants, and they should carry your desired attributes for a strain. For instance, if you intend to enhance the terpenes of a particular kush lineage strain, the kush must be the male plant that plays a dominant role in crossbreeding. If this is not done properly, the characteristics of the kush will be put to waste.
More Seed Planting, The Better
In creating a new form of marijuana strain, it is crucial to plant and work with many seeds to produce more desirable offsprings. It can provide breeders with a wide variety of selection as well. Regardless of simply backcrossing, it is still best to cultivate many seeds to find the best male plant and give you, as the breeder, the favorable male to female ratio.
Assign them labels. For instance, if you are breeding Girl Scout Jones, there should be a label indicating number one, two, three, and so on until you reach around ten selections. If you ignore this recommendation, it may cause further issues to arise in the future.
Growing the seedlings does not only require adequate water, sunlight, and nutrients. It likewise requires proper monitoring from the growth of its roots, the aroma it produces, the vigor it develops, and other important factors that are considered necessary to note. These can be essential, especially when you take clones from them.
Marijuana’s Sex and Which One To Keep
During the growing stage, you are already aware which among the plants stand out the most according to the observation of their vigorous stature. After doing some labelling, the next step would flower the plants to identify which among them are male and female. This stage is the best part of breeding because you get to determine which has the best male and best female characteristics among the other plants in the growing area.
Male plants are easy to identify, given that they typically show ahead of female flowers with a few weeks gap. In this way, you are helping the plants to have adequate synchronization to achieve flourishing pollination, providing the pollen time to interact with the females ahead.
Plants with male sex appear to have flowers with ball shapes forming a cluster. Meanwhile, female flowers have an appearance resembling a blade of grass that has protruding hairs in white colors. If you happen to decide which among the male plants and female flowers are perfect for pollination, then it is essential to separate them together away from other plants to prevent compromising the other plants.
Pollination Indoor
Provided that you already have male and female plants in an indoor growing area, the flowers of the male plants will start to develop, and the female flowers will begin to develop a bunch of hairs. The most recommended period for pollination is when the flowers of the female plants are at least two and a half weeks old to allow them to generate strong, ripe seeds.
At this point, the flowers of the male plant will burst open like claws and with the resemblance of banana within four weeks maximum. If you intend to observe it closely, banana-like materials are hanging from each flower of the male plants.
Naturally, it will burst open and generate a powdery substance in yellow color. Successful pollination does not require a tremendous amount of pollen; hence, it is best to collect some of it and place them in parchment paper. Do not forget to label them properly and store them in a dry area.
Success of Pollination
After the previous stage, the female pistils are pollinated by the male. There should be changes happening to the female pistils, for instance, the change of color of the flowers from the previous white color to either brown or red. This implies none other than successful pollination. The pollen of the male was able to travel inside the female and turned smokable flowers into a seedling.
When you are at this stage already, the essential thing to do is give every seed adequate time to become sturdy and ripe. Discarding the male plant is essential as long as you have gathered enough pollen or taken a clone when undergoing the process of stabilization.
Within six weeks, the calyx of the female plants will show seeds inside and start to develop. Provide adequate water, nutrients, and enough lighting for the plants to flourish properly. With no issues arising, anticipate harvesting the seeds after six weeks standard time frame.
Observe and Check for Ripe Seeds
When the harvest day awaits, check for any available ripe seeds and determine whether they are close to harvesting. Immature seeds will have a light green color and sometimes appear to be white.
Good seeds ready for harvest are the ones with tiger-like stripes and a color of brown. Seeds will be strong and hard when touched. Once they reach the ripening stage, they are ready to harvest and clean up before storing. Do not forget to label the seeds before storing them.
Label and Storing the Seeds
It is important to store the seeds after harvesting. Keep them in the dark and dry area where sunlight is not within reach. This is done to hinder the seeds from germinating. Make sure to label the seeds properly, either male or female.
First Generation Testing
This stage is the most awaited stage for many breeders: to see whether the seeds will germinate or not. If you carefully followed the guidelines above, anticipate that the seeds you produced will be similar to the ones sold at the seedbanks with great sturdiness and not easily crushed when done with a touch test.
To do the test, drop the seeds in warm water. A glass of it would be best. Place the glass in a dark area and try to check the seeds from time to time. Give it a little swirl if possible, and replace the water if necessary. If done properly, within 72 hours maximum time frame, the seeds will germinate and generate whitetails, and the shells are split.
If the seeds germinated well and thrived accordingly, take down notes and see their improvements compared to their parents. Depending on your preferences and the stability you desire, breeders are suggested to use the male parent’s pollen to stabilize the genetics of the seeds.
Stabilizing
To achieve stabilization, it is recommended to use the first generation of breeding female seeds and stabilize them using the male pollens stored from the parent’s lineage. It would be very practical to use the stored male pollens at this point to save you the hassle of cultivating a male plant again. This also ensures that the male pollens used are exactly the same as the first generation of seeds.
The whole process done is called backcrossing, which is particularly popular among breeders to produce the most stabilized genetics, and the desired characteristics are achieved fully. The offspring of the first generation seeds and male parent’s pollen are called the second generation seeds and should be labeled as F2. The backcrossing of seeds can be done up to the fifth generation.
Final Thoughts
Creating your own strain of marijuana is very simple and requires only adequate skills. Although it will take time, effort, and close monitoring of the seeds, the process is all worth it in the end.
There is nothing more fascinating than breeding your own strain that suffices your personal preferences and taste. With enough training and skills, the way to perfect crossbreeding and backcrossing will take tremendous effort and knowledge, but the offspring will provide amazing results.
