A feminized cannabis plant is one grown from seed bred to produce only females, the plants that make the buds you actually smoke. There are a few terms worth getting straight before you pick the right seed and strain for your grow, and one of the first is the difference between “feminized” and “regular” seeds.

First, the basics. Cannabis comes in two sexes: a plant can be female or male. There's no way to tell what sex a plant will be just by looking at the seed. A “regular” seed has roughly a 50/50 chance of growing into a male or a female.

Female plants produce the buds we love so much. Males produce flowers with no meaningful THC content, plus pollen (which won't get you high either). If pollen from a male plant reaches a flowering female, she'll shift her energy into making seeds instead of buds. Pollination won't turn a female into a male, but it will fill your harvest with seeds, which is why you need to be careful about keeping plants together before you know their sex.

What are feminized seeds?

Expert cannabis breeders figured out several ways to make sure seeds come out female. To produce feminized seeds, the breeder stresses a female plant until it turns hermaphrodite. The “male” flowers on that hermie release pollen, and when it reaches the “female” flowers, it produces seeds that grow into female plants. Another way to guarantee a female is to take a clone (a cutting) from a female mother plant and grow it out.

How to grow feminized seeds

Feminized seeds have a reputation for being easier to grow than regular seeds. That can make some growers let their guard down. But like any grow, it comes with its own challenges.

Feminized cannabis: indoor vs. outdoor

When growing feminized seeds indoors, you have to switch the light and dark hours by hand. Growers usually flip to the flowering schedule once the plants hit a good height (ideally about half the final height you're aiming for).

Outdoors, feminized seeds need to be planted in the right climate and at the right time of year, because daylight hours change with the seasons and female plants need a specific schedule as they develop. The ideal is to plant in spring and harvest in fall.

Advantages of growing feminized seeds

Growing female cannabis comes with plenty of perks, which is why feminized seeds have become some of the most sold, most requested and most used by growers. Here are a few of the advantages:

• One of the main reasons they're so popular is how easy they are to grow: you don't have to hunt down and pull out males to keep your garden all-female.
• These days, the catalog of feminized seeds is much bigger and more varied than that of regular seeds.
• They grow in a stable, uniform way, so you can make the most of your space, whether that's a grow tent, a grow room, a greenhouse or an outdoor plot.
• They come in all kinds of formats in terms of genetics, chemical makeup and plant structure, including autoflowering and CBD-rich varieties.

What are the most important feminized strain families?

Today you can buy countless feminized cannabis seeds, genetically stabilized by crossing different varieties. Some come from landraces (native, regionally adapted strains), while others come from earlier crosses that belong to legendary families on the cannabis scene. Some of the best known are Haze, Afghan, Kush, Skunk, Cookies, Cheese, Gelato and Purple, among many others.

How long does a feminized plant take?

Whether you're growing feminized seeds indoors or out, timing depends on the strain. Some, like indicas, grow fast, with short flowering periods of 6 to 7 weeks. Others, like the Hazes, can take twice as long to flower.

If you want to harvest as fast as possible, go for fast-flowering strains or feminized autoflowers. Some of them can be ready just 60 days after germination.

How are feminized seeds made?

Regular seeds have always been the classic way to grow cannabis. Purists say plants grown from regular seeds are tougher. To breed their own strains, they separate out the males as soon as they show their sex and collect their pollen. Then that pollen is used on clones of the female plants to see what comes out.

So what about feminized seeds? And how do you make feminized autoflower seeds?

If you don't know the difference between feminized and regular seeds, chances are feminized seeds are what you need. Most feminized seeds you germinate will give you female plants, which means far fewer headaches during your grow.

To feminize, you have to reverse the sex of a female plant. That means forcing it to produce male flowers, which will start releasing the pollen used to fertilize other females. Keep in mind this process doesn't change the plant's genetic makeup. That's why crossing two of these plants always yields females: only female chromosomes are involved.

Two of the most common methods for making these seeds are controlled stress, also known as rodelization, and spraying a solution of distilled water, sodium thiosulfate and silver nitrate (STS, or silver thiosulfate). Rodelization is done by delaying the harvest by about 2 to 3 weeks, while the second method involves spraying the plants, and the sprayed flowers can't be smoked or used to make resin extracts. It can also be done with gibberellic acid (GA3), which has to be sprayed on the plants before they switch to flowering.

 

 

 

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