Feminized vs. "Normal"

CSF_Raziel · Oct 29, 2016

Tri_Cho_Me said:
And feminized seeds are less prone to show different phenotype's?
Could you plant 100 feminized and still find different pheno's?

I'm growing Strawberry Kush right now. Are my pheno's then either OG Kush or Strawberry Cough?

Tri_Cho_Me

Maybe your first question could be answered better by someone else, but essentially the answer is no.

You would most certainly find different phenos if you planted all those feminized seeds. However, they are considered less stable than regular seeds because they are more prone (generally speaking) to turning hermie.

Your seeds are going to be a combination of dominant and recessive traits from both the Strawberry Cough and the OG Kush. Look up Punnett square. Think of it this way, when two parents have kids, sometimes the offspring will look much more like one parent than the other. No two children will be the same (twins aside) but they will be similar and share traits like their color of eyes.

Great breeders are able to reduce the number of phenotypes that present themselves and provide a more consistent result.

Tri_Cho_Me · Oct 29, 2016

CSF_Raziel said:
Maybe your first question could be answered better by someone else, but essentially the answer is no.

You would most certainly find different phenos if you planted all those feminized seeds. However, they are considered less stable than regular seeds because they are more prone (generally speaking) to turning hermie.

Your seeds are going to be a combination of dominant and recessive traits from both the Strawberry Cough and the OG Kush. Look up Punnett square. Think of it this way, when two parents have kids, sometimes the offspring will look much more like one parent than the other. No two children will be the same (twins aside) but they will be similar and share traits like their color of eyes.

Great breeders are able to reduce the number of phenotypes that present themselves and provide a more consistent result.

So awesome. Nerdy stuff. I love it.

Would I know my pheno's two months into veg? Or, is pheno identifying more of a flower thing? So far, the two Strawberry Kush I have going appear the same.

Tri_Cho_Me

MJPassion · Oct 29, 2016

Tri_Cho_Me said:
I don't know if this thread already exists, I'm sure it does, but the search engine on here isn't all that friendly. If so, feel free to point me in that direction :friends:

Is there a benefit to growing "Normal" seeds as opposed to Feminized? I am growing Feminized since I'm a noob and it seemed like the easy thing to do for a noob (K.I.S.S.).

It seems like a waste of time, energy, water, soil, light, grow space, etc. to eventually throw out half your plants (or whatever number).

I'm sure there is a benefit since people do it, just haven't figured out what that is yet

Thanks for pointing me in the correct direction or filling me in on this information!

Tri_Cho_Me

Cannabis seeds are some if the most expensive seeds on earth. Especially FEM seeds which is ridiculous, imo.

Reg male/female seeds don't hold any advantage from a purely growing point of view but when you consider the cost & risk taken to replace seeds you liked males come in and save the day.
Of course, you could use CS or STS & make more fem seeds as well.

Just my :2cents:

Phaeton · Oct 29, 2016

Snook said:
I don't know where you got the 4 year record for keeping a mother alive but I'm not buying it... maybe I'm misunderstanding your meaning.

I think so. I never used 'clone mothers', to me that sounds silly. Young plants clone so much easier.
I run a perpetual, every eleven days a clone gets transplanted, a vegging plant get moved, another vegging plant get clones taken and moved, a third plant gets moved, a fourth plant goes into the bud room, and a finished plant comes out of the bud room.

Nowhere is a 'clone mother' involved.

As for simple, two clones every eleven days, only one of which will be used.
With seeds it is a seed every week with about one in ten a bummer.
I find the seeds easier, poke them in a hole and wait versus cutting and misting and timing it all just right.

Neither is rocket science but keeping fifteen variety of seeds on hand is doable. Keeping fifteen different clones lines viable is really a pain.

Snook · Oct 29, 2016

Phaeton said:
I think so. I never used 'clone mothers', to me that sounds silly. Young plants clone so much easier.
I run a perpetual, every eleven days a clone gets transplanted, a vegging plant get moved, another vegging plant get clones taken and moved, a third plant gets moved, a fourth plant goes into the bud room, and a finished plant comes out of the bud room.

