After you have decided to start growing your own marijuana at home, the next step is choosing the seeds. But before you start analyzing strains, you must learn the differences between each type of cannabis plants, and once you have taken a good look at the main characteristics of each, consider what type of seeds meets your goals best.
There are two main types of cannabis seeds to consider first: regular and autoflowering. Regular cannabis seeds are, as the name indicates, normal seeds as nature gave them to us, without any human intervention. These genetics are the most stable and allow growers to create the perfect environment for them.
The down part of regular seeds is that you run the risk of your plants turning to be male, and this isn’t negative because we are feminists, it’s because male plants are not the ones responsible for producing the THC-rich buds we are looking for but the females are.
However, this means that with regular seeds you can also make your own cross-breeds to create new strains by mixing them with other female plants.
Keep in mind that when you grow regular marijuana seeds, you will have to plant these seeds and wait until they show signs of their male traits, and if they do and you’re not looking to cross-breed, make sure you get rid of them fast or else they will pollinate your female plants and ruin the plantation. Also take into account that, given there’s a 50/50 chance that your regular seeds will grow either male or female, you’ll need to plant twice as much as you need.
On the other hand you have autoflowering cannabis seeds, which are the easiest kinds of seeds to grow and rarely fail, even less when the ones you get are feminized autoflowering seeds, which maximize the chances of getting female plants to 99.9%.
The main difference between auto and regular seeds resides in the time it will take them to grow and flower. Cannabis plants grow in two mains stages: vegetation and flowering. The vegetation phase is the one that goes all the way from the germination up to the flowering stage, where the plant grows its structure in order to be able to support heavy buds. The flowering stage is the final lap period of your plant, where the baby buds are born and go all the way to growing into full-sized flower colas.
When you grow regular seeds, the flowering stage is triggered by the plants’ light cycle: you can vegetate for as long as you want, and once you change the plant’s light cycle to less than 18 hours of light a day, the flowering stage will kick in. This works best on indoor plantations, where you have full control of the environment. When growing outdoors, you’ll need to ensure you have optimal conditions to ensure that light conditions don’t lead your plant to die, usually the best timing is at the peak of summer.
On the contrary, autoflowering seeds will enter flowering usually after 3-4 weeks, according to their pre-programmed genetic clock. This makes the shortest life cycle among any cannabis seed variety, which is perfect for growers looking to harvest fast or perform multiple harvests per year.
So, if you are looking to grow big, bushy cannabis plants your answer is to get yourself regular cannabis seeds. However, if you’re not an experienced grower, or you’d like to make sure that no time or money goes to waste then definitely get autoflowering seeds to kickstart your home cultivation with peace of mind.