Regular cannabis seeds are as nature meant, a mixture of male and female having no dominant sex. While most autoflowering and other modern seed varieties have their own special qualities, so too do most regular cannabis seeds. Great for personal breeding purposes, there is actually great value in regular seeds alone.
Many of the world’s most popular strains were developed by breeding certain specific desired traits, such as high producing, highly prolific seeds that produce a large amount of resin quickly. Other desirable traits have to do with robustness, disease resistance, or even flavour. All of these traits can be developed through careful selection and frequent crossbreeding. However, no one was looking for a cannabis seed with superpowers. Genetics play only a minor role in the creation of regular cannabis seeds, and although specific breeders are starting to understand the role that genetics plays in the traits of some strains, they still haven’t completely figured out all of the feminized seeds out there.
So, how can you tell which marijuana seed is for you? For starters, look for feminized seeds wherever you buy your marijuana. When a retailer advertises “stacked or trifolium”, take note of the second word: trifolium. Trifolium contains only one molecule of estrogen, so regular cannabis seeds from Canada or Mexico aren’t actually feminized. Instead, the term refers to seeds which contain traces of both estrogen and testosterone.
Some of the world’s best marijuana strains are those that exhibit a high level of Phenotype development. These plants are truly wildbred, with only a few of their desired phenotypes allowed to develop at any given time. If you’re a breeder, you want to know what these Phenotypes are and which ones you’re able to cultivate. If your store carries only regular cannabis seeds, you’ll be seeing a wide range of these “wild” plants, so it’s important to know what they are and where they come from.
Many people mistakenly think that regular cannabis seeds are autoflowers. While the Phenotype characteristic does help plants grow better than “regular” seeds, plants bred for feminization processes are not actually autoflowers. When a plant has been transformed through the means of autoflower, it doesn’t mean that it can do anything else but grow again, just like a plant that has been through “autoflowing”. In fact, many growers consider feminized or cross-bred marijuana plants to be cross-bred with other plants. Cross-breeding just gives them a new set of characteristics that they otherwise wouldn’t have.
If you see a bud with an interesting shape or color, it could be because the plant has been crossbred. If the buds are found in a store that is selling feminized cannabis seeds, then they came from pollen collected by someone at work who was trying to feminize their crops. Some growers who are interested in feminizing their buds go so far as to collect pollen from flower petals at local events. This makes the pollen especially unique, and it adds a whole new dimension to your collection.
As a result, your purchase of these cannabis seeds are not really “wild”, they’ve been crossed with feminized plants. On the other hand, some growers do it themselves. They inject buds with just enough of the right hormone levels in order to encourage the growth of the desired characteristics. When those characteristics are noticeable, you can see how the plant has been feminized, and cross-breeding is the true process behind it.
Some people wonder if it’s okay to collect and save seeds from mother plants. The answer to that question is no, you can’t use those for growing purposes. What you can do with them, though, is to transfer them into new pots and put them in the greenhouse to start a new crop. When you harvest your plants later, you’ll notice that they’re all very similar in size and look-how you can tell they were all bred from one female plant!