Boys Will Be Boys

By Grammy Green

What are feminized seeds, and why would you want them?  Why spend $10 on one seed when I can get seeds for free from my friend?  Feminized cannabis seeds are specially bred to eliminate male chromosomes so as to produce only female plants, and buds are only produced by female plants.  Female plants produce considerably more THC, CBD and CBN as compared to the male cannabis plant. 

Male cannabis, on the other hand, is much like a drone bee.  Useless at collecting pollen or producing honey, a drone exists merely to impregnate the queen bee.  Sure, you can grow a male plant, but then what will you do with it?  No buds to smoke, minimal THC and CBD; it's only purpose is to provide pollen to the female plant in order to produce seeds.  

Back to your friend... maybe she's into creating a new hybrid and is deliberately looking to produce seeds.  That's okay, but any seeds produced will have a 50/50 chance of being male (and a 50/50 chance of being female.) So you take a chance anyway and decide to grow that free seed.  How will you know if the resulting plant is male or female?  You have to wait several weeks into the full vegetative stage before the difference is apparent. Look for the tell-tale oval pollen sacs of a male.  Once you've identified a male plant, pull it out!  Otherwise, you will have a lot of apologizing to do to your neighbors when their lovely cannabis girls come up pregnant.

And, when you are buying seeds, make sure the package is marked "Feminized" or "Female".  If it says "Regular", you are back to a 50/50 chance of getting what you want.