Many growers would like to create feminized cannabis seeds for growing in their garden. There are a few different ways of creating feminized cannabis seeds. In this article we will teach you how to grow feminized “selfed” cannabis seeds.
What are Feminized Cannabis Seeds?
Most growers are aware of regular cannabis seeds. These are cannabis seeds that when planted will grow to be either male cannabis plants or female cannabis plants. Feminized cannabis seeds are different in that they will only grow into female cannabis plants when they are flowered.
What are the Advantages of Feminized Cannabis Seeds?
When growers start their cannabis gardens with feminized cannabis seeds it can save the growers having to grow and then remove male cannabis plants from their gardens. This saves the growers time by not having to germinate extra seeds, potting them, using extra growing mediums and transplanting cannabis that ends up once sexed to be male plants. The grower will not have to spend time, only to throw out their male plants after flowering has started.
What are the Downsides to Feminized seeds?
There are few downsides for the everyday cannabis gardener when using feminized cannabis seeds. First, feminized cannabis seeds are somewhat more prone to developing male pollen sacs. This is because the plants are trying their best to reproduce, as they do in nature. Because of this the plants may be more likely to try and pollinate itself to produce seeds, to carry on its genetic makeup for the next generation of plants. Also if the grower would like to produce their own regular seeds for their next cannabis garden they will need to self that plant as we will discuss in this article.
What is Colloidal Silver and How is it used for Feminized Seeds?
Colloidal silver is a solution of suspended silver particles in distilled water. People sometimes use it for health benefits and it is sold over the counter for this reason. You can buy colloidal silver using commercial means or you can even make your own. It is pretty easy to do. One thing that you will notice when buying colloidal silver commercially is that it will come in different strengths. You will see a listing on the bottle and it will typically have 10 to 40 or 50 PPM. This is the Parts Per Million of silver that is suspended in the distilled water solution.
Colloidal silvers’ role in creating feminized seeds comes down to spraying the solution onto your female plant. You will want to use a solution that is at least 15 PPM when spraying. Using a weaker silver solution will not produce as much pollen.
What does Colloidal Silver do to Female Cannabis Plants?
When the female cannabis plant is sprayed with colloidal silver, the silver particles are absorbed by the plant’s leaves and flowering tips. After about a week of spraying the plants, it will induce the female plant to start growing male pollen sacs in place of the female flowers. These male flowers will spread pollen everywhere creating seeds that will only be feminized.
Methods for Reversing Female Cannabis Plants: How To
If your goal is to create feminized cannabis seeds, it is best to first sex the plants to make sure that the plant that you intent to use is female. You can spray male cannabis plants to reverse them as well, however you will only create all male cannabis seeds, instead of all female cannabis seeds.
Once you have sexed that cannabis plant to be female, it is good to start spraying the female cannabis plant about one week before you switch to 12/12 for your flowering period. This will allow the plant to start to absorb the silver solution, and some of the work reversing the plant will start to happen even if you are unable to see it.
PRO TIP: We like to start spraying our plants one week early, then we will switch the female plant that has been sprayed, one week early into flowering before starting the plants that you would like to seed.
This works awesome if you have two exact clones, and would like one to pollinate the other. For example if you have two clones, keep one in 16/8 hours of lighting. Then start spraying the other clone with your spray two weeks before you would like to start flowering and making your seeds. After one week of spraying one of your clones, remove it and start it under 12/12 lighting while keeping the other under the 12/8 for one week. After a week of spraying the one clone and one week of flowering the clone you would like to reverse plant the other clone that was not sprayed and on 16/8 hours of light in with the clone that has been on 12/12 for one week.
This will give the plant you would like to reverse a one week head start on flowering and creating pollen sacs.
Keep spraying the plant that you have been spraying for two weeks. You should not be starting to see some male pollen sacs. If you are unsure of what they will look like you can read this article showing the difference between male and female cannabis flowers. After three weeks of spraying and 12 hours of darkness you will start to see good growth of male pollen sacs.
How Much Colloidal Silver Should I Spray on the Plant?
The first week it is advised to spray the whole plant down with the spray, or if you are only using one branch then to spray the entire branch. Once the first week is finished you only need to lightly spray the growing tips of the branches, or branch you have selected to grow male pollen sacs.
How long will it take for the Reversed Female to Create Pollen?
In our experience we see the male pollen sacs start to open and shed pollen after four weeks after seeing the pollen sacs start to form. You can start spraying and creating pollen sacs on female plants as late as 4 weeks into the flowering period. At this point however any female you would like to pollinate will be too far along to create good mature cannabis seeds. You can collect and save the pollen from these pollen sacs. All the pollen that you collect will be female pollen, meaning that if you use it on any other female cannabis plant it will create all feminized cannabis seeds.
This is a great way to make Feminized cannabis seeds in the future if you only want unseeded buds in your current grow.
Best Time to Pollinate to Make Feminized Cannabis Seeds
For cannabis seeds to fully mature, it typically takes about 6 to 8 weeks depending on the cultivar of cannabis that you happen to be growing. We find it best to pollen female plants after 3 weeks of flowering in 12 hours of darkness.
What happens if I Pollinate too Early?
