Do you use seeds from seedy-weedy?

Growing
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I’ve been collecting seeds from my Cannabis for as long as I’ve been ingesting. Many have been labeled but many are not and for the most part, my opinion has always been that it’s all good.

But since getting legal to grow and actually putting skills to practice as I learn them, I’m realizing that perhaps planting seeds that came from a hermaphrodite isn’t the best thing to do.

So I thought I’d ask around:

1). do you believe that a seed from a hermaphrodite plant is still a quality seed?

2). do you believe that their quality differs depending on WHY & HOW it turned hermie?
(weak genetics vs. being stressed)

3). do you believe that these seeds have a higher chance of being hermie too?

4). do you believe hermies caught early enough can be salvaged or should they be destroyed immediately?

Thanks in advance and I look forward to opinions!

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Good morning @Dianna.Donnelly! Great questions, I’ll tag in more of the growers on here to see if they’d like to chime in too! @mastergrowers

These are just my opinions, so take these with a grain of salt.

I think they absolutely have the potential to be quality in many regards, but from a breeding perspective (from what I hear from other breeders anyway) is it’s not considered good stock to use for breeding.

Look up epigenetics, the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression (in this case, that stressed incurred by the mother plant may express in the offspring.) Personally, I believe that’s a big reason why there’s that idea/notion floating around to not use hermie genetics, whether it’s based on multiple observations of growers/breeders actually seeing a higher percent of hermaphrodite offspring from hermaphrodite seed,) or that maybe there is actually something to epigenetics.

I’ve heard of people picking off nanners from herm plants in efforts to save them, and some doing it successfully. Personally I think it’s a bit of a risk, you miss one and you’ve got a BIG problem.

Stick with breeders with good reputations and that are known for typically solid/stable plants. Anyone’s genetics can hermie, but some are far more prone to it (and the connections of why that is happening seems to becoming a bit more evident.)

Just my two cents!

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  1. No
  2. yes
    3.yes
  3. No and yes

Don’t mess around with hermies at all. Your asking for trouble to be sure. Basically you only want stable seeds from somebody who knows what they’re doing when making them. Unintentional seeds can come from hermies or from the sneeker gean, there is a gene that causes a boy to put out a female looking pistol when he is young, this can result in a free ticket into the girls locker room where he pops off and creates seeds that carry this sneaker gene. Many growers faced with a room full of seed decide to sell and share this seed not relizing that the dreaded sneaker gene is contained within. Http://moonflowerseed.com

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Very interesting topic and timing as well.
I was having these same thoughts as I was doing the daily inspection on the hermaphrodite I had.
Two weeks ago I had noticed a few male or reverted!? flowers coming from some of the undersides of the main bud sites.

Answers to your questions directly summed up at the bottom. :).

(Roughly half way up Plant only visible directly from underneath and it just caught the right light the first time for me to notice)
I removed everything I could find which I will roughly call was only one male flower anther on maybe less than 5% of the plants total budding sites.

Long story short it’s a crop king crown royale fem. this one of the same batch of 5 (4 grown on) was the only one showing traits of hermaphrodite.
All four are completely different flower structure ranging from purple leaves and sort of buds (this one) to green buds with purple ish leaves and green "calix"stacking flowers with red and yellows in the leaves.

After plucking the few hermie flowers I saw. And again day or two later. (Not more but maybe around same amount or slightly less found)
I have seen none since those first five days of watching and plucking.
One qualifier along with stresses noted later this was roughly around the time I noticed that the watering with the aerated teas I had done a little over a week prior started to kick in.
(I got an Fluence vyprx plus which instantly sent this Plant to purple in two days. (Only leaves exposed to direct light)
But didn’t act as a deficiency.
However I did apply some extra compost plus teas and a mulch layer of grass seed and purselane.
(This one likely had the least amount of light for the entire time until the Vypr showed up)

I would’ve never liked feminized as much as I don’t like autoflowers. (I don’t have reasons as much as my own ethics on the manipulation of genetics females to force self seed, what if more of this ends up in our gene pool long term? As there are breeders which have stated using fem because that one “was so good”.

