When you’re growing your marijuana crop, you can always buy new cannabis feminized seeds for each crop. However, if you plan to have an extensive growth operation, or you just prefer to feminize your existing seeds rather than continually purchasing cannabis seeds, this post is for you.
Male versus Female Cannabis Plants
If you have an existing crop, you can examine them early during the flowering stage to determine which are male and which are female. Males will have seed pods along the stems and females will have buds.
If you don’t want to see your females start the process of reproduction instead of producing good buds, remove the males before their seed pods have ruptured and began pollinating the female plants.
Female plants are the ones you want to grow and harvest, as they’re the ones that produce the buds from which oils are extracted, though male plants do have their uses as well.
Making Cannabis Hermaphrodites
There are two known techniques for achieving cannabis feminized seeds:
Colloidal Silver: This is a distilled water base with microscopic silver particles suspended in the fluid. Using a concentration of 15ppm – 30ppm, spray the female plants during weeks 1 through 4 of the flowering stage. Make sure you are spraying the females only.
Spray them up from 1 to 3 times daily – the goal is to soak them – for at least two weeks. Once the pollen sacs appear, it will take 3 to 4 weeks to reach maturity.
Rodelization: This technique involves letting female plants “over-mature”, which causes it to create male pollen sacs, which then can be used to pollinate other female plants. Though this process does not create a true hermaphrodite, this type of pollen will create female only seeds.
It’s important to note that neither technique is full-proof. It’s still possible to get a rogue male regardless of how carefully the sexing is done.
Harvesting the Pollen
There are multiple methods for harvesting the pollen. You can put plastic around the top of the plant’s pot to catch pollen as it falls. You also can put a plastic cup around the pollen sac to collect the spores as they fall. If you have a keen eye, you can remove the pollen sac before it ruptures, allowing you to rupture it yourself and catch every single spore.
Pollinating
Once you’ve collected your spores, it’s time to pollinate. Some growers will take a fine, watercolor paintbrush, dip it in spores, and “paint” the pistils (flowers) on the female plant.
The simplest method would be to place your female plant in a large bag, with the pollen sac, and shake well.
Then, leave the plant for 24 hours before disturbing it. You can choose to pollinate only certain branches if you’re looking to do some cross-strain breeding.
Once you’ve harvested your pods and pollen, cannabis feminized seeds can easily be created with any of the methods listed above. But remember, not all plants are guaranteed to be females, as there is always the possibility of a random male plant popping up.