You can pollinate the female plant as early as you start to see flowering on the plants, however once the plant has been flowering it will slow growing new flowers that can be pollinated, and put its energy into growing seeds. Waiting to pollinate your plants for three weeks allows the plant to grow lots of flowers, and will result in more seeds being produced.
This will also allow enough time for the plant to grow the seeds to maturity. Once the plant’s seeds are ready for harvest it will slowly start to die back. We have a great article you can read here all about, growing and harvesting cannabis seeds. This article goes into more detail about how to cultivate the seeds themselves.
What happens if I Pollinate too Late?
Pollinating your cannabis plants too late with feminized pollen, will result in some immature seeds, however the majority of the seeds will be immature. This is because once the plant has finished growing some mature seeds, it will start to die having finished its life cycle; many of the seeds will not have time to finish growing to their full potential before the plant starts to die back.
How long does it take to make feminized seeds?
We recommend that you wait till the plant has started to die back for the best seed harvest possible. Overall it can take about 9 to 10 weeks for the plant to produce the best feminized seed harvest.
Can I Pollinate the Same Plant To Create Feminized Seeds?
Yes, if you are in need of only a small amount of seeds or would just like some seeds to test you can use the same processes as above however only spray one branch of the female cannabis plant. This will create only one branch with the majority of the male pollen sacs. Growers can then use this branch to pollinate the other branches on the plant. This is exactly the same as using two clones from the same plant, however we find it is somewhat easier to two clones
Will Feminized Plants produce Feminized seeds?
This all depends, if you use a feminized cannabis plant that has been reversed using the methods described in this article, then yes your feminized plant will continue to produce feminized seeds. However if you are using regular pollen from a natural male plant on your feminized plant, it will not produce feminized seeds, and will instead produce regular seeds once again.
How do you make feminized Autoflower seeds?
This same process can be followed to produce feminized autoflower seeds. However it is a little more tricky to know when you should start to spray the plant with your Colloidal silver solution. This is due to the fact that the plants will start to flower after a certain point in time rather than the lights being turned back to 12 hours.
We recommend starting to spray female autoflower cannabis plants, at week three of their growing cycles. Most autoflowering cannabis plants will start to flower about one month into their growth cycle. And will finish flowering in 3 months. This will give the plant time to start absorbing the silver solution, before it has started to flower. Autoflowering cannabis plants will produce feminized cannabis seeds no different than photoperiod cannabis plants. Autoflowering cannabis plants can also pollinate themselves, like photoperiod cannabis plants. We have a great article here you can read all about growing Autoflowering cannabis plants.
How do you Feminize male Seeds?
Currently there is no way for the average cannabis grower to feminize male cannabis seeds. This is because there is no way to tell if regular cannabis seeds are male or female cannabis plants.
Can Feminized Seeds be Male Plants?
This can happen when growing feminized cannabis seeds, sometimes even without a male cannabis plant or pollen a grower growing feminized cannabis seeds can have a male plant. Although rare it can happen in about 1 to 100 female cannabis seeds. This is because nature wants to do its job and reproduce more cannabis plants. This is why growers who are only growing feminized cannabis plants should check their plants from time to time just in case this may happen.
Making Your Own Colloidal Silver
The great thing about using colloidal silver to make your own feminized cannabis seeds is that you can easily make this yourself. With a few simple things you can make silver water in as little as a few hours.
You can search online and find many types of premake colloidal silver generators online. They are most pretty inexpensive costing anywhere between 30 to 40 dollars to a couple of hundred for a good quality one that will last for years to come and make hundreds or more batches.
To make your own colloidal silver you will require:
- 9 Volt Old Plug with the Wire Attached (old cell phone plugs work great)
- Distilled Water
- 99.99% silver, this can be a coin, or silver wires
- Wireclips
- Small glass Bottle to Hold Water
- Small piece of cardboard
Cut the end off the wire that attaches to the 9 volt plug in, separate the two wires from each other and strip some of the rubber off the ends. Then attach the wireclips to each separated end. Then place the coin, (cut the coin in half) or each silver wire to each end of the wire clips to hold them. Fill the glass bottle with water, almost to the top. Place the cardboard over the top of the water glass then push the two wire clips though to hold the two pieces of silver (coins or wire). Just place the end of the silver into the water and plug the 9 volt power supply in.
Now you just have to wait for a few hours. The small voltage will help separate the silver from the coin or wire, releasing it into the water creating colloidal silver. You can then strain this water into a spray bottle and you are now ready to make your own feminized cannabis seeds.
Should you Smoke Plants That Have been Treated with Colloidal Silver?
If you have a female plant that has been sprayed with colloidal silver you should never smoke or use it in any way, it is a good idea to throw out those plants once the seeds have been harvested. Never smoke, cook or vape with silver treated cannabis plants.
Final Thoughts
If you are interested in making feminized cannabis seeds we recommend that the first time you do so you buy some Colloidal silver that you know has the listed PPMs on the bottle so you can see the process first hand and how it would work before trying to make your own solutions. Once you have a good run thought about making your own seeds, then give it a try making your own solution. This will make it much easier to understand if the solution that you make yourself is working for you as expected.
