Question about Fem Seeds

I would like to know if it is worth the extra money to order feminized seeds. do they have a very high chance of being herm? or will they 99.5 percent be female? is it worth it. i read an article in CC that said fem seeds arent worth it. they will be herms. so please let me know your experience with fem seeds and let me know if they are 100% fem or what the hell is the rave about em? please and thanks everyone!

bump. i would like to know as well..

i am growing some fem seeds right now myself....just turned them over to flowering so im waiting on the verdict. ill let you know my male to female ratio and hermi status.

Ice

"I would like to know if it is worth the extra money to order feminized seeds."

I feel that fem seeds are worth the money TO TRY A STRAIN and that Pick n Mix is the best way to try a lot of great strains, inexpensively. (more to your answer soon)

(ok, more to your answer now)

"do they have a very high chance of being herm?"

I have 3 strains from feminized seeds in my garden, 4 strains from regular seeds. All three strains from feminized seed plants have hermied slightly or excessively, all 4 of the regular seed plants are perfect.

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The feminized seeds are made by hermieing a great pheno clone by using a chemical, then using the plants own pollen to pollinate the clone or other clones from that pheno-mother, to produce all feminized seeds. Since the hermieing is a result of chemicals/stress and not of poor genetics there should be no more hermieing traits passed on to the S1 seeds than the parent had.

Here's where the problem starts. Except for IBLs like Bubblegum or Rez Sour Diesel inbreeding two children (F1s) will produce less stable offspring. For those not familiar with this - White Russian seeds are made by crossing White Widdow with AK47. When Serious Seeds wants to make more White Russian seeds they would cross the WW x AK47 again, not let a male white russian pollenate a female white russian - because that would produce less stable seeds. Except in stabilized InBred Lines like RSD and BG.

So, your S1s are going to be slightly less stable than their parent. If I want a mother to take clones off for years I'll order a set of regular seeds and pick the best female as my mother. If I want to try a lot of strains quickly and inexpensively to decide which strains I want in my garden - while doing the least amount of work planting, caring for and weeding out males and caring for extra females - I'll order feminized.

Both have their places, both strengths and weaknesses.

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thanks Hobbes....im anxious to see how mine turn out. basically since fem seeds are less stable slight stress factors will turn them hermi and you could end up with a pollinated bud here and there. its really nothing outrageous though when you think about it...if you do get some slight hermi going on all the seeds should in theory be feminized correct?

thanks for sharing.

Ice

".if you do get some slight hermi going on all the seeds should in theory be feminized correct?"

The seeds from a self pollinating S1 would be an S2 I believe, feminized for sure. A study a read a few months ago said that by the time breeding gets to S3 or S4 the plant is so unstable it's ungrowable for our purposes. The S2 would be less stable than the S1, which hermied to make the seeds for the S2.

My feeling is that any pollen from a plant that hermies when you don't want it to is not pollen you want to make seeds with. (Except for late flowering hermieing of course)

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is it also likely that the genetics come out perfect?
and you may take clones of a mother for years to come?

wow some great info. thanks dude! i think ill stick with regular seeds. or like you said, to try out a bunch of strains. thanks bro! rep+

so if i have some bagseeds, seeds from buds that i bought, they are herm right? if they are from herm then they are feminized seeds right? if that is the case then i am growing a bunch of feminized seeds? i dont flower until about 4-5 more weeks so ill let u know ratio but isnt that how it works? fem seeds are from a seeded female plant, correct?

whoa whoa let me tell you something about reguler seeds. they are hazardous. i use a closet and when i first started i thought i would just use some bagseeds well turned out ALL 4 were males. i was in you same situation and i chose to go with bagseeds. well i bleached the room and cleaned the shit out of it. pollen is very tricky. well ive finished 2 grows with fem seeds with no problems the only i wasent pleased with was DUTCH PASSION PURPLE crappy! i only go with fem seeds bra an i would DEF say its worth the extra cash

stephen94 said:

so if i have some bagseeds, seeds from buds that i bought, they are herm right? if they are from herm then they are feminized seeds right? if that is the case then i am growing a bunch of feminized seeds? i dont flower until about 4-5 more weeks so ill let u know ratio but isnt that how it works? fem seeds are from a seeded female plant, correct?