Nowhere is a 'clone mother' involved.

As for simple, two clones every eleven days, only one of which will be used.
With seeds it is a seed every week with about one in ten a bummer.
I find the seeds easier, poke them in a hole and wait versus cutting and misting and timing it all just right.

Neither is rocket science but keeping fifteen variety of seeds on hand is doable. Keeping fifteen different clones lines viable is really a pain.

yankeetransplnt has a thread here Shallow Water Culture: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=318155 In its very interesting reading and in post #40 he describes his cloning method... 50/50 perlite and vermiculite ina 8oz coffee cup w holes in the bottom sides of the cup, sit in 1" of water, roots 2 weeks... 100% success.. I have bubble cloned exclusively for years but am experimenting with his method.. at first with 50/50 mix, then with turface... both worked exactly as YT described, 100% (5 cuts, one seed start) roots in two weeks. That was a month ago.. right now the pan is looking like his SWC method.. roots all over the bottom of the tray.. take a battery filler and suck up water in the tray and blast it back... tada, O2 in the root zone.. theyre loving it.. heres a couplea pics.. I'm not saying your method is wrong, it IS your method and it works but am finding this new method fascinating. there are only 4 in there right now, 2 have gone into that miniPPK... actually the one in the MPPK, lower left, is the white Widow seed plant that was started over there in the SWC cloner in 50/50 mix and transplanted into a bigger cup with turface and into the MPPK..shes looking a little lightly colored.. all an experiment right now but will probably move to this method.. sorry for the ranting.. OH and no clone mothers.. read the thread.. it good stuff.. YT is the man.. :woohoo:

Easy7 · Oct 29, 2016

Tri_Cho_Me said:
Makes sense...

I wonder if a feminized seed that hermies, if it hermies because it was bound to hermie from the second it was created as a seed (genetics), or if it hermies because of conditions involved? Could I lower my chances of a seed going hermie if I provide perfect conditions? Or would it still hermie regardless? Does that make sense?

Tri_Cho_Me

Outdoors in nature are perfect conditions. Indoors there are all sorts of fluctuations and unnatural conditions.

Make the effort to be able to search and find females from reg seed. It's worth it

Tri_Cho_Me · Oct 29, 2016

MJPassion said:
Cannabis seeds are some if the most expensive seeds on earth. Especially FEM seeds which is ridiculous, imo.

Reg male/female seeds don't hold any advantage from a purely growing point of view but when you consider the cost & risk taken to replace seeds you liked males come in and save the day.
Of course, you could use CS or STS & make more fem seeds as well.

Just my

I am actually planning to experiment with colloidal silver. Just not this round. Again, baby steps.

Tri_Cho_Me

jesbuds · Oct 29, 2016

Looks like you've had all your questions answered but gotta reply to this one:

CSF_Raziel said:
Feminised seeds are more prone to be or turn into a hermaphrodite, thus producing unwanted male flowers and ultimately seeds.

CSF_Raziel said:
However, they are considered less stable than regular seeds because they are more prone (generally speaking) to turning hermie.

This is what we call, spreading weed rumors on grow forums as fact. Only saying this because you reiterated it twice in this thread as something true and it's not.

Phaeton · Oct 29, 2016

Back in the 1970's feminized seeds were hermaphrodite seeds disreputable sellers would collect and resell. They were extremely hermie prone and had poor genetics for the most part. Although one strain I grew was excellent, the drawback was the seeds that appeared at six weeks along, guaranteed in every plant.

Using this outdated info then CSF_Raziel's posts would be correct.

Keeping up with technology is almost a full time job, hard to squeeze in actual gardening and stay informed at the same time. Lighting is going nuts right now, as are nutrient formulas.

