Cannabis seeds can be regular, autoflowering, or feminized. The feminized seeds originate from a pair of 2 female plants crossed to each other, causing their offspring to be 100% female. Since their parents are both females, these seeds will end up being female plants that produce buds, not seeds.
With feminized cannabis seeds, you can always be sure all your plants will yield buds. You don’t have to worry that some of your plants are males that can disturb your garden. Feminized cannabis seeds are widely available at seed banks.
Breeders know that many people prefer to grow cannabis plants to produce buds. These people do not care about breeding and making new cannabis strains. But how about growing new strains without any male cannabis plants? Is this possible? Well, you can try doing it with feminized seeds as well.
The Advantages of Using Feminized Marijuana Seeds
Feminized cannabis seeds don’t have male chromosomes. Hence, if you use them to create a new strain, they will produce only female offsprings. The resulting plants can be recognized as genetically modified. However, the seeds stay natural because they have been created via pollination.
Unlike the male marijuana plants, females tend to produce cannabis compounds like CBD and THC in higher amounts. When used in creating new cannabis plants, the feminized seeds will assure you no resulting plants will be males or hermaphrodites. Using these seeds is an effective way to ensure your future plants will all be females. If they are all females, you know you can enjoy more yields, less lost crop, and get a better return on your investments.
Growing and using male seeds can damage your crop, especially if you grow them closely with the females. If you want to breed cannabis strains to create new strains but you’re running out of space, feminized seeds will be the solution.
Some experts do recommend using non-feminized marijuana seeds to create the opportunity for a range of great plants. However, while you prune female plants, they still have the chance to become males. Instead of getting giant sticky buds, you end up with pollen balls.
How Can One Use Feminized Seeds in Producing New Strains?
This may sound impossible, but you can use feminized seeds to create new strains soon. You just need to grow them first and wait until they are mature enough and ready to produce offspring. You don’t need to pair them with pollen-producing male cannabis plants because feminized plants can do it for themselves.
So how do seed companies try to create new strains by using feminized cannabis plants? How can they breed 2 female plants? Well, the main thing will be forcing the female plants to create pollen sacs, just like what the male cannabis plants do.
Feminized cannabis plants will be stimulated to produce male flowers that produce pollen. When the required pollen is available, they start collecting it and use it to pollinate other female cannabis plants. Once done, the pollinated plants will produce seeds of a new cannabis strain. These seeds will grow as female plants when you cultivate them.
How to Force female Cannabis Plants to Generate Pollen?
Marijuana growers can encourage their feminized cannabis plants to produce pollen sacs. That feminized pollen from these plants can be used in fertilizing other female plants to come up with new strains of marijuana. You can force them to generate feminized pollen in 2 major ways.
Induce “Feminized” Pollen Chemically
Seed companies and breeders refer to it as a professional way of feminizing marijuana seeds. In this process, they are using certain substances like gibberellic acid and colloidal silver to stimulate the feminized cannabis plants to produce the same pollen sacs developed by male cannabis plants. It occurs by drenching the bud sites every day throughout the initial 3 to 4 weeks after switching to the 12/12 light cycle.
Rhodelization
In the forest, some cannabis plants will start generating male pollen sacs that allow them to pollinate themselves. It occurs when these plants experience stress or growers have failed to harvest them on time, thus, the buds begin to die due to old age. These plants will try to do whatever they can to preserve the future generation.
This process is considered “natural” and normal, and the resulting seeds will be mostly females. However, the issue here is that the resulting plants are more likely to be hermaphrodites, which means they have both sex organs without chemical induction. It only means that the future resulting seeds are still more likely to end up being hermaphrodites even under natural situations. Due to this, it is best not to try your feminized cannabis seeds to make pollen sacs this way. Likewise, you should get rid of those seeds created through the natural process.
Using Silver Thiosulfate
As said before, marijuana plants can be male or female. Females are more important for their bud production than males that focus on producing seeds. Growers have been trying to produce more females as much as they can and get rid of the males. If you have invested in growing feminized cannabis seeds and want to try creating seeds that will grow as female plants, then you can try doing it by using silver thiosulfate.
Experienced growers are using silver thiosulfate solutions to encourage the grown feminized cannabis plants to develop male organs that will enable them to pollinate either themselves or other cannabis plants in your garden. This way, you will get a new strain of cannabis in the form of feminized seeds. This method will help you make sure your future seeds will be females like their parents.
The treated cannabis plants will take a few weeks to develop pollen sacs. When that happens, you need to move these plants to another room or wrap them in a bag. This method is so effective, but novices are discouraged from trying it. Skills are necessary to ensure success.
Conclusion
Growing cannabis plants not just for buds but also to create new strains is a good experience for any grower. You don’t need to invest in male cannabis seeds to get started because the feminized seeds can already do it. All you need is patience and knowledge to ensure your success.
