Trouble reading today's article? Click here: Issue #157 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 Dear Fellow
Grower, In today's issue... - Learn whether you need to worry about gender problems when growing
with feminized seeds!
- Learn what to do if your plants get sick!
- Make sure you're only getting seeds from a trusted breeder!
- One of our readers sent us an impressively fat Aurora Indica plant pic!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside (founders of
GrowWeedEasy.com)
"Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines."
~Robert H. Schuller
Do Feminized Seeds Cause Hermies? by Nebula Haze |
Before I get started, here are some quick definitions :) |
Feminized Cannabis Seeds: All plants grow up to be female and produce buds
Hermies: Hermie cannabis plants can look like normal female plants at first glance, but they produce pollen that causes seedy buds, just like male plants. Hermies are to be avoided! Cannabis growers are trying to grow sinsemilla (seedless buds), which means there should be no hermies or male plants to release pollen near your female plants during the flowering
stage.
"Sinsemilla" means "no seeds." Sinsemilla is the highest quality and most potent of all buds Since most growers are trying to grow sinsemilla, having only 100% female
plants in the flowering grow room is crucial to prevent pollination. Pollen is the bane of high quality buds. And just like male plants, hermie cannabis plants produce pollen that creates seedy buds. That's why you don't want accidental hermies in the grow room, just like you don't want accidental males!
The desire for only female plants is why starting with feminized cannabis seeds can be a
blessing for small-scale growers. While male plants only produce pollen, growing feminized seeds means that all your plants will end up being bud-bearing females (instead of growing half male and half female plants like with regular seeds). Good feminized seeds should produce only 100% female plants, with no hermies. So starting with feminized cannabis seeds lets you make the most efficient use of your grow space. You don't have to worry about identifying hermies or males
and throwing them away before they pollinate your female plants. With good feminized seeds, you know that if you’re growing 6 plants, all 6 of them will make buds, and that makes it easier to plan out your grow ahead of time.
With all these bonuses, why would any small-scale grower who wants sinsemilla use any other type of seeds? Pros of Feminized Cannabis Seeds
- All plants produce buds
- You don't need to watch out for male plants
- You don’t have to throw away half your plants after nurturing them for weeks
- You don’t have to worry about your buds getting pollinated,
causing seedy buds and reduced yields
But is there a dark side to feminized cannabis seeds? One of the biggest worries growers have about feminized seeds is that they will produce hermies.
“Hermie” is a nickname for a hermaphrodite cannabis plant. A hermaphrodite plant produces both female buds and male pollen. This picture shows a cannabis plant that has both male pollen
sacs and female pistils growing in the same place.
That’s no good because even a little pollen in your grow room can seed your female plants, just like a male cannabis plant would. And a hermie can be a lot easier to miss than a male plant since it may just be a small part of the plant that's affected.
A male plant makes itself known at the beginning of the flowering stage, but a hermie plant may grow only buds except just one or two tiny pollen sacs, or a few yellow hermie bananas which
also produce pollen. Any type of male part that grows in your garden can add seeds to your buds.
Is It True That Feminized Seeds Can Cause Hermies? Yes!
Many growers believe that
feminized seeds cause hermies, and there is some truth to that. In order to create a feminized seeds, one of the parent female plants had to be forced in some way to produce pollen.
That pollen is used to pollinate another female plant, and the offspring of those two plants will all be female since both of the parents were female. That's how you get feminized cannabis seeds. But that also means
every time you have a feminized seed, that seed had a plant that hermied in its recent genetic history.
There are different ways to feminize seeds, but only some methods produce seeds that turn hermie on you
It’s important to understand that hermies can happen a couple different ways. And the different types of hermies affect what genes are being passed on to the seeds. Hermies can be caused by many things, including…
- bad genetics - the plant comes from a line of plants that naturally create hermies
- high stress - high temperatures, light leaks, inconsistent light schedules, as well as other
types of major stress can cause a healthy plant to hermie, though some plants/strains are more susceptible than others
- letting buds over-mature - this is also known as “rodelization;” basically when the plant’s buds have
gone past maturity without being pollinated (if the grower waits way too long to harvest), a female plant will often make male pollen within its buds as a last ditch effort to pollinate itself and make seeds for the next generation
- chemical stimulation - by exposing a female plant to certain substances like colloidal silver or gibberellic acid during the early parts of the flowering stage, you can force
any female plant to create pollen. This is how seedbanks get female pollen to produce feminized seeds.
