So I just grew out a decent crop of some strains that I've never grown/smoked before- ALL being femmed varieties....freebies from the tude. So theres a couple questions/thoughts lingering in my dome that I would like to get some exp. feedback on....... 1.) Are femmed seeds/plants less potent than non-femmed? <my last crop isnt as strong/potent as I think it should be...decent, but no cigar> 2.) Does the time from seed to pre-flower differ from Fem - NonFem? <my femmed showed sex at 4-6 wks...my non-fem are at 7 wks and only 3 out of 12 are showing; and some are just now getting ***. nodes> Unrelated, but the cherry pheno Black Widow from Mr. Nice...is it worth cloning and when will the cherry smell be evident? If anyone else has any good tips for the BW, please chime in.
Personally i think the conditions that the plant has been raised in have more of an influence over the things you have mentioned . As for feminised seeds I've had pretty good experiences with them so far but they are still new to me . Black widow sounds intense I gotta check that one out 42o
I only use fem seeds for piece of mind. A little insurence that time and money isn't wasted . I have 5 fem cheese from ghs going atm and they are nice but if you want strong plants and a knock out smoke get some big bang seeds. I grew this 2 crops ago and it became an instant fave
Femmed seeds have been controlled as to what kind of sex gene ends up in the seed. Once the seed is created it doesn't know that it came to be female due to luck of the draw or manipulation of the process. In other words, a feminized seed is no different than a female seed of the same strain, it will grow the same. Feminizing does not change the seed in any way, it just controls the conditions under which the seed was produced to ensure no male genetics.
Above is fact. My grower insists on feminized, 'cause she refuses to waste any space/time on males (closet grower).
regular, because that way its one or the other not a herme - and you can keep the male and cross it with the female again if you wanted and get something even better femed seeds work most of the time, but I have had about 20-30% turn herme in the latter weeks of flower I have bought many seeds that are feminized and these 4 different seeds all turned herme in the latter weeks of flower - all were ordered from here and in original packaging unopened Headband Sharks Breath Sour Cream Tangerine Dream all turned herme in the latter weeks of flower
I've been growing femmed seeds from reputable breeders for years and never once had a hermie or a male from them.
I've often wondered about femming the seeds myself, I read an article someplace, to do with silver and a 9 volt battery, but as always I'll fall back to my old method of putting a bunch down ..growing to about 10" then 12x12 for 2 weeks, to force their sex, then binning the males and vegging the females, ....it's a hassle to start a grow this way, but thats gardening for ya! "V"
Regular seeds can still turn hermi as well . I've never had a hermi from fem seeds just one off a Reg seed that must have got stressed out And isn't 20-30% better odds than 50/50 male/female? Just my opinion 42o
[quote name='"420outdoor"'] Regular seeds can still turn hermi as well . I've never had a hermi from fem seeds just one off a Reg seed that must have got stressed out And isn't 20-30% better odds than 50/50 male/female? Just my opinion 42o[/quote] One would try to reason that......... but.....comparing a plant that shows to be a male(after switching to 12/12).......versus a plant that switches from female to male "X" amount of weeks after flower? But it doesn't add up. You could seed up an entire crop. Hermies are bad. I do prefer femmed seeds. They have always been 100% female for me. I don't see the reason to not spend the very few extra bucks on femmed seeds rather than regs, unless you plan on breeding, then why? Do you really want to have a higher probability of having to cut down potentially(Avg speaking) up to 1/2 of your plants because at the 12/12 turn, you found out they were males? It's just not worth the few $ you "saved" when you purchase them, cause after you factor your time, effort, expenses, you end up losing. You just wasted months of concerted effort, and for what?
Yes but the point is that not only fem seeds can turn hermi any seed can . I know Fems have more of a chance to turn but if you buy high quality seeds then this is significantly lower . If you keep a close eye on your grow you can easily remove any hermis that show, if any just like you would remove the males to stop pollination But personally I've never had hermis off the good quality Fems I have bought , and I think people are either believing the minority of people that get them or are spending money on shitty Fems
some good points here...and to touch on the HERMIE issue; i believe that it is plant determined. that is, its not the femmed seeds being more prone to herm(although it may be in some cases...lower quality etc), but rather its particular genetics that "encourage" it to send out male flowers towards then end of flowering to ensure pollination...of any kind. i understand how they are made and i also understand that they are 'genetically equall' to thier mom, BUT has it been scientifically proven to be as POTENT as non-femmed? and it is not exactly the same as its mom, because(in most cases) it's mother was spawned from both male and female...therefore it(mother) is more genetically diverse. i may be off there....this avenue wasnt exactly touched on in genetics class(one geared towards livestock lol) the male of the Black Widow is considered to be the prize factor when creating your own strains...not to say the female is useless....but only a small part in the BIG picture. i hate spending X amount of months on ANY strain and not have it turn out to be FIRE. the best bags of weed ive ever smoked were seeded...by far! my growing conditions are identical in both grows and my current non-fems are not eager to show their naughty bits....there has got to be something behind that. thanks for all the good comments fellas, and i hope i dont come of as a dick, but god damnit i want the FIRE!