Click to expand...

No that isn't true. Because ALL female plants CAN get seeded, by either self-pollination (hermie) or male pollination. Just because weed that you bought has seeds doesn't mean that they are feminized seeds. The plant either hermed, which wouldn't give you fem seeds unless the plant that the bud came from was a feminized plant that self-pollinated (but like hobbes said, they are very unstable and not recommended to grow with. Self-pollinating fem seeds usually have a very high herm ratio), or the plant was pollinated by a male plant (due to either ignorance about seperation of sexes or lack of caring about it on the growers part). If it is the #2 senario then those are regular cannabis seeds and should be used to see what you get, espically if that was sick weed that they came from. But if it is senario #1, then they will most likely herm.

Regluar cannabis seeds from an experianced, caring breeder is the way to go. Subcools genetics have a 9:1 ratio (usually) female:male because he is an amazing breeder. Stay away from the amsterdam scene of seeds, and you should be good.

Good read thanks!

i have 45 femenized plants going. they are almost 4 weeks old and on about 4 of em ive found on one node a male preflower and on the next a female. so they deff hermi out i just hope my whole crop dont get fucked because of it....seriously though from now on im oprdering reg seeds. ill just plant 30 at a time and if i end up with 15 males oh well. ill just kill em like i have been doing. so as far as im concerened as of 3 weeks im nervous i guess ill be able to give a better opinion when i get to the end product.....im really hoping one hermi doesnt ruin the whole bunch. that is possible right?.....now would those seeds be considered femenized? because they were pollenated by a hermi? or is it only when a bitch knocks herself up they are femenized?

you know its funny because when i bought them. the term verbatim was, "100% female seeds" not maybe girls ,maybe boys, maybe both.

".im really hoping one hermi doesnt ruin the whole bunch. that is possible right?"

Yes it's possible. The pollen could float around your room and pollinate all of your plants. Most likely only those close by would be heavily seeded anyway. Get some tweezers and pick out every banana.

".....now would those seeds be considered femenized? because they were pollenated by a hermi? or is it only when a bitch knocks herself up they are femenized?"

It's only when a plant self pollinates that feminized seeds are made. So hermie pollen on a sister plant will not make fem seeds, but hermie pollen from a clone from the same mother as the female clone being pollenated, will produce feminized seeds.

If a plant from a feminized seed (S1 - Self Pollinated Generation 1) hermies for no reason and pollinates herself to make S2 seeds we can expect the S2 to be less stable than the S1. A study I read a few months ago said that by the time a breeder gets to S3 or S4 the plant is too unstable to grow for our purposes.

If you don't know why a plant hermied it's probaby because of poor genetics, and in my opinion you don't want to use pollen from an unstable plant for breeding. You'll just produce unstable offspring.

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One hermi plant can and will ruin your entire crop if let to go unchecked. For right now, make sure that those are male flowers come in, and if they are just snip them off before they open. You will loose some growth at that bud site, but it should be okay. Also, the hermi plant will only make fem seeds if the feminized seed/hermi plant pollinates itself. But, as I've stated, I wouldn't use those fem seeds that it produces because they will more than likely produce extremely unstable seeds. So any form of mild stress (temp to high/low, light intensity too high, overfeed with nutrients, topping, supercropping, ect.) will hermie those plants in a heart beat. The reason is because the main step to making Feminized seeds is from forcing a plant to hermie by fucking with the plants light cycles in ways mother earth never intended. This will make the plant hermie and the self-pollinate. The self-pollinated seeds will then be "feminized seeds". The problem with this is that then by forcing it to hermie, you are encoding hermaphrodite traits within the seed DNA, changing the evolutionary path of the seed from either male/female to hermie mutations. This is the reason why feminized seeds have such a high ratio of hermies. It is already encoded within their DNA evolution to hermaphrodite, making it so much more easier to do so with any form of mild stress. This isn't a great breeding technique and it encourages hermaphodism within a gene-pool, making the gene-pool weak and unstable. No "good" breeder has any reasons to make feminized seeds EXCEPT for one reason alone; profit.