Seeds created from hermie pollen will turn out being female, or at least as female as the parents :) The pollen from a hermie plant makes feminized seeds The pollen sacs on this hermie have opened and pollen has spilled onto the leaf below
Feminized seeds are susceptible to becoming hermies themselves when exposed to the same conditions as their female “father” who produced the pollen. But since any plant can be chemically induced to produce pollen, it doesn't mean that the abililty to hermie in a natural environment is passed on to the seeds.
So only some
feminized seeds come from parents with bad genetics, and that’s what’s the grower cares about most. Are your cannabis bagseeds viable?
Viable, good seeds usually appear either dark and striped or solid gray/beige. If a seed is pure white it usually means it's underdeveloped and won't sprout. But it can sometimes be hard to tell. In the end, if a seed sprouts and grows it's
a viable seed! I've had very pale, flimsy seeds sprout into gorgeous fast-growing plants, so if you're not sure the best thing to do is try to germinate it!
This technique works on nearly any plant, including plants that would never hermie naturally. So it can be used to take two plants with great genetics to produce female seeds. But
the same process will also work incredibly well on plants that do hermie easily all on their own. That means it’s up to the breeder to test and make sure that they have a solid plant with unbeatable genetics before using this technique.
The pollen that results from chemical stimulation is then used to pollinate another plant and make feminized seeds. If the parent plants would never hermie without
chemical stimulation, than you have created feminized seeds that won’t ever make pollen in your grow room.
But if one of the parent plants was chosen because it does hermie easily, than you’ll end up with seeds that hermie and the breeder might not have done any testing on the parents or the resulting offspring to even know.
Without testing, a breeder can't tell whether they've created quality feminized seeds Choosing the Right Cannabis Breeder Unfortunately some cannabis seed breeders are more trustworthy than others. The great ones have created stabilized strains that have been bred over several generations to produce a consistent product without any gender problems.
Less scrupulous breeders might breed two random female plants together and sell the resulting seeds as a new strain without any testing. In this second case, you don’t know what to expect, and neither does the breeder.
If the breeder hasn’t tested their strains extensively in many situations, they won’t know whether their
seeds tend to hermie or not. If they have carelessly bred plants that have a tendency to hermie, than it’s really likely that at least some of the resulting seeds will have the same problem. Breeder choice is important!
I have to admit I may be biased
towards feminized seeds. I’ve grown exclusively with feminized seeds over the last decade. It has made my life so much easier! I only purchase seeds from breeders that I trust and all the resulting seeds have been bud-bearing females. I haven't had any real problems with hermies.
On the flip side, I’ve heard of growers buying feminized seeds from untrustworthy breeders and having a big portion of
their seeds turn male or become hermies even in perfect growing conditions. So there is truth to the fact that you can run into hermie problems with feminized seeds.
Yet there are good and bad breeders out there, and with good breeders you have a very low chance of running into cannabis sex problems.
Conclusion: Feminized seeds from a trustworthy breeder have a low chance of producing hermies, but the odds are much worse with feminized seeds from an untrustworthy source The truth is it takes a hermie of some sort to create feminized seeds. That means that you always run the risk of running into hermies when growing feminized seeds… yet that is true for non-feminized cannabis seeds, too! Lots of regular seeds produce hermies.
What’s most important, whether you get feminized
seeds or not, is to get your seeds from a breeder who has a reputation for producing quality genetics. That is the best thing you can do for any strain to ensure a smooth grow. With a great breeder, you have a very low risk of running into any sex or gender problems.
I personally prefer feminized seeds, and that’s the only type of seed I grow. It makes it easier for me in my small grow and limited space. I haven’t run into any
significant problems with hermies, so I’m satisfied with growing only bud-bearing plants.
