Reaching a certain level of experience as a grower implies, among other things, the desire to face new challenges. By now you already have such extensive knowledge of marijuana growing and what it entails that you will probably start to get the bug with doing experiments that go beyond trying with a certain type of fertilizer, an irrigation system or a method. of lighting.
One of the most common steps when you have already mastered all these types of techniques is to bet on create your own seed bank with the best samples of your previous harvests. Getting your own cannabis seeds is a process that requires some skill but that will allow you to always have a reserve with the best of your crops to replant and enjoy your favorite marijuana varieties in the future.
The generation of marijuana seeds
In theory the process is very simple. There are male marijuana plants and female marijuana plants. Both have flowers (buds) with a very similar morphology, only that the females are the only ones that are provided with seeds prepared to be pollinated by the males.
What is the difference between a crop we want to get seeds from and one we don’t? The difference is abysmal. In a crop only intended for harvest, you will have already taken good care of eliminating the male plants to avoid pollination of the females. When the females are not pollinated, they maintain a flowering process that usually lasts between 6 and 10 weeks in which the plant fills with those juicy and aromatic buds that you will end up smoking after harvest.
However, when there are seeds in the bud, these give a rather unpleasant taste to the joint that you want to smoke and you will have to move them away. That is why it is so important to start the male plants of the harvest as soon as you identify them, as we have already seen in other posts on this blog.
But if you want to save seeds of your favorite varieties for future harvests you need to go through this pollination process and, therefore, there must be a male hovering around your females. What you can do, experimentally and in order not to have to put your entire plantation into this ordeal, is to set aside two specimens, a male and a female, for a few days, to make sure that pollination occurs and then kill the male. .
Here we can see an explanatory video of the youtuber cannábico Makapeta in it he explains how the process is done:
It’s all a question of marijuana genetics
With what we have already seen, the obvious has become clear to you, that to obtain your own marijuana seeds you need parents. Our recommendation is that you take your time when making this selection because at the end of the day it depends on the quality of the seeds you obtain and your future crops. So here are some things you should look at when choosing who is going to be dad Y mother:
- The most robust and resistant plants.
- Those that have rooted the fastest.
- Those that offer a better response to light.
- Those that germinated before.
- Those that showed a greater flowering, either were female or male.
Whether it is your first experience in the extraction of your own marijuana seeds for future harvests or if you have already carried out this process before, you should know that crosses of pure varieties are not highly recommended. Forever it is better to opt for hybrids because they offer much more stability. In the long run, a pure seed weakens and to ensure its evolutionary process sooner or later you will have to cross it with another variety that is not. So if you want to skip this step from the beginning, it will be much easier to maintain a stable crop in the long run.
Another aspect to take into account is the type of seeds that you should use. To look for the father, a regular seed is always better. You can obligate To make it a more masculine crop if you plant the seeds closer together, don’t overwater them, and use very little fertilizer. Still you will have to be aware of the plants that date female or hermaphroditic. In the case of mothers, the easiest thing is to resort to already feminized seeds.
Once you have selected the parents, you can let nature take its course or you can also work on the pollination process to make sure that you are going to get all the seeds you want. Among the most common tricks for them are:
- Wrap the male plants, when they are about to mature, with transparent cellophane-type paper. During flowering the pollen will stick to the paper and later, with a brush and a lot of patience, the pollen is distributed over the buds of the mother.
- Pollinating the flowers of a mother plant obtained by using cuttings.
- Save a cluster of male flowers and one of female flowers at the end of flowering cut at an angle of 45º. Pour the pollen from the male flowers into a glass of distilled water and place the sprig of the female bud in the glass without getting the fruit wet. Leave it in the dark for a couple of days to complete pollination.
And what to do when the seed has already been pollinated?
You will realize that pollination has been completed when you see seeds in the female’s bud that are adopting different colors. At first a little greenish and tender and increasingly dry and darker.
Don’t let them get too dry before you get them. Ideally, you should let the flowers ripen a bit and then cut the buds with the seeds and put them aside to dry.
After 2 months you can plant those cannabis seeds, but until then you will have to store them in a dark and dry place, at a stable temperature around 10 degrees. In the right conditions, well-preserved seeds can last up to 7 years before you plant them, although the most common is to do so during the two years following their extraction.
