Why grow regular seeds?- Alchimia Grow Shop

Regular cannabis and its beginnings

Cannabis is an ancient plant that has been coexisting with the human species for thousands of years. Studies on the plant argue that it originated in China and that from this initial point, the plant slowly but steadily colonized the world until it reached the 4 continents, using the help of animals, travelers, merchandise, or wars to expand.

This entire cannabis movement meant that marijuana plants had to adapt to the different climatic variations wherever it was exported, generation after generation.

During this process of cannabis expansionism, the plant was crossed year after year with other marijuana plants adapted to other regions, with which new genetics emerged that over the years have gradually established themselves as regional cannabis.

To maintain the species and have more seeds for cultivation, crosses were carried out in an endogamous way. Plants from the same family were always crossed without providing new genes. Still, at the same time, the breed was refined, removing, for example, the hermaphroditic cannabis traits that many genetics contained.

There are many countries where you can now find cannabis called landrace or regional, such as Afghanistan, Thailand, Laos, Mexico, Pakistan, Colombia, among many others.

As man was able to collect seeds from every corner of the planet, new strains were created. On this occasion and in a time much more contemporary to today, breeders began to emerge, who were initially plant caretakers. The first crosses as we know them today did not occur until well into the 20th century with the first seed banks and growing communities that were established in Holland, the USA, and Canada, among others.

Regular cannabis, the beginning of every feminized plant

Regular marijuana allows the seed grower to have great genetic diversity. Being plants that contain many genes from different regions of the planet, they can also be very different from each other, even if there is a standard in the genotype of the seed. A clear example is Skunk, which is made up of genes from strains that are collected in Afghanistan, Mexico, and Colombia.

These differences between sister plants serve to select those genetic traits that are most liked and to establish them as stable characteristics of a variety.
This great diversity provides different flavors, smells, resistance, sizes, leaf types, plant structure, flowering times, types of effect, and many other characteristics of cannabis.

By using regular seeds, the grower opens a door to discovering new characteristics such as different flavors and smells, improving production, resistance, etc., which means that the world of cannabis can continue advancing without stagnation.

Of all these crosses we can give several examples, such as the case of Blue or Haze hybrids, which are already considered genetic families par excellence from which several phenotypes have emerged that have been standardized with very similar characteristics among all their sister plants.

These plants, the selections, have finally been feminized today using current techniques, which means that there are no male plants, and only females with very specific characteristics are grown.

These plants are very good to be grown indoors or outdoors because they provide the stability that regular plants often cannot have or are difficult to maintain, but with them, there will not be many variations in flavor, effect, power, vigor, etc.

When grown regularly, the grower sees for himself the potential that a specific strain can offer. For example, the Skunk marijuana known worldwide, created by Sam Skunkman, if grown in regular format you can find the different phenotypes that we can now find in feminized formats such as Cheese, Orange Bud, and Exodus Cheese, among others.

From the cultivation of the regular ones, phenotypes can be found that can be selected and subsequently made new strains with them, such as the strains from the Chemdog family, Blue, Purple, White, etc.

The male plant has a great genetic load that it transmits to its descendants, which is why it is as important to select female plants as males, although it is always more difficult to find a good male than a good female. We can see the keys and tricks that the TGA breeder Subcool uses and the importance of a good male.

Males must meet minimum requirements that ensure that subsequent generations improve the characteristics of their ancestors, so we can say that without males we could only be talking about a few genetics on the market since there would not be much diversity to select from, always. It would be the same, which is what is happening with feminized strains since many banks use the same strains to create their genetics.

Grow regular seeds indoors

Growing regular plants indoors can be done in the same way as with feminized plants and thus obtain a productive crop without problems and with the possibility of saving some of the best strains that we have grown.

With these strains, you can make mother plants and reproduce them through cuttings to be able to grow them when required. Even if you find a worthwhile male, you can always carry out controlled pollination to be able to get a few seeds and create new genetics at home, being able to grow and select them, finding new flavors, smells, and effects.