Yet a lot of growers grow with regular seeds because they're easier to breed and produce, or the grower has created a system for weeding out male plants that's better or more convienient for them than using feminized seeds.
In the end, when it comes to
feminized cannabis seeds you need to decide whether the small chance for hermies is worth the convenience of all-female plants. It’s up to you to figure out what’s best for your needs! Did You Know?
These are all viable cannabis seeds even though they look different from each other. I've heard some growers claim that only "tiger-striped" seeds are good, but this is a misconception. All cannabis seeds start out with a dark, striped outer coating. But when the coating gets rubbed off it reveals that the seeds are actually a much lighter beige or gray underneath! Both kinds of seeds will produce great plants, some simply have their natural coating, and others
don't.
What Happens If My Plants Get Sick? |
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Are your plants looking a little under the weather? Do your leaves look yellow or have spots? Maybe your plant is droopy. Learn exactly what you need to do here:
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Which Seed Breeders Can I Trust? |
Interested in getting a best-of-the-best cannabis strain for your next grow? One of the best ways to ensure that you get great genetics is to start with a great breeder. We put together a list of some of the most famous and reputable cannabis breeders we’ve worked with.
This list considers...
- Potency - THC & CBD content, plus does it have the described effects?
- Bag Appeal - bud structure, color, density, smell
- Consistency - do strains grow the way the breeder says they will? do plant characteristics vary a lot from plant to plant of the same
strain?
- Ease of growing - general hardiness of strains
- Reputation - has this breeder earned a good reputation over the years?
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"Hey Nebula I'm a 60 year old man who up and decided to grow a year ago. The first was from seeds that were given to me. Planted 8, 2 were female. They went through heat stress, nutrient problems, ph problems and still turned out to be decent. 2nd grow bought quality seeds. Planted 10, 7 were females. Killed 4 due to soil being too thick, last three pretty much had the same
nutrient/ph problems as the first grow. The pure Kush had no kick to it.
"Then I started getting your news letters every Sunday, and spending a lot of time on the web site and watched grow videos on you tube. I'm on my 3rd grow now. I'm on day 23 in flower and everything is looking amazing. Planted 10 seeds, 5 strains. All female and looking beautiful. You are proof than an old dog can
learn new tricks...Thank you."
~ Donald Green
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Trophy Pictures of the Week! |
"This is Aurora Indica entering flush phase once again could not have done this without your websites help. Growweedeasy.com rules."
-Rook
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We encourage you to forward this email to a friend in need!
Who Runs This
Newsletter? |
Nebula Haze:
Medical cannabis is important to me personally, and I'm dedicated to showing others how easy it is to grow their own supply of
cannabis at home.
It is my mission to educate and build growing resources to help both new and advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. |
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Learn which seed sources are personally recommended by Nebula Haze |
Sirius Fourside:
Sirius Fourside is a hobbyist grower who has gained the bulk of his experience growing in water as a medium(deep water culture,
bubbleponics).
"Growing cannabis is a relaxing hobby in and of itself, but it also saves you money and keeps you from having to deal with shady characters. Cannabis is much
easier to grow than people give it credit for, and growing in water doesn't increase the difficulty much, if any. But whether you want to grow in water, perlite, or a different medium, we'll show you how easy it can be!"
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GrowWeedEasy.com has put together a hand-picked list of all the available SEED BANKS including what type of payment they
accept and where they ship in the world!
View complete list of trusted seed sources:
http://www.growweedeasy.com/seeds
Why not start your grow with quality genetics from an award-winning
strain? Or choose a strain that suits your growing style and personal needs. Still not sure? We recommend Nirvana. They've been breeding award-winning strains for
decades and offer some of the most reliable stealth shipping in the industry. In our complete seed sources list you'll discover... - Which Seed Sources are Fast, Safe and Reliable (list is updated regularly)
- Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Check Money Order, Paypal & even more secure payment options!
- Connoisseur, High-CBD & Medical Grade Strains Available
- Find Out Which Seed Sources Deliver to YOU!
Get Seeds!
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