My problem with this type of breeding is why we have roses that don’t smell, dairy (Holsteins cows) that can barely stand up with their weight but give huge yield, plants with yield and diseases, ball python “spider variety” has a wobbly neck, people still use the line because it’s “cool”
fancy dogs with again all sort of strange illness and disease.

I’m very curious to know if it does matter on a cellular or scientific level that is beyond my understanding. But I have seen it in some industries I’ve been involved in. And find breeding plants very fascinating.

I’ve always been against the idea of a fem plant. Mainly for the reasons of mothering/cloning/breeding.
Now I have an idea to run from seed with fems (variation and pheno/geno difference indeed) for random or bulk and then a few nice regulars for keepers.

I haven’t used enough long terms to know there’s a difference. And same goes for autofem. I don’t like the idea because I can manipulate plants just fine. But then it does sound handy and I’m sure genetically it’s improved a lot since the last trial I did, which was along time ago, currently trying again with ether auto mazar afem or white widow AFem. Two out of six are up.
(Straight germinated into a 10 gallon living soil under 400w MH with established ground cover, hasn’t seen fertilizer yet super nice green growth and three weeks into flower, so far so good) so I may change my mind on the whole auto and fem.
always willing to try and adapt/learn something new. Can’t be stuck in the old especially with the dedicated technology coming towards this now.

And I guess the demand is there for breeders that I follow to switch over to producing fems and possibly autos as well.
But I professionally would never carry them for a breeding line, stock plant line for propagation or much beyond one time cheaper bulk growing. (Greenhouse etc maybe) living soil makes it very neat to see the different expressions and I wonder if that has any affect either way.

I will be able to thoroughly check the finished product to see if there are any seeds, so far have noticed none. And keep checking because I was going to pull the plant early until I only noticed a few. If it had gotten worse then yes it would’ve gone.

I’ve had hermies in the past (entire run) maybe that’s why I have a biased. But I’m trying it again. Could’ve been room stress at the time or genetics because that too wasn’t recent.

This was a trial run in a “under construction room” so I was checking for temps, humidity vpd, etc during this trial as well as literally renovating the room at the same time halfway through flower still.
There would have been plenty of stress for any plant to have survived and thrived in that situation.

New method of weighing to measure water uptake. So ran a pretty “dry” run and then ramped that up in the last or what should’ve been last month of flower. (Likely go 10/11 out of the 9 weeks said on breeder package).
Did a similar ramp up in light and temperature. As well.
Showing interesting results.

Also a complete run with only two applications of salts. (One at seedling stage 3-5 days old) and again second week of flower two feeds back to back)
Next time I will omit this flowering feed and use only teas and thermal compost admins earth worm castings(with various additives)

Long thoughts, any questions just ask.

Can we consider bag seed and properly bred feminized genetics completely separate?
IMO they should be, though depending on the bag and whose seed I suppose. :joy:

  1. Yes, seeing these fems even from " a not very respected breeder from what I hear not IMO yet" sort of maybe. 2/10 might have TMV in their genetics. Which is another interesting topic.

  2. Completely. Have heard the technique (chemical or not?!) can also make a difference. Only have heard. Not sure.
    I do believe like all breeding proper environment quality growing skills and healthy plants are always going to be critical for seed production.

  3. Crappy bagseed i.e. street cannabis with seeds in it. Has always Hermed from stress (this happened before fen seeds were available here, though I could be very naive on that subject. Don’t remember that as an option buying seed in holland either then though)

  4. I’m curious. Maybe super happy times after the stress can reverse that? More light? Better spectrum? Proper day night cycling? Etc. I was doing some of these and saw now more male flowers coming this far.
    Almost done.

