Seeds: Feminized or Regular?

[Tone3000]

The title says it all. Please debate the pros and cons of regular seeds versus feminized seeds. Clones and autos are a different conversation.

The list to me seems quite short, and to come out for feminized all the way.

With feminized seeds, you can just proceed with growing, free from worries about accidental pollination unless you run into a hermie situation, which could occur in any case, no matter what seeds you are using. If you ever want to breed, just apply some colloidal silver or gibberellic acid while you are growing the plant and voila! You have all-female pollen to breed your own feminized seeds. How great is that!?! You won't every have to worry about males impeding your girls' production.

If you have regular seeds, you have to weed out the males (pun intended!) after flowering. It seems to me that the only reason to go for male seeds is if you are primarily a breeder and plan to breed right away, plus you don't want to bother making feminized seeds. But in reading others' comments, it seems that some have strong feelings on buying only reguar seeds. I haven't figured out why and since I'm new to growing, I am undoubtedly missing many things. Why regular seeds?

[DW2]

Howdy Tone3000. I use 'feminized' seeds for my grows. I let the ladies get a little stressed and they produce 'nanners' which do produce female seeds. So far, I have not had any male seeds come from a 'nannered' plant (no Y chromosome in a female plant). The commercially available feminized seeds are too pricey for me and making your own with the colloidal silver method makes the bud unconsumable due to the silver compounds left on the bud. My last five grows have all been with the 'nannered' female seeds from previous grows.
My $00.02 worth. (Not adjusted for inflation LOL!!!)

[Tone3000]

Alright, so that's one for team FEM seeds!

Let me back up just a sec, though. Are you saying that you intentionaly stress and hermie your plant in order for it to self-pollinate and it produces viable seeds, which you have used for your past five grows? Do you grow only one plant in your grow area at a time in order to prevent all of the plants from getting pollinated and seedy? How does a self-pollinated plant yield viable seeds, or is the hermie plant pollinating another plant to make the seeds?

That does sound like a good breeding shortcut, no matter how you work it out. I'd be too worried about keeping the pollen contained. I have another tent (my original grow tent before I got a two-section tent) that I'm thinking about finding a place to put with a second light to use as a breeding tent. I could spray a whole plant in there and harvest the pollen without worrying that the pollen would contaminate the giirls in my flower tent. Then I could put one girl in there to be pollinated and grow seeds.

[Notes for other newbies like me: Hermie = hermaphrodite, which occurs when a female gets stressed and produces male flowers (instead of or in addition to female flowers). The male flowers look like bananas, or "nanners"]

[DW2]

Tone3000, yes, I intentionally induce some stress (break in the light schedule or let the heat get above 85° F), but at first, they did it on their own as they matured and did not get pollenated naturally. '
No, my plants are from many different 'sets' of bag seed collected over years past. I have noticed differences in the plant's physical appearance and psychoactive properties as well.
There is a difference with hermie produced seed and nanner produced seed. A true hermie puts on male pollen sacks and can produce male seeds. A nanner forms in an existing female flower and only produces female seeds.
I have grown different plants at the same time, but I cannot say that one nannered plant 'pollenates' any of the other plants in the grow room because some of them did not produce any seeds when the plant(s) with the nanners did. If I had to make a guess, I would speculate that the nannered plant only pollinates itself and not the neighbors.

[UndergroundFarmer]

I've like the vigor from stuff grown from regular seed and the ease of producing hundreds and thousands of more seeds like them. I like that in good growing conditions, the female to male ratio runs about 5:2. I also like that regs open up more possibilities for pheno hunting or finding an absolute unicorn of a plant that can launch a whole new variety. I don't like some of the accidental crosses. I don't like that cannabis pollen makes me sneeze my head off. I like that I can save pollen from male plants for future use and there will be more than enough to offset the grains that didn't survive storage. I'm still experimenting with regs and will grow out more varieties of regs for seed this summer. I'll be testing out my home made Ghost Train Haze and Blueberry Kolache seeds. I'll probably grow out some Kali Mist and Golden Tiger for more seed.

I don't really have any beef with either kind. Everything I'm growing right now is from feminized seed because I'm growing strictly for stash this round.

[Rwise]

I like to make seed for my future grows, and I use mostly regs, why well its because its better genetically. There are many out there that will tell you that feminizing is destroying our favorite plant. And that feminizing will increase the chances of hermies (to the point that all will be hermies or self pollinating), I do believe that! I have seen it here (hermies from hermies, I killed all the seed from them). But I also make fem seed from time to time, many of us have limits and fem seed is the way to go. Mother Nature says 50/50 male/female from reg seed, I never get that most years I get far more females, however last year I got more males than females. One area was 5 males to 1 female. (chop chop).
Dont forget STS can be used as well as many other things to make them hermie. Years ago I used intermittent light high heat and humidity to create hermies (wasn't the goal) and made my first fem seeds.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Sex chromosomes don't work in cannabis the way they do in humans. Plants with XX chromosomes are of course always females but XY plants can go either way and environment helps determine how many become male vs female. In a controlled indoor environment, we tend to yield just enough males to breed if we wish.

[OldManGrower]

Chalk me up as lazy. I use feminized seeds and truly have neither the facility for or interest in trying to breed my own seeds. I can at best grow five plants at one time and feel that using feminized seeds will most likely result in better harvests and easier grows. Cost is not an incentive. I almost never buy the "Latest and Greatest" Strain of the day. I go for the lower cost seeds that have been around for a while and usually cost 6-7 dollars. A years worth of seeds costs me about $100.00. With regular seeds, I could easily lose some or all of a grow by growing a male. One male in five seeds means I can lose 20% of a grow by having to toss it out. Why take the chance? I have just harvested two Tutankhamen plants that I grew from $5.00 seeds. "Tut" which has been around for a while is regularly listed as one of the most powerful strains on the market but is an older strain that does not receive much marketing and thus sells for a third of the "Latest and Greatest". My early sampling of my grow indicates that it may well be the best strain I have ever tried.

[SwitchH2O]

Well, money isn’t an option for me. So the expense of buying really good feminized seeds from reputable seed banks is the only way I go. I’m in Canada, so the laws and the cost is much different. I’m retired! I saved money all my life… I’m spending it now!

[Ckbrew]

I like being retired. Should have done it years ago.

[User420111]

More and more I'm leaning towards just buying the feminized seeds of strains that I really like. Let the pro growers do the hard work and ok worst case scenario you pay $12-$20 per seed for really quality genetics. They almost all guarantee germination and then the survival is up to you. Say you already have your initial grow expenditure out of the way. You got the tent and the supplies, etc. Even if you spend $100 on 5 seeds and only 4 make it... that's FOUR female plants to harvest and yielding upwards of 4-8 ounces per plant. Even on the conservative side 4 ounces times 4 plants is 1# of quality weed. At street level prices these days that's $6400 on a $100 investment

Nowhere in the OTCM, NYSE, TSX, LSE or Nasdaq can you get that kind of return on your investment in just four short months.

Plus you can rest easy knowing you are supporting the industry as well.