Phaeton · Oct 29, 2016

Snook said:
yankeetransplnt has a thread here Shallow Water Culture: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=318155 In its very interesting reading and in post #40 he describes his cloning method... 50/50 perlite and vermiculite ina 8oz coffee cup w holes in the bottom sides of the cup, sit in 1" of water, roots 2 weeks... 100% success.. I have bubble cloned exclusively for years but am experimenting with his method.. at first with 50/50 mix, then with turface... both worked exactly as YT described, 100% (5 cuts, one seed start) roots in two weeks. That was a month ago.. right now the pan is looking like his SWC method.. roots all over the bottom of the tray.. take a battery filler and suck up water in the tray and blast it back... tada, O2 in the root zone.. theyre loving it.. heres a couplea pics.. I'm not saying your method is wrong, it IS your method and it works but am finding this new method fascinating. there are only 4 in there right now, 2 have gone into that miniPPK... actually the one in the MPPK, lower left, is the white Widow seed plant that was started over there in the SWC cloner in 50/50 mix and transplanted into a bigger cup with turface and into the MPPK..shes looking a little lightly colored.. all an experiment right now but will probably move to this method.. sorry for the ranting.. OH and no clone mothers.. read the thread.. it good stuff.. YT is the man..

Thank you but am not sure why this was directed at me.
The are many ways to clone, some more complicated than others, all seems to function fine which is why I do not bother to give details on how. This information is out there and out of twenty or so excellent tutorials I find that twenty or so of them work really fine.

I am glad you tell me my method is not wrong, since all I said was I take two clones at a time. Hate to break your bubble but when I did SOG I would take up to forty clones off a single plant, and no, I did not keep it as a clone mother, it would get thrown in the trash after cloning, young plants clone better.

The are many successful methods for growing personal marijuana and almost as many for growing commercial marijuana.
This insistence that only MY method is great merely indicates a lack of experience.
In the circle of gardeners I am acquainted with, some grow stronger mj, some grow more per watt, some use HPS, some grow trees, other SOG.

And you know what? It is all good. I did manage to convince a SOG grower with HPS on light movers to add 'white' LEDs to the sides of the HPS and he did notice an improvement in yield.
And he convinced me that my overly narrow and intense Advanced XTE would be more efficient on a mover. He was correct.

Change is good, as is accepting progress.

maryjaneismyfre · Oct 29, 2016

In the old days, plants were stressed with light or other techniques to express bananas for feminizing or selfing and that limited the feminized seed to plants that were prone to hermie as those were the ones easy to make bananas, those that had one or more male chromosomes. Some plants you can stress them all you want and you will never get a fertile banana.

At some point someone figured out that ethylene in the plant was the signaller for sex and that if you got silver into plant somehow it replaced other metals used by the plant for making the stuff and it would make no "female hormone" and become a full blown male..

Once this news got out it changed the whole feminized seed scene. Now they could take the girls before that they don't hermie and make self pollinated seed or crosses with that as the male. So these days feminized seed is no more prone to herm than regular seed although it used to be. The techniques have changed to make them and this opened up new possibilities. It all depends on the parents for regular or feminized seed these days as to whether they will herm.

There are disadvantages though to feminized seed, for one with regular you have a male and a female and the progeny show the variance between the grandparent lines.. As a grower you get more chance to pheno hunt and find that special plant. Different growers have different needs in a strain and different personal tastes and you can select for that. With a modern feminized seed, one has to rely on the breeders selection, this can work for you and against you. They might have the elite or magic specimen that you would have to search through many packs of regulars for and when they self that or use it in a cross you get expressions of that superior selection already but on the otherhand they could be selecting for something completely different to what you would in making their fem and that would not suit you. For example, you could want to select for a certain pheno or terpene profile that the plant selected for S1 is not, like you could be looking for pineapple in cindy and the breeder used a tropical fruit or lime pheno in his feminized program, that would not help you. Also you could want to select for high but the breeder selected for yield etc..You could want the indica pheno of a cross and the plant used in the feminized version was the sativa.. but as said sometimes and often the breeder will have done a great selection already or the plant is a once off and S1 is the only way to get the genes available.

