How Are Feminized Seeds Made: A Complete Guide

Most veteran cannabis growers have used feminized cannabis seeds in their garden. The benefits of feminized cannabis seeds are known for in the whole cannabis industry that’s why even novice growers are using it in their cannabis cultivation. However, there’s a growing number of growers who wants to know how are feminized seeds are made.

Although you can easily purchase feminized seeds in dispensaries and seed banks, nothing beats achieving of making your own feminized cannabis seeds. It may not be easy for some, but with practice, you will soon get it and reap the benefits of using feminized cannabis seeds in your garden.

Feminized Cannabis Seeds

Feminized cannabis plants will only grow from plants that are exclusively female and it gives the guarantee that the outcome plant will only produce female plants that will flower. The difference it has from regular cannabis seeds is that the regular seeds will produce half male and half female offsprings. 

How Are Feminized Seeds Made?

If you’re one of the hundreds of novice cultivators who are wondering how are feminized seeds made, we’ll discuss to you the different methods on how to feminize cannabis seeds. However, we’ll focus more on the method that uses colloidal silver as it’s the most convenient that you can do at home.

• Stress or Rodelization Method

This is one of the first methods used to obtain seeds that produce female plants. There are a lot of ways to stress the cannabis plant to make sure they develop male flowers. A grower can use factors such as temperature, nutrition, photoperiod, and PH levels. 

Supporters of the rodelization technique prefer to delay the harvest 2-3 weeks in order to force the plant to develop a few male flowers without stressing them as much as with any of the other methods. 

The downside of this technique is that it will produce less amount of pollen than other techniques. The advantage is that it’s 100% natural and it doesn’t use any chemicals. This is a great alternative for growers who wants to keep it simple without using any chemicals.

• Silver Thiosulfate Solution (STS)

This is one of the most commonly used methods for both producers and seed banks. The solution is made of distilled water, silver nitrate and sodium thiosulphate. The STS is easy to prepare but the lifespan is quite limited for barely a few days as long as it is well-preserved.

Keep in mind that you should never consume any part of the cannabis plant that has been sprayed with STS. Also, you should not revert the plants to make resin extracts and the best thing to do to them is to discard them after harvesting the pollen.

• Gibberellic Acid

The Gibberellins are plant hormones that help guarantee various processes related to the development of the plants. Although there are several types of gibberellins available in the market, the most common and effective is the gibberellic acid or GA3. This product can be sprayed on the cannabis plant before switching photoperiod plants to flowering stage.

• Colloidal Silver Method

This method uses colloidal silver that is formed by electrically charged silver nanoparticles and has antibacterial and antifungal properties. This has been first introduced in the market in 1980 because of its therapeutic use.  Just like in the STS method, make sure that you get rid of the sprayed plants once their pollen has been harvested as the colloidal silver is absorbed systematically by the plant and it will remain in its tissues. 

Here is the complete guide on how you can make feminized seeds using colloidal silver:

1. Select two female plants that have strong genes. One plant is going to be chemically treated to grow male sex organs while the other one is going to be pollinated.
2. Make sure you have colloidal silver that has a minimum of 30 parts per million (PPM) of silver. You can purchase colloidal silver in hardware stores, plant store or those who sell dietary supplements.
3. Spray the colloidal silver solution each day of the first 3-4 weeks of the cannabis plant’s flowering stage. You can directly apply the colloidal silver on the bud sites until they are drenched. 

You can stop doing this once you see the pollen sacs appearing and beginning to open. You should not smoke buds that have formed on this plant because they have greater tendencies of being coated with colloidal silver.

1. A good indication that your pollen sacs are ready to be harvested is when you see them swollen and they begin to split open. You can remove the pollen sacs from the plant and let them dry air dry for about a week. Once completely dried out,  you can shake the sacs in a bag and gather the feminized pollen.
2. Pollinate the second plant by using the pollen that you have just collected. Take note that the plant should be about 2-3 weeks into the flowering stage to ensure that it will produce seeds.
3. Wait for about 6 weeks and you will notice that the calyxes on the pollinated plant are swollen and showing seeds. This is the perfect time to harvest your own feminized seeds. 

Advantages of Using Feminized Cannabis Seeds

You have learned how to make your own colloidal silver and you’re ready to use them in your cannabis garden. Let us reinforce this by giving you the benefits of why more and more cannabis cultivators use feminized seeds.

• Saves the Cultivators Time

Some cannabis cultivators especially those who are only growing in their home don’t have the luxury of time to check on their cannabis plant every now and then. Using feminized cannabis seeds, bring a near 100% guarantee that each plant grown from the seed will produce only female plants thus producing large amounts of bud when properly grown.

• Give Better Cannabis Genes

Most feminized plants are products of the breeders carefully controlling the strains they have mixed in order to produce great defining characteristics of each strain. The feminized plants are known to be more productive, aromatic, powerful and attractive. 

• Allows for Breeding with more control

Ad advantage of using feminized seeds is that they have the ability to better control the breeding of the plant. It gives more control of the whole process and by recording the seed strains used in feminizing seeds, it allows us to better understand the diversity of the plant in a way that might enlighten new breeding potentials.