^All true. And the myth that femmed seeds are more likely to hermie is based in some fact -- original attempts at feminizing did indeed result in higher hermie rates. But those efforts started 20 or more years ago, by now the reputable breeders have refined the techniques and learned which genetic lines will resist going hermie and stabilized them down. So it's fair to say that femmed seeds from a reputable breeder are not more likely to hermie than regular seeds, but femmed seeds from a hermie in the first place or some other sloppy technique like that will end up with more hermies. One other point with femmed seeds: I try to stick to major genetic lines bred into the strains I grow (such as Northern Lights, Haze, WW, etc). These are the ones that are more reliable when femmed because they are the ones that have been worked on the longest by breeders. But if you start getting into femmed versions of exotic, niche strains then there could be a greater chance of hermie because there has been less work on stabilizing these.
I'm not following this -- why would femmed seeds be genetically equal to the mom? Even femmed seeds have both a mother and a "father", that father being another female, but the point is that the seed is the genetic combination of the parents, not a copy of one of them. And yes, a plant from a femmed seed is just as potent as a female plant from a "regular" seed of the same genetics. Again, femming does not change the seed or the plant, it only eliminates the possibility of a male. Once the seed is formed there is nothing about that seed to know that it became female by chance or because there were only female genetics available. Quick clarification about the feminizing process -- there is one feminizing technique in which you can get a genetic copy of the mother. Some strains will produce seeds late in flowering if unpollinated. It's a survival mechanism, to try to pass on the genes before dying. Not all strains do it, and most of those that do produce only a few seeds. But, some breeders did select for this trait until they developed strains that would produce tons of feminized seeds this way, essentially clones in seed form. One of the big problems with this technique is that when you grow the seeds that trait has been passed along, so your all-female plants can bust out with seeds as well. That's why breeders have moved away from this technique, I don't think any of the breeders have done any femmed lines this way for several years now.
yea with femed seeds you have only a chance to get female or herme with regular seeds you have the chance to get female or male or herme so you chances of getting a herme plant are 50% with femed seeds and 33% with regular seeds - yes its not really a 50/50 chance since you are more likely to get female or at least thats the idea anyways but statistically thats how it is however if you only want female not male then it is still better to go with regular seeds since again you have a statistically better chance of not getting a herme and the herme is the problem not the male plant, the male plants can be seen in the veg stage before flower but a herme usually wont come out until a few weeks into flower but thats just my opinion and expierence from growing with both types of seeds for many years also I think that the way to make femed seeds is they irradiate them with gama rays and it destroys the protein markers that allow it to change into a male, but this isnt always 100% thats why you get a herme
Reg's gotta come from somewhere, keep buying non-femized seeds they're like 2 whole dollars apiece cheaper!! lmao!
The fact that there are two possible outcomes does not make the odds 50/50, that is not "statistically how it is." When I get in my car to drive somewhere I either will live or die on my journey, but my odds of dying aren't 50%. The fact that another approach has more possible outcomes (three possible regular seeds: f/m/h) doesn't mean anything about the odds of any one of those actually occurring. When I get in my car to drive somewhere I either will arrive unharmed or be injured or die on my journey, but my odds of arriving safely don't change just because there is another possibility. As for how femmed seeds are made -- no, it's not gamma rays or any other kind of radiation . The main techniques are light stress, application of colloidal silver, and/or application of gibberellic acid. And importantly, these techniques are applied to select budsites on a healthy female, not to the whole plant. But back to the original discussion, femming does not "destroy protein markers" or alter the seed in any way.
The ratio of male to female is more like 65:35 naturally. But anyways. How do you guys feel about genetic stability of these femmed seeds? Do you notice some really funky pheno's because of recessive traits that might be increased by imbreeding? Or a loss of vigor? I have only grown femmed seeds once and they were ones that had great reviews but still didn't match up to the clone only Trainwreck I can around. Smoke wasn't as strong, smell wasn't as sweet, had a little skunkiness to it which the original didn't have. Was relatively stable with slight differences. But I am not sure they femmed the original to begin with. All in all I have not been impressed with seeds and have been sticking to clones.