The fems I've seen in the last few years compared to their regular sisters were more stable and maybe had a higher percentage of production plants in them, that said the special ones that get kept and get grown again, they came from the regulars..

With regards to clone mothers..there is a reason some moms are hoarded for decades..some are too special to chance loosing them and having a clone mom is imperative, and a backup and more backups with your trusted peeps. I have a mom that comes from seed someone germed in the late 80's and she is of my most vigorous plants..Depends also on your growing style..sometimes one can get by with just making cuts from vegging plants perpetually but its nice to still have a backup of your moms in bonzai or the likes..Having nice HPS light makes vigorous moms as well as Sam said here a long time ago, put a cut outside sometime in the summer in some rich soil and let it get sun and go mad and then take cuts off that for new moms the plant will have renewed vigor like they were just popped.

Hope that makes it clearer for you..

aridbud · Oct 29, 2016

.... It all depends on the parents for regular or feminized seed these days as to whether they will herm.

The fems I've seen in the last few years compared to their regular sisters were more stable and maybe had a higher percentage of production plants in them, that said the special ones that get kept and get grown again, they came from the regulars.

Couldn't agree with you more!

Tri_Cho_Me · Oct 29, 2016

maryjaneismyfre said:
In the old days, plants were stressed with light or other techniques to express bananas for feminizing or selfing and that limited the feminized seed to plants that were prone to hermie as those were the ones easy to make bananas, those that had one or more male chromosomes. Some plants you can stress them all you want and you will never get a fertile banana.

At some point someone figured out that ethylene in the plant was the signaller for sex and that if you got silver into plant somehow it replaced other metals used by the plant for making the stuff and it would make no "female hormone" and become a full blown male..

Once this news got out it changed the whole feminized seed scene. Now they could take the girls before that they don't hermie and make self pollinated seed or crosses with that as the male. So these days feminized seed is no more prone to herm than regular seed although it used to be. The techniques have changed to make them and this opened up new possibilities. It all depends on the parents for regular or feminized seed these days as to whether they will herm.

There are disadvantages though to feminized seed, for one with regular you have a male and a female and the progeny show the variance between the grandparent lines.. As a grower you get more chance to pheno hunt and find that special plant. Different growers have different needs in a strain and different personal tastes and you can select for that. With a modern feminized seed, one has to rely on the breeders selection, this can work for you and against you. They might have the elite or magic specimen that you would have to search through many packs of regulars for and when they self that or use it in a cross you get expressions of that superior selection already but on the otherhand they could be selecting for something completely different to what you would in making their fem and that would not suit you. For example, you could want to select for a certain pheno or terpene profile that the plant selected for S1 is not, like you could be looking for pineapple in cindy and the breeder used a tropical fruit or lime pheno in his feminized program, that would not help you. Also you could want to select for high but the breeder selected for yield etc..You could want the indica pheno of a cross and the plant used in the feminized version was the sativa.. but as said sometimes and often the breeder will have done a great selection already or the plant is a once off and S1 is the only way to get the genes available.

The fems I've seen in the last few years compared to their regular sisters were more stable and maybe had a higher percentage of production plants in them, that said the special ones that get kept and get grown again, they came from the regulars..

With regards to clone mothers..there is a reason some moms are hoarded for decades..some are too special to chance loosing them and having a clone mom is imperative, and a backup and more backups with your trusted peeps. I have a mom that comes from seed someone germed in the late 80's and she is of my most vigorous plants..Depends also on your growing style..sometimes one can get by with just making cuts from vegging plants perpetually but its nice to still have a backup of your moms in bonzai or the likes..Having nice HPS light makes vigorous moms as well as Sam said here a long time ago, put a cut outside sometime in the summer in some rich soil and let it get sun and go mad and then take cuts off that for new moms the plant will have renewed vigor like they were just popped.

Hope that makes it clearer for you..

It does! Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge :thank you:

Tri_Cho_Me

Grojak · Oct 29, 2016

I know that feminized seeds exist to make peoples life easier and that is how most view it but that is only part of the story in my opinion.

