What to do with herm'd plants

Hi All,

I'm in week 7 of flower on 2 dutched durban poison and I am noticing seeds. I made some mistakes early on so I am not surprised that it happened. I've read the seeds may produce herm'd plants. Also that the weed will not taste as good and of course less THC. The buds are sticky tho.

Should I chop them now or is it worth waiting a couple more weeks? This is an indoor grow btw. I'm a bit bummed but, as always mistakes are a great teacher.

Thank you!

I call it bodybagging, I go buy suitably sized black contractor bags, slip the bag over the whole plant as carefully/cleanly as possible then chop the stalk and tighten the bag around it, throw it in the trash. The idea is to contain the contaminants (pollen) and not spread it around or move it without being in a sealed bag.

Week 7 flower, you could smoke the weed but it's probably going to be premature and unripe.

If it’s just 2 plants, and there are no more plants to contaminate, fuck it' let em ride it out until they’re done. Make hash or edibles with em if you don’t want to smoke em. Bubble bag kits are cheap, and YouTube videos will walk you through the process.

Let ‘em go till they’re ripe, yes you’ll have seedy weed, but it doesn’t mean the weed is bunk. It will be a little lower in THC and a lessor yield, but it will be decent if the strain is good. You invested a lot of time, reap some reward.
But please destroy any seeds, they’re no good for breeding purposes and will just contaminate the gene pool with hermie genes.

I don't agree with seeded weed being less potent, unless there are studies that say otherwise.

I'm pretty sure plants know how to produce seeds and trichomes at the same time.

brick weed is male/female/hermied plants and seeds all squeezed into a brick, still gets me high

Yea just grow them out and smoke/edibles. We planted like 20 of the white widow seeds that I had from a hermed plant last year outdoors. None of them hermed and all of them were female for what it's worth.

Let them finish and just make some bubble hash out of them. Make sure you wash your grow room with soap and water to inactivate any pollen stuck on the walls fan etc. Dont need to scrub just get it wet. Good luck

PopAndSonGrows said:

I don't agree with seeded weed being less potent, unless there are studies that say otherwise.

I'm pretty sure plants know how to produce seeds and trichomes at the same time.

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Don't got the science to provide but its a pretty simple logic.
Flowers are grown to attract pollen, reproduction requires a lot of energy. If a plant is growing seeds that is going to be it's priority and will use less resources developing tricomes/new buds

Phytoplankton said:

Let ‘em go till they’re ripe, yes you’ll have seedy weed, but it doesn’t mean the weed is bunk. It will be a little lower in THC and a lessor yield, but it will be decent if the strain is good. You invested a lot of time, reap some reward.
But please destroy any seeds, they’re no good for breeding purposes and will just contaminate the gene pool with hermie genes.

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Isn't that how you get feminized seed from self pollinated hermies? I understand why they would not be wanted for breeding but are they not still useful for production purposes?

VaSmile said:

Isn't that how you get feminized seed from self pollinated hermies? I understand why they would not be wanted for breeding but are they not still useful for production purposes?

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Do you get feminized seeds? From my understanding, yes. However, it is believed that a hermied plant will make seeds that will also be susceptible to being a hermie.

go go kid said:

brick weed is male/female/hermied plants and seeds all squeezed into a brick, still gets me high

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Yeah true, and I have to admit I occasionally get nostalgic for the smell of burning stems and leaves

VaSmile said:

Isn't that how you get feminized seed from self pollinated hermies? I understand why they would not be wanted for breeding but are they not still useful for production purposes?

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Who knows, you could be right. Some of the best weed I've smoked was seeded though.

I appreciate all of your responses, thank you. You have answered most of the questions I haven’t even asked yet. I am probably going to de-seed all of it and keep the seeds clearly labeled and try to grow a couple of pampered plants by themselves and see if they herm. It will be a good experience for me to try to learn how to spot stuff like that. If they do herm I will destroy the remaining seeds.

I will probably make rso tincture out of it so I don’t have to worry so much about contaminating future grows from handling the stuff. And gonna give my grow room and fans a good cleaning too especially since that is also where I dry.

Time to pull out a credit card and an album cover. If you know you know. Haha

I forgot how much I like talking about growing lol. I got some pics to make this post a little more interesting.



So the green football is about the size of a fat grain of rice. I noticed this when I figured out my plants were stressed (1 month, sigh). I plucked it off thinking it was going to be a pollen sac but I have no idea what it is.


This was almost 2 weeks ago when I was thinking maybe everything will be ok. I think the nute burn was too much potassium. The curled leaves may be from combination too much light and supplemental UV, which I just turned off.


This was yesterday when I started noticing all of the seeds.

A friend of mine from Mexico saw them a couple of weeks ago and said “she looks angry. Angry plants are strong!”

TCH said:

Do you get feminized seeds? From my understanding, yes. However, it is believed that a hermied plant will make seeds that will also be susceptible to being a hermie.

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There's a difference between a hermie plant and one that gets nanners. A hermie plant will produce both male, female and hermie seeds, leanng hard towards hermie. A plant that has nanners does a self pollinization that prodces female seeds only (yes there can be an occassional male) it's called rodelization, and is the non-chemical way of getting feminized seeds.

TCH said:

Do you get feminized seeds? From my understanding, yes. However, it is believed that a hermied plant will make seeds that will also be susceptible to being a hermie.

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Obviously, simply run the pundit squares and either 75 or87.5% will carry the hermie gene but only 25%of those will have the gene "expressed/dominant" and those that have a resesive hermie gene should only express that under high stress environments. You are almost eliminating the possibility of a true male(yes some still pop but <1%)
Ideally you would use a true female that has proven not to turn even under extreme stress the force her with silver and hormones. Please correct me if I'm way off base here

I don't think anyone really knows what a "hermie" plant is gonna produce All I can offer is my own personal experiences. If you stress a plant, and it makes seeds, that's a natural reaction to stress. You'll hear the parrots telling you that gene line is garbage and trash the plant. I had a plant that I stressed, got 20-30 seeds off it, smoke was fire, and every seed I've grown has been a copy of the original plant, and all female. I don't see seeded weed being less potent, just less weed because the plant made seeds instead of bud. It's still the same plant.
Chopping this plant now would be beyond silly. You're almost at the finish line, and you're gonna get some good bud. Nobody can tell you with certainty that those seeds will grow hermie plants, none of mine did. Don't worry about pictures and bullshit you hear on grow forums or in magazines. Social media is 90% bullshit anyway. Just grow some weed, learn from your mistakes, and get baked on something you grew.

I agree to keep them going until harvest if no risk of them pollinating other plants.

I also agree there is no science behind seeded bud being less potent, I would argue that it may be more potent as the plant tries to protect it's seeds..
I just finished a pollen chuck project and the seeded bud is just as terpy and potent as the previous runs without seeds. For some reason people seem to imagine a cannabis plant that was pollinated just shuts down and only works on the seeds, this is not the case, if you take care of the plants needs you will have excellent bud and seeds