When I personally asked Ajran of Greenhouse Seeds at the 2007 Cannabis Cup why they make feminized seeds, after explaining the above to him (which he already knew), he told me, and I quote "because their is a market for it. people love feminized seeds, and we are just supplying that market". Capitalist jargon at it's best. No love or respect for the plant, just love & respect for money. Not a great breeder.

On that note, I HAVE grown feminized seeds in the past with good results, but the fem seeds couldn't compare to the vigor and over-all quality of regular cannabis seed plants. Everytime the regular seeds have won. I also understand that for small personal grows, fem seeds are the most ecomonic opinion ( I too can only grow 4 plants at a time, because I live in an apartment). Just be aware of where they came from and what they are if you are going to use them. And don't complain when they herm on you! haha. And also, even though I bash the Amsterdam scene, I am also going to the 2009 Cannabis Cup this year. Amsterdam just have a very loving vibe to it and I love the culture. Even if the weed can't compare to what we in North America breed, it is still worth the trip to be able to smoke some dank in a coffee shop with a hot cup of tea, and chat up about fine cannabis to dutch folk. Theres no place like it, espically during the cup. I also hear that last year the quality of the weed improved, finally. I saw pics from HT and they do look much more resin coated.

Well thats my novel! haha.

their bullshit all my barneys red diesel wre fuckin hermies, fuckin cheap bastards

Toker I've got a Red Diesel mother in pro mix and a clone in hydro - both hermied and produced more bananas than either the DP Blueberry (who's producing a lot of bananas this time around) and DP Strawberry Cough (mild hermieing last grow, virtually nil this grow).

Advice from Toker and I: If you absolutely MUST grow Barney's Red Diesel FEMINIZED you'd be well prepared to have several good pair of tweezers in your grow room to pluck bananas.

Looks like a killer plant though, juicy and covered in trichs. I'm betting great smoke, and I'll get a good idea from this hermied plant if I want to order a pack of regular seeds to pick a strong mother.

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it seems like regular seeds are way better. i mean, the feminized seeds cost pretty much double the price anyways. so if u pay half the price and get half the females and no hermies, its still better imo than paying twice as much for twice as many females with a much larger chance of hermi. may as well just buy two sets of regular seeds for the same price. banana peel method would definately help the female to male ratio

i must have good luck ive not had a fem seed herm on me as of now.

I ordered all of these strains for $145 CAD delivered, I'll have 11 strains to try one after another. I'll probably find a strain or two I want to buy regular seeds to get a mother, I may even find a plant stable enough to be a mother. I know there are going to be some bananas, but that's a trade off for only having to pay for 1 seed per strain and care for 1 plant per strain from seed to harvest - to try the strain.

Another thing to consider - the seed bank is going to pick the best pheno it has for the mother and the S1s will be very similiar to the mother in many traits, so we get a good chance of getting a good pheno that's a potent producer, to sample the first time out.

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Pick n Mix (single feminized) : Cost including delivery: $145 CAD / 82 GBP / $116 USD

Can't recommend these guys high enough.

Alaskan Ice - Greenhouse
Arjan's Haze #3 - Greenhouse
Blue Moonshine - Dutch Passion
Big Bang - Greenhouse
Cheese - Big Bhudda
Flo - Dutch Passon
Jack Flash #5 - Sensi
Super Silver Haze - Greenhouse
Taiga (autoflower) - Dutch Passion
TrainWreck - Greenhouse
White Widow - Seedsman

Feminized seeds are so simple, no concerns about how many females you'll get when you plant the seeds. I reallly love them except for the hermieing.

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