Backstory: I grew "prefeminized" and than took a 10 year break.

A few years ago I really wanted to purchase some Sensi Star seeds, it was a phnemon back in the late 90's, I had seen them in regular form before but had passed on them for another strain. Well when I was ready to go get them they were sold out and only available in fem form, this ment I would not be finding a male, not be making F2's and not be crossing it to anything. The more I looked around the more I found strains I wanted to grow only in fem form, this really blew my mind. And I got to thinking wow what a clever way to prevent your seeds from being crossed (in male form) and I don't put much stock into breeding with fems, however if you if I found something super dank from a fem seed I would not hesitate to pollenate it for future pheno hunting.

The other side to this coin though is how many knock offs there are out there and people making money off other peoples work basically. An F1 cross of 2 crosses you didn't create does not make you a breeder!!

Tri_Cho_Me · Oct 29, 2016

Grojak said:
I know that feminized seeds exist to make peoples life easier and that is how most view it but that is only part of the story in my opinion.

Backstory: I grew "prefeminized" and than took a 10 year break.

A few years ago I really wanted to purchase some Sensi Star seeds, it was a phnemon back in the late 90's, I had seen them in regular form before but had passed on them for another strain. Well when I was ready to go get them they were sold out and only available in fem form, this ment I would not be finding a male, not be making F2's and not be crossing it to anything. The more I looked around the more I found strains I wanted to grow only in fem form, this really blew my mind. And I got to thinking wow what a clever way to prevent your seeds from being crossed (in male form) and I don't put much stock into breeding with fems, however if you if I found something super dank from a fem seed I would not hesitate to pollenate it for future pheno hunting.

The other side to this coin though is how many knock offs there are out there and people making money off other peoples work basically. An F1 cross of 2 crosses you didn't create does not make you a breeder!!

This was hard to follow and understand. Maybe I'm stoned. :comfort:

What is your position? Do you dislike feminized seeds? Like them?

Tri_Cho_Me

aridbud · Oct 29, 2016

Two sides of a coin...you decide.

Shmavis · Oct 29, 2016

Regs over fems. Regs are always better. Pollen chucking is more rewarding this way. :biggrin:

Actually, I’m just kidding about regs being better. In the end it really is all about your particular setup, space and expectations, as others have said.

But if you have extra room - and it really doesn’t take much - then you can start playing matchmaker. You say: you & you would look great together. So let’s see how your babies look! It’s all downhill after that. You’ll be hooked. Get yourself a few packs of regs and toss some pollen! (Eventually, because of course you're right about baby steps for now.)

That’s why I prefer regs. Have grown fems. Have plenty of fems in the vault. But I have found a greater tendency towards inter-sex plants with them. I’ve ended up with unwanted beans from fems more often than with regs. However, as this thread illustrates, it’s debatable as to the degree of this likelihood. (Honestly, I’m not in a position of knowing to comment on that, only report my personal findings). But my prior experiences always leave me wary of fems. I tend to feel I need to dedicate a good deal more time inspecting them for sacs. This is why I had advised not to SCRoG. Doing so takes away the ability to perform a sound inspection. I think such a method (SCROoG) would be best advised with clones from a (first) proven fem. Selection first.

To that point, here’s a couple boys I isolated to collect pollen from. Nothing overly remarkable about them smell wise, in fact they’re kind of lacking. But they look very much alike. Almost clone like. And I dig their serration. None of the girls are this heavily serrated. So... I’m gonna toss some pollen and then see what shows in the babies (someday down the road)... now that’s the exciting stuff!

