Starting with the right number of seeds is an important factor to start your first cannabis grow room. Start too many and you have wasted seeds, start to few and you’re left with gaps in your grow room.
In this article we will give you some good tips on how many cannabis seeds you should start with. This can include many factors of growing seeds and we will try to review all of them below.
How many seeds do you need to start one Cannabis Plant?
When growing cannabis you will need one seed to grow one cannabis plant. However there are factors that will change how many seeds you will need to start this one cannabis plant. Seeds are easy to start with knowledge and experience, but sometimes not everything goes as you have planned and you will need to start extra seeds to get the first plant in your garden.
How Many Cannabis Seeds Should You Buy?
When picking how many cannabis seeds you need, the first thing you will need to figure out is how many cannabis seeds should you buy? There are so many different size packs out there or some seedbanks will sell you only one seed, 3 seeds, 5 seeds or even 10 cannabis seeds. There are important things that all growers should be aware of when thinking about the number of cannabis seeds they should be starting.
How Many Seeds Do I Need?
Knowing how many seeds you will need for your growth depends on several different factors. We will outline each of these below.
Are you new to starting Cannabis Seeds?
If you are new to germinating cannabis seeds for the first time, you can bet you will have some issues with starting the seeds for the first time. This will impact how many cannabis seeds you will need to grow to start off with. In this case it is best to take how many plants you are looking to grow and multiply it by two. These will give you room to have some failure when starting the seeds for the first time.
So if you are going to grow say 8 seeds in your grow space look to start at least 16 seeds for the first time. This way you have 8 extra chances to make sure you are able to fill your growing space. If you have a few extra plants that you don’t need, there are friends you can give them to, and if not take the 8 best plants and keep them and add the others to the compost bin.
Where are you getting the Cannabis Seeds From?
Depending on where your new seeds are coming from, it’s a good idea to look into this. If you are buying your cannabis seeds from a reputable seedbank they will most likely have a germination guarantee that your seeds will germinate as sold. However even with this you can still end up with a few duds in the seeds you purchased. Seeds are living things and you will have a few that end up as duds depending on how many seeds you buy.
If you are getting them from friends, how many seeds are they able to provide for your grow? If you need 8 seeds and they can only give you 4 seeds then you will need to find other seeds to get going with. If they can give you 30 seeds for your grow, and they are ten years old, you may end up with zero plants in your garden because of germination rates.
Where you acquire your cannabis seeds is very important to factor into when deciding how many cannabis seeds you should grow.
Are you Seeds Feminized or Regular Seeds?
When buying regular cannabis seeds it is important to factor in that half of you cannabis seeds will end up being male. So if you are looking for 8 female cannabis plants in your grow room you will have to start twice as many cannabis seeds once again. Normally when a grower grows regular seeds they will get about 50/50 percent of male and female cannabis plants in the garden.
This will be compounded that you may also get some dud seeds, and if you are a new grower some may not germinate as well. This will really inflate how many cannabis seeds you will need to start to get to your 8 female plant count.
If you are looking for female cannabis seeds we suggest that you check out our cannabis seeds selection page.
How old are the Cannabis Seeds you are starting?
It is not secret that the older cannabis seeds, or any seeds for that matter get the poorer germination rate you will have. Fresh seeds that are one month old you can expect to get 100% germination rates, provided the seeds were grown and harvested properly. As time goes on depending on how the seeds were stored, they will slowly become less viable overall.
Growers will need to think about this when they first are buying and starting their seeds. Are these seeds 5 years old, are they ten years old, maybe they are one month old. This will play an important part in determining how many cannabis seeds you should grow.
If they are very old seeds expect to start far more than the 8 plants you will need for your grow room. This can be hard to know when ordering seeds, some seedbanks will hold on to their seeds and sell them for years, before replacing the stock. We like to keep our stock replaced every six months and sell seeds that are no more than a year old.
How Will You Germinate Your Seeds?
Depending on how you start your seeds, you may have higher rates of germination for your seeds. Starting seeds in soil has a greater risk of having seeds that do not germinate. If you would like to make sure you plant seeds that are going to germinate you can use the paper towel method to start your cannabis seeds. This way you will see exactly how many of your seeds grow tap roots. Growers can put all 8 into the ground with taproots and have a good guarantee that they will all break the ground, giving all 8 plants needed for the grow room. You can also read more here about the Sink or Float method of seed germination.
How many Cannabis Seeds should you plant in one Pot?
If you would like to make sure you get at least one cannabis seedling per pot, sometimes it’s a great idea to start more than one seed in the pot at a time. Many times if you are looking for at least one plant per container, the grower can start two seeds per pot. When starting more then one seed per pot if one of the seeds doesn’t sprout you can still have one plant from seed.
Some growers also plant more than one seed per pot, and then cull the weaker of the two plants from the pot if both germinate.
How Big is Your Growing Space for Plants?
Knowing how many plants you are able to place in your grow tent, growing space will help with picking how many cannabis seeds to grow. It’s a great idea to pick your space and containers at the same time, not point buying 5 ten gallon containers if you can even fit one in the growing space.
Before starting any seeds check how many containers will fit into the space. If you can only fit 3 pots in your 3X3 tent there is not much sense in starting 20 seeds for your grow as most of them will go to waste. You would be much better off starting 6 seeds using the tips above to figure out the best number to get started with.
Conclusion
While there is no way to know exactly how many cannabis seeds you should grow, using these tips above will give you a general estimate on how many you will need to get started with. It’s always a very good idea to start with more seeds than you expect to grow. It would be better to have a few extra plants started then end up with a few less plants then you actually need.
Not having enough plants will waste time, energy resources and plant space.
