One of the oldest strains I grow is only in regular seeds. I forget just how wonderful this strain can be. The most special thing is these regular seeds usually run around 80% female. I have seen other strains bred by the same breeder that do it also. I have also run across this with major breeders also. I have had 5 packs of TGA seeds produce 4 females. Pretty sure it is in how the seeds are made. Healthy plants produce healthy seeds. Keeping a plant well fed all the way through the seed making process might be the key........................ I am not sure if people realize that the male female ratio's of regular seeds are probably a lot better then they think.
It's been my experience that, with non-feminized seeds, the old article from Dutch Passion really did nail it in terms of getting a favorable male:female ratio.
Dutch Passion said:
From literature and our own findings it appears that the growth of a male or female plant from seed, except for the predisposition in the gender chromosomes, also depends on various environmental factors. The environmental factors that influence gender are:
• a higher nitrogen concentration will give more females.
• a higher potassium concentration will give more males.
• a higher humidity will give more females.
• a lower temperature will give more females.
• more blue light will give more females.
• Fewer hours of light will give more females.
It is important to start these changes at the three-pairs-of-leaves stage and continue for two or three weeks, before reverting to standard conditions.
In nature - with both plants and animals - one male is fully capable of "servicing"
many females, so there is no need to have anywhere a 50:50 ratio. Pollen travels, after all. Also, consider the whole process of creating a viable, mature seed and the timing involved with same. The male plant produces flowers... They open and release their pollen, the wind (any wind at all, as many an outdoor grower has learned the hard way
) carries that pollen far and wide - and the male plant's duty is DONE. But, at the same time, the female plant's duty is far from done. Once its flowers are pollinated, time is still required for the seed-making process. Therefore, it is perfectly logical for plants grown from seed at one point time (in the growing season) to be more heavily biased towards females and plants grown from seed at another point in time to be more biased towards males.
Nothing is 100% (err... so to speak), of course. But if I read where someone is complaining about a breeder because the pack of seeds they purchased ended up producing an extremely unfavorable ratio (IOW, mostly males), I have to wonder if much of that can be attributed to unfavorable conditions in the grow room.
I don't always find myself extremely concerned about the conditions that I'm trying to grow cannabis in. But if I only have one or two seeds of a strain - or have several, but the strain is known for producing multiple phenotypes and I'm looking for a specific one either for a mother plant or simply because I think I'll like its bud better than a different phenotype - then I won't attempt to grow them out in the middle of August, for example, when it is rather difficult for me to keep my grow space's temperature under control.
Again, even with perfect(+/-) control of conditions, there's no guarantee that you can get 100% females (or, I suppose, 100% males if that's what you're looking for), but I have found that it seems to affect the ratio of what I get.
YMMV, of course.
Some strains show sex under 20hrs of light.
Most all of them will, eventually. What we tend to refer to as "preflowers" are really just... flowers. I start looking for flowers (with a magnifying glass, if at all possible - but my eyesight is <BLEEP>) as soon as the plant is sexually mature (internodal growth becomes staggered instead of the initial pattern of each new set of branches being directly across from each other).
They may also give you a estimate of percentages. Though even if they are around 80% they may not say so because you just never know.
The only strain that I ever bought - and immediately grew - multiple packs of at one time was Nevil's Haze "back in the day." I don't remember the exact ratio, because it has been quite a few years. But I do remember hoping for something close to 50% female and I greatly exceeded that. IIRC, I saw >75% females.
Though rare some packs could end up with more males then females.
I cannot say for sure that no cannabis strains have evolved to produce more males than females (again, under conditions favorable for the production of mostly females). But I doubt it. It just seems like such a mutation would have ended up causing the examples that carried it to have been "out-competed" and, therefore, for said mutation to have vanished. IDK, I'm no geneticist/etc.
Don't let a couple males keep you from growing the best.
+1,000,000, lol.
All the true champions come from regular seeds.
When it comes down to it,
every strain came from "regular" seeds... if you look back far enough.
I favor breeders who offer at least some non-feminized selections in their strain catalog. I don't know that it makes all that much difference - to me, in terms of just wanting to grow something decent, I mean - but when I'm looking for something new to grow and see a breeder such as Greenhouse Seed Company, where it looks like
every strain they sell is only available in a feminized version, well... I just skip to the next breeder.
i took the best female and the best male and did my own pollination.
I once tried to make some Maine Coon Siamese cats that way, and it turns out...
You'll bleed a lot less if you just let them get on with things all on their own
.