A quick and easy way to grow regular plants is to put all the regular seeds in the cupboard and a small sog pot. After a few weeks of growth, the plants can begin to flower, and when the sex of the plant appears we can remove the males and leave only the females.

At the time of removing the males, the female plants that have remained in the crop can be transplanted. When carrying out this transplant when the plant has already entered the flowering period, the stretching will no longer grow as much as if the transplant had been carried out before changing the photoperiod from growth to flowering.

To accompany the cultivation of regular plants and fill in the gaps left after removing the males, it is interesting to put some feminized seeds at the beginning of cultivation so that all the plants grow at the same cultivation rate. In this way, we will have a good harvest even if we have to remove some male plants from the grow tent.

Advantages of regular marijuana plants

• Variety in flavors and smells
• Make mother plants to take cuttings
• Selection of the phenotype that most represents the variety
• Possibility of making homemade seeds
• Knowledge of the cannabis plant
• Respect for the nature of the plant

Growing regular plants outdoors

Outdoors it is clear that cannabis strains can also be planted in regular format. The process is the same as with feminized seeds with the disadvantage that we will not know how many females we have until the preflowers appear. However, it should be noted that there is a very simple way to not have to wait so long to know the sex of the plant.

If you want to know the sex of the plant, you can make a cutting of it and root it directly during the flowering period, indoors, so that as it roots, the metabolism also changes and in a few days after rooting see the appearance of the plant’s preflowers to determine its sex.

After knowing how many female plants we have, we can choose either to germinate more or use those cuttings that we have made to be able to replace the discarded males with the cuttings and thus continue with the same number of plants that we wanted to grow at the beginning.

When we grow plants in a regular format we can contemplate that more or less half of the seeds planted will be male. There may be times when, due to certain circumstances, more females emerge than males or vice versa.

There are no studies that explain why a plant tends to be male or female, but we do believe that there are several factors that can cause the plant to decline as a female or male strain.

Is it possible to have more female plants than male plants with regular seeds?

From our own experiences in cultivation, we can comment, but not certify, that when the plants during their first two months of life have growing conditions appropriate to their needs, high humidity, temperatures of about 24-26º, direct sun for maximum hours per day. day, without deficiencies or excesses, and without stress, the ratio of female plants is usually higher than that of males.

When growing marijuana plants that are resistant in every sense, the ratios of female plants are higher than strains that are already a little more delicate. Plants that are more susceptible to excess fertilizers or require more hours of sun or higher temperatures can always tend to create more male plants. We do not know exactly why because no one has corroborated it, but we deduce that it could simply be a way to make the species survive in an aggressive growing environment.

Let’s take an example of Thai marijuana plants which are accustomed to a very specific climate. If these plants have not been very well acclimatized to the other climate where they are going to be grown, the plants will suffer stress simply because they are outside their natural habitat with which their older generations have been living for so many years. When using these plants outside their idyllic paradise, problems arise due to a lack of acclimatization until they become accustomed to the new growing location and thus to the new living conditions.

But, apart from the weather, the plant’s nutrition needs also come into play. Some strains that come from places where food availability is limited, if we plant them in soil rich in fertilizer, will become overfertilized much faster than other strains that come from places where the substrate is very rich in fertilizer and vice versa.

So how do you ensure that using regular seeds, as few males as possible come out? The answer taking into account the previous reasoning would be that the seeds should first be germinated when the temperatures outside are mild and there is good ambient humidity. The hours of sunshine during the day are more than 15 and they also have good sun exposure for good growth. Minimize the possible stresses that may affect the plant as much as possible and then all we have to do is wait until we are lucky and that the force is with us and more females emerge than males.

100% female plants will not be achieved since the species must move forward and if or if some male plants will emerge, but surely following these tips will produce more females than males and you will be able to enjoy more plants to make a good selection to find the best female from the seed packet.

So growing regular cannabis strains is more than feasible and there is no reason to be scared if you see some male plants, you simply have to throw them away and continue with the females to discover new flavors, smells, effects and of course, new cannabis genetics, remember that there is always a regular seed behind a feminized one.