(Your first grow is coming along spectacularly, Tri_Cho_Me)

maryjaneismyfre · Oct 29, 2016

3 Sides

The breeders side, I think he is stating as well saying its a pity to not be able to carry on the line for himself via f2's. With most seed released as f1 though, it is great and stable and vigorous but the f2 generation with show expressions all over the place, with individuals having characteristics from of all the grandparents. So when the knock-offs happen they tend to remain that and be unstable...That is unless the original breeder did proper work or the strain is an inbred or true breeding line. Double edged sword. In that case the f2's and f3's will be stable. This is where many breeders had their work ripped, as an extreme example the seeds that Skunkman brought to europe that were bred to be stable and uniform, spawned an industry and everyone seemingly ripped everyone else off afterwards once the industry took off. If they had been releasing feminized stock and no-one was able to really breed with them none of that would have occured, but on the otherhand we would not have all the wonderful strains of today that came about from everyone being able to f2 and cross everyone else's stuff. Some growers/breeders luckily for the rest of use release strains inbred to be used as breeding tools.

I don't like the breeders today that only release feminized stock but I like the breeders that welcome others to work their lines, just to give credit where it is due. I think if you paying $10 a seed no-one has the right to complain if you use it to make more seed.

Tri_Cho_Me · Oct 30, 2016

Shmavis said:
Regs over fems. Regs are always better. Pollen chucking is more rewarding this way.

Actually, I’m just kidding about regs being better. In the end it really is all about your particular setup, space and expectations, as others have said.

But if you have extra room - and it really doesn’t take much - then you can start playing matchmaker. You say: you & you would look great together. So let’s see how your babies look! It’s all downhill after that. You’ll be hooked. Get yourself a few packs of regs and toss some pollen! (Eventually, because of course you're right about baby steps for now.)

That’s why I prefer regs. Have grown fems. Have plenty of fems in the vault. But I have found a greater tendency towards inter-sex plants with them. I’ve ended up with unwanted beans from fems more often than with regs. However, as this thread illustrates, it’s debatable as to the degree of this likelihood. (Honestly, I’m not in a position of knowing to comment on that, only report my personal findings). But my prior experiences always leave me wary of fems. I tend to feel I need to dedicate a good deal more time inspecting them for sacs. This is why I had advised not to SCRoG. Doing so takes away the ability to perform a sound inspection. I think such a method (SCROoG) would be best advised with clones from a (first) proven fem. Selection first.

To that point, here’s a couple boys I isolated to collect pollen from. Nothing overly remarkable about them smell wise, in fact they’re kind of lacking. But they look very much alike. Almost clone like. And I dig their serration. None of the girls are this heavily serrated. So... I’m gonna toss some pollen and then see what shows in the babies (someday down the road)... now that’s the exciting stuff!

View Image

(Your first grow is coming along spectacularly, Tri_Cho_Me)

Thank you! :thank you:

I will get to that point some day where I do some breeding, but baby steps. I have to get this next round off the ground soon in my no-till pots! So stoked :biggrin:

Tri_Cho_Me

Tri_Cho_Me · Oct 30, 2016

maryjaneismyfre said:
3 Sides

The breeders side, I think he is stating as well saying its a pity to not be able to carry on the line for himself via f2's. With most seed released as f1 though, it is great and stable and vigorous but the f2 generation with show expressions with individuals having characteristics of all the grandparents. So when the knock-offs happen they tend to remain that...That is unless the breeder did proper work or the strain is an inbred or true breeding line. In that case the f2's and f3's will be stable. This is where many breeders had their work ripped, as an extreme example the seeds that Skunkman brought to europe that were bred to be stable and uniform, spawned an industry and everyone seemingly ripped everyone else off afterwards once the industry took off. If they had been releasing feminized stock and no-one was able to really breed with them none of that would have occured, but on the otherhand we would not have all the wonderful strains of today that came about from everyone being able to f2 and cross everyone else's stuff.

I don't like the breeders today that only release feminized stock but I like the breeders that welcome others to work their lines, just to give credit where it is due. I think if you paying $10 a seed no-one has the right to complain if you use it to make more seed.

I will have to try some Regular some day. Unfortunately, my setup isn't conducive to to it (no-till and one plant per pot, limited space) and I just ordered a bunch of fems from Nirvana. Maybe by the time those are gone, I'll have a different setup to where I'll have more flexibility.

Tri_Cho_Me

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