There’s a reason I call my new company as the following::nerd_face: #startanewlife.
Be careful at work.
Spine injury is a tough sell to the workers insurance. :p. I’m just getting old. (Almost millennial :wink:

Sjoerd Visser
The Plant Opinion.
(Soon to be online)
@plantopinion instagram.

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Just my 2 cents, cannabis is actually what is known as a trioecious plant.
It can display male-only, female-only, or male and female flowers on one
plant. Essentially, every cannabis plant has male and female potential, it
is a matter of how much the male potential has been bred out or reduced for
sinsemilla cannabis growing. Certain things such as stress or chemical
applications can cause one sex over the other to be displayed.

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Actually the male and female parts would have to exist within the same flowers to be trioecious (as opposed to male and female flowers on the same plant). A small distinction, but a distinction none-the-less.

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Epic answer Sjoerd, thank you for sharing your experience and views on this!

Great responses everyone!

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Plants can be hermaphrodite due to genetic factors and stress. It would take a very great amount of stress to make a female plant express male flowers if it was bred halfway decently. Breeding programs in cannabis are not breeding programs at all for the most part (in comparison to other agriculture). People are getting away with murder if you ask me, considering how much they can charge for a strain with absolutely no credible stabilization. We are currently pretty accepting in this industry of the high rates of variability we find in one bag of seeds. I urge growers to request better breeding. Don’t buy anything F1 or F2, especially for $10 per seed!!! If the breeder can’t tell you how many/what type of crosses they have done or percent homozygosity out of 10 or 100 seeds, ask them to do better or shop elsewhere. This industry desperately needs a bump in quality within breeding programs. Also ask about pest and disease resistance! With industry becoming more wide-spread, this will be more important than yield and potency in the not so distant future. Drought tolerance is a big one as well, depending on your cultivation methods.

  1. No, absolutely not, at least not if you don’t want more plants that will express hermaphroditic qualities easily. The exception would be if the original plant only became hermaphroditic because of very extreme conditions (and even so, such mutations can be passed down via epigenetic pathways to offspring, so you might get bad seed despite a stable mother that was just heavily stressed). All that considered, there is always a possibility you could still get an awesome seed, the chances are just more slim. That’s just how gene recombination works.

  2. I think I’ve pretty much covered this already. Those two factors are connected. Weaker genetics are stressed more easily. You just have to decide what your own standards are.

  3. Absolutely. If the mother was more likely to become hermaphroditic (especially if she DID become hermaphroditic), the seeds will have a much greater chance as well.

  4. Depends on what you mean by salvaged. If you don’t mind some seeds in your flowers, it doesn’t matter too much. But if you are seeing male flowers earlier in the cycle, they will be more likely to be viable and pollinate your female flowers than if they were to show up later in flower. Quite a few strains will express male flowers in their last few weeks, at which point it sort of looks bad, but I wouldn’t worry too much about lots of seeds because females are past their prime at that point and therefore (opportunity for fertilization has likely passed) unlikely to develop seeds.

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The three forms that can be displayed give you the trioecious. Having all
parts within a flower refers to perfect or imperfect. So cannabis is a
trioecious plant with imperfect flowers. The flowers are missing all 4
whorls. Calyx and pistils, but no corolla or stamen.

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Or stamen with corolla on males. Can’t remember if they have a calyx.

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I recently destroyed two gorgeous plants that were seeds from some cannabis we’d bought years ago. Both were hermies and I now realize what stressed them. I had 3 big plants going into flower so when I turned the lights out I’d take these smaller plants out and put them under an Aerogarden to keep them in veg. That must have stressed them and no doubt, the difference in lumens would be vast I think.
Thanks everyone for the great responses.

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I love it! Indeed you are correct now that I’m diving in deeper. I was thinking that male, female, and perfect flowers would have to exist on a single plant, but it does look like trioecious refers to the population level (no perfect flowers required).

I would think that female cannabis flowers had calyx whorls since the calyces are the bulk of what we sell as flower. I don’t know so much about males. I could see what looks like the calyx being the corolla whorl itself. Female flowers are definitely lacking the whorl of petals it seems, which males have. And then the specific female parts together would be a whorl, and then the male parts a whorl, or so I would think.

But is this all together not the case because of the overall conglomerate/aggregate type structure of the female flowers? I can’t find any good info on different types of flower structure (the morphology/structure of the flower compared to other plants), much less what female cannabis is classified as. Do you happen to know?

Keep up the botany!

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this was also discussed on the ‘talking cannabis’ series on youtube,
i’m very sorry i cant remember which live episode specifically (there’s a bunch), but there is some great current knowledge, and some really old as well.

what i think i heard was that male and female plants are genetically determined in seed form, and that hermies come from all sorts of other reasons. because once the male or female is determined that will not change, and this may be more in regards to once the seed is created then no matter how it is germinated it will genetically grow out to be what it is supposed to. no grower intervention would change that for example heat, water, hormones etc.

and i agree @Cody we should vote carefully with our dollars now which breeders we will support throughout this next couple years, especially with Monsa(n)t(o)an already having a patent on it or an attempt few years ago… what do they want with it?
they’ve bought quite a few organic seed companies in the ag world as well. and now they are also with bayer pharma… coincidence… hmmm
round-and-up ready cannabis factories> lol or gmo “real MK ULTRA” product :wink: . oh the possibilities.

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I’m an autoflower guy so I’m a little biased on which breeders I support :rofl: Luckily for me many breeders offer both photo and auto (that’s what the market wants!) Ultimately though, I look for breeders that have passion for what they do. I’ve seen breeders be a dime a dozen, so many rippers and hacks out there trying to make that quick buck on sloppy reproductions.

I have a great story of an autoflower breeder who hired people to repro his seed for him. No standards, no quality. Vast amount of his repro genetics went out to seed banks and growers direct (giving both a bad name by association,) and then had the balls to blame the growers abilities when documented journal after documented showed up with bad germ rates and hermie plants.

I have another story about a Canadian breeder that did the same thing (these were photoperiod/full cycle seeds.) Growers from all over the map reporting hermie genetics, he blamed the growers.

Give people enough rope and they tend to hang themselves if it’s destined to be.

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im interested to hear your thoughts on quality autos brand and breeders in general though i noticed your collection had some repetition.
i want 9lb hammer or power, a cheese(really seemed to help), and a day haze(keep going).+fruit/colour for dessert :wink: so i want this is regulars so this can be kept in stock so to speak
so thats what im looking at for chronic back pain, lack of sleep, side effects from pharma etc)
i think that autos have their place, especially outdoors. as do fems, likely with people stuck to a plant count for example

may i ask why you prefer your autos?
do you run them 24 hr cycles?
i have two right now that look great, and within a week or two should meet the VyprX+
the auto mazar were from vicotry seeds, the white widow were from a bin he had behind the counter and he grabbed two crappy looking ones after our wonderful discussion on paper towel germination and him not wanting to warranty seed based on pre imbibing the seed.
is there a no “bashing” companies policy? i feel like that’s the point of sharing bad experiences. if theyve been resolved by said companies then one would state that the situation was taken care of or one would likely not even be posting in the first place.

i won the argument with crop king, one pack no or minimal germ the other three all had 90 or 100 and they said no because i didnt soak with a paper towel… facepalm
they are a breeder im hearing is one that rips off genetics, i was ok with run 1 so i did grab a second to see i will not be,

niagara seed bank was the one arguing about methods,
and i believe there is a store in toronto that is selling and advertising branded seed and only actually sells “unpackaged restickered his brand of seed with fancy names that he bred” i was only there years ago and am returning soon because he has genetics im after which i was very unaware of at the time
“advertised not priced and hard to find organized by breeder” if that’s the case i will post because he sells seeds from a company that’s relevant on this forum

which is another interesting topic, how do those future patents (if varietal specific ones are issued) hold up across borders and continents? royalties etc.

i think now that these multi million dollar companies are involved in breeding projects we will see a dramatic change in the amount of companies that can sustain on only seed sales.

in canada one must be a licensed producer to obtain product, genetics etc, can they mail order clones or are they going to sell these in the government regulated similar to liquor stores. the clones and seeds that is.
currently an entire province is getting 50 /150 stores this year and the rest later
so this also affect breeding ability what if they start only selling fems, there are companies that have gone this route now also, so there is no “ripping off their genetics properly”

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These are autoflower breeders and companies I work with and I’ve grown genetics out from others not on this list as well.

Auto Seeds
Blk.Seeds
Bomb Seeds
DinaFem Cannabis Seeds
Dutch Passion Cannabis Seeds
Female Seeds
Heavyweight Seeds
Mephisto Genetics
Royal Queen Seeds
Seed Stockers
Short Stuff Seeds
Sweet Seeds
Zambeza Seeds
Zamnesia
Zenseeds

There’s some great stuff out of many of these, but highlighting I’d say Mephisto, Dinafem, Dutch Passion (and not even kissing ass because @DutchPassionTony is on here, but because they genuinely have very stable genetics based on the feedback my community AFN provides (proof’s in the pudding!))

I love Dinafem genetics, I’ve never grown anything of theirs I wasn’t satisfied with and I find their autoflower reproductions of the more “well known” commercial strains are usually pretty on-point in terms of what people expect for appeal and that “authentic” feeling. If you are looking for a good cheese, their Kush and Cheese (both photoperiod and autoflower) are just loaded with cheesy stank.

I received an autoflower with an Attitude seed order several years ago and I didn’t know what it was. No clue what I was doing (miracle grow soil haha) and I looked on the internet for what the heck this “autoflower” thing was. Found the usual mixed bag of results and opinions from forums and then I found the Autoflower Network. One of the admin of that site at the time actually reached out to me on my newbie question and personally took me under his wing to help me understand how to do things, encouraging, basically being a mentor. I loved that vibe so much that I stuck with that particular forum. Years later, I’m now an owner of the Autoflower Network and manage the community with over 25,000 registered home growers. :stuck_out_tongue: So that’s why I love my autos. I found so many people that love them, that grow them for medicine, the breeders that stick with them and give us the bigger and better autoflowers that we want to grow.

Here’s a Dutch Passion Auto Ultimate from Mr Ganjamoto, grown on AFN:

Dutch%20Passion%20Auto%20Ultimate%20(Mr%20Ganjamoto)
Dutch%20Passion%20Auto%20Ultimate%20(Mr%20Ganjamoto)600×800 135 KB

There’s a pretty distinct difference between giving honest/constructive feedback and dropping a bunch of hate speech and F-bombs. I always encourage honesty, it’s that feedback that makes people grow (or think about growing.) That said, it should be encouraged giving vendors a fair opportunity to respond to feedback and correct situations. I see the opposite a dime a dozen on social media, people have one bad experience and get on Facebook to trash talk in front of thousands how much company X sucks. Knee-jerk reacting consumerism.

We see fly-by-nights with autoflowers quite a bit, it’s all the popular strains other breeders have put out with a new label. Photoperiods are not exempt, breeders do the same thing there. Quick $$$. You know how much 10 regular seeds are running from some breeders at these conventions go for? I’ve seen upwards to $250 for 10 packs of regs. That’s some serious coin for something that seeds out by the literal thousands if you were so inclined.

Many breeders have gone this way and I do suspect it’s partly for the reason you listed, safeguarding those genetics! I like having the option for both (nowadays I honestly like growing from non-feminized, plus I’ve been playing around a bit with my own auto crosses (nothing to show, I just dabble.)) Fems can save some time depending on what I’m doing with them though.

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