How are feminized seeds made?

Reading Time 5 minutes

 

 

Feminized seeds were a revolution when they came on the market more than 15 years ago. Nowadays they represent more than 75% of the worldwide sales of marijuana seeds, and this is no coincidence, as during this time they have proven to be just as good, or even better, than regular seeds. In this article we will see different ways to create 100% feminine seeds, are you in?👉

 

 

🔥 Is it easy to create feminized marijuana seeds?

 

 

If you have ever wondered how to feminize a cannabis seed and you imagined it was a difficult task I’ll tell you it wasn’t, creating a good regular variety can be as complicated as producing female cannabis seeds, because the greatest difficulty is in finding parents who transmit their best qualities to the offspring.

If you have already accomplished this step and your only concern is to know how to extract feminized seeds from a cannabis plant, I am going to explain it to you briefly.✍

 

 

🎯 How to make feminized seeds with STS step by step

 

 

1. Prepare STS (Silver Thiosulphate), mixing silver nitrate with sodium sulphate.
2. Spray the STS on the plants that we want to reverse their sex, these will act as “male” in pollination.
3. Change the photoperiod to flowering and repeat the spray application of STS one week later and again 15 days after the first time.
4. After the third application change the photoperiod of the receptors that will act as female during pollination, this will be the last application of STS, after the second one we already inhibit the production of ethylene, which causes the plant to flower as male instead of female.
5. About 25 days after putting the receptors in bloom they will begin to be at their best to be pollinated, depending on the variety, this will happen at the time when the reversed ones start to release pollen.
6. Pollinate for 2 or 3 weeks if you want to get a lot of seeds, if you want to get few and take advantage of the rest of buds to consume you can do a located pollination on a single branch.
7. After the last pollen intake by the females it is time to ripen the feminized seeds, it is very simple, we only have to feed the plants for 30 days more as when we cultivate to produce flowers.

 

 

 

Requirements for parental selection

 

The females chosen to be reverted to male have to undergo a number of tests to prove that they are suitable for reversion. These tests are based on the resistance and sexual purity of the selected specimens and basically they try to induce different types of stress. Only plants that stay fully female will pass the test and then they can be considered good breeding tools.

When we choose the varieties we want to cross we have to look at the desirable qualities, such as taste, production, effect, speed, and so on. But it must be clear that these features are only useful if they are transmitted to the progeny, a good phenotype is only a good phenotype if its qualities are not transferred to its descendants. On the other hand, if it transmits those qualities, it can also be considered a good breeding tool.

 

 

 

🧐 Are there other ways to produce feminized cannabis seeds?

 

 

Yes, there are, although not as effective and reliable as with STS, so we do not recommend them. But if you want to know other ways to make 100% feminine seeds of your favorite weed I’ll tell you. First of all you have to understand that all techniques are based on stressing a female plant to revert its sex to male, so it can produce flowers with which it can pollinate another female.

The first feminized seeds on the market were made by naturally stressing a female to pull out male flowers with pollen. This is not a good method, since plants that revert under natural stress can easily transmit this trait to their offspring. It often happened that those feminized strains were hermaphrodites, so natural stress is not a good way to reverse cannabis females.

The most common technique used to cause stress to female plants was known as “Light Poisoning“ or light stress. It’s easy, you just have to use irregular photoperiods, or often interrupt the night cycle of female cannabis plants during flowering.

 

 

⚠️ What is Rodelization?

 

 

It is another stress process, in this case due to over-ripe, i.e. not harvesting in time or lengthening the flowering cycle of a female cannabis plant to produce male flowers. This method is not very good because of the small amount of pollen that is created, it is not worth it if you want to make many feminized seeds.

This is something they do naturally as a way of perpetuating the species. When a female guesses she’s going to die and hasn’t been pollinated, she spontaneously generates fertile male flowers to self-pollinate and continue with the lineage.

 

 

⛳ Making feminized seeds with colloidal silver

 

 

The technique for producing feminized marijuana seeds with colloidal silver is based on the same theory as the STS one. Both use silver to inhibit the production of ethylene in a female plant, and that this specimen blooms as a male and releases pollen.

With colloidal silver there are also several spray applications during the night cycle in some of the first days of the flowering cycle. The silver used in this method, or in the STS technique, is a heavy metal that can be toxic. It is therefore important to cover the substrate so that possible droplets from the sprayed leaves do not wet the soil.

 

 

👌 How are feminized seeds made with gibberellic acid?

 

 

This way of producing 100% feminine seeds with gibberellic acid was published by the great Robert Connell Clarke in his magnificent book “Marijuana Botany”. With this method several applications must be done during a period of 5 or 7 days. The biggest problem with gibberellic acid technique is its instability, since a very precise dose is needed to be effective, around 100 PPM. It is also common that each variety may need a different dose, so not many people use it nowadays.

 

 

 

👾 Conclusions

 

 

If you want to make your own feminized seeds, I recommend you the STS method, it is the most used for some reason. You have to be careful not to inhale the gases it produces, protecting yourself with a mask, safety goggles and gloves for its manipulation, but it is the most effective technique. It is surprising to see an elite clone bloom as a male after having grown it many times as a female, I invite you to try it.

If you liked this article you can help us if you share it, that way if a friend of yours is curious about how to get feminized seeds he/she can see it here.🤪