Why do some people not like femenized seeds?

[Burro Johnson]

I would like to know why some people don't like femenized seeds

 

[MJPassion]

They suffer from “fear of a dank planet”.

 

[Easy7]

Fems work great for guerilla from seed to harvest outdoor grows. One seed, one female, all success.

But:

Fems are usually ripping off somone elses creation

Generic in name and appearence

No real promise of being female that doesn't hermie or even a great representation of the name/breed

Cost a lot of money

Few fems ever become clone only, every clon only becomes a fem

 

[russjcan]

If you get regular seeds you can put a boy and a girl together and make your own seeds.

 

[Maple_Flail]

the male plant.

not limited by science how far something can be inbred

just feels more natural *shrug* do i really need reasoning beyond it is what i prefer to pay for?

 

[DrDee]

If you get regular seeds you can put a boy and a girl together and make your own seeds.

I agree with russican here

also...a female has to be hermed to create fem seeds. I put a lot of time and effort into a grow and don't want to risk it by using herm prone genetics.
JD

 

[insomniac_AU]

Personally I like fem seeds. I've only ever had one lot of fem seeds hermie ever and I've grown quite a lot. Funnily enough it was Barbara Bud from the Great Gardener. The rest of the fem seeds I've started from have produced clone after clone with no issues at all. Growing any seed is a gamble. You never know what the results will be. As we know phenos can vary widely even with seeds from the same plant.

 

[insomniac_AU]

The reason I buy them is I am growing in a small set up at home. I don't have the time to waste to risk growing a male. I like to know I'm not wasting my time before I start. Just to add I have nothing against the Great Gardener. I think Matt does a great job and shit happens. One of my favourite keeper strains Jean Guy comes from him.

 

[CosmicCharlie]

No males, also risk of hermies

 

[Ibechillin]

Nothing wrong with feminized seeds, they are made using STS (Silver Thiosulfate) or CS (colloidal silver) which involves spraying to temporarily make female plants produce male parts through hormonal change. It is not stressful to the plant in any way and the plant goes back to being all female when you stop using the silver spray, it only affects the branches that are sprayed as well not the whole plant, it does not cause the offspring to be hermaphrodite as it is a hormonal change. Regular male x female seeds are just as likely to be hermaphrodite as feminized seeds, its an inherited trait from the parent plants. Through multiple generations of selfing negative effects will surface because of the lack of genetic diversity, outcrossing should not be a problem.

I have found many female individuals that I could not reverse by stress, as well as a few that could not be reversed with STS. Why I do not know for sure.

Selfing to S4 will cause inbreeding loss of vigor and many buried negative genes will be expressed, try for S5 or S6 and you are lucky to get functional pollen Dehiscence, I find sticky pollen that is viable but does not drop, so it is functionally sterile. You can use it with a q-tip if careful. I try to not make above S3's. It is hard to use STS to make all female copies of a female clone specially if a Poly-Multi-Hybrid, a selfed female clone of that type will segregate and act as an F2 population. So very hard to find one just like the clone mother.
-SamS

you can cross two female or cross two males by transforming one to the opposite sex, a transformed female clone to male will express pollen but it is still genetically a female, the same with males they can be transformed to female to make seeds.

Transforming males to a female will also allowing smoking of the male transformed to female expression or lab testing of the cannabinoids and terpenes they can contribute to progeny.

Regardless if the female is Haze or Skunk the f1 hybrids express the same general terpene and Cannabinoids, I have made hundreds and tested them.

There may be sex linked traits but this has not been proven in Cannabis.

Intersexed plants can be male or female. Males that are intersex can make seeds on themselves or on nearby plants.

One last point is plants do not just turn intersex because they have not been pollinated, they are born with the intersex traits, be they XY intersex or intersex traits that require stress of some sort to express the intersex. Both are inherited from intersex parents.

People confuse dominate and recessive genes with what a plant recieves from the parents, but do a prunett square with two palnts that have dominate and recessive genes for the same gene and you will see progeny have a crap shoot on what they receive. Depending on what the parents have Ww X Rr for example in the case of White and Red.

Plant genetics like Cannabis can be confusing as Cannabis is a dioecious obligate outcrosser and is a bit special. (90% of all flowering plants on earth have both sex, the remaining 10 percent have unisexual male and female flowers on the same plant (monoecious species) or male and female flowers on separate plants (dioecious species) they are the minority. Cannabis is one of the minority it is dioecious.
-SamS

 

[insomniac_AU]

Nothing wrong with feminized seeds, they are made using a technique called STS which involves using colloidal silver spray to temporarily make female plants produce male parts through hormonal change. It is not stressful to the plant in any way and the plant goes back to being all female when you stop using the colloidal silver spray, it only affects the branches that are sprayed as well not the whole plant, it does not cause the offspring to be hermaphrodite as it is a hormonal change. Regular male x female seeds are just as likely to be hermaphrodite as feminized seeds, its an inherited trait from the parent plants. Through multiple generations of selfing negative effects will surface because of the lack of genetic diversity, outcrossing should not be a problem.

Thanks for posting that. Sam has a huge brain.

 

[Lester Beans]

Same chance of getting a Hermie in reg seeds, especially since most offerings these days are untested or lightly tested.

Fem seeds are fine and good for people who don't care about making seeds. They just want to grow some erb. Also lots of folks don't care if the fem is an exact copy of the mother. The majority of growers do not have access to clones let alone clone onlys. So to get the genetics, and to be guaranteed a female is a win win.

 

[Maple_Flail]

ibechillin with the knowledge bombs as usual

 

[insomniac_AU]

Same chance of getting a Hermie in reg seeds, especially since most offerings these days are untested or lightly tested.

Fem seeds are fine and good for people who don't care about making seeds. They just want to grow some erb. Also lots of folks don't care if the fem is an exact copy of the mother. The majority of growers do not have access to clones let alone clone onlys. So to get the genetics, and to be guaranteed a female is a win win.

That's why I did it. The chances of a regular person in a country where prohibition exists being able access good cuts are almost zero. I buy fem seeds for exactly the reasons you pointed out. I want to grow some herb, I want to know what I'm going to get before I invest my time and I want to be assured all plants will be female as I can only grow a very limited number.

 

[CaptainDankness]

Can't make F2's with fems therefore they are garbage. Though I will grow out freebies.

 

[Switcher56]

My opinion is what ever floats your boat
When we consider everything, growing our own medicine isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination. e.g health care doesn't pay for it, so you're on your own dime. A penny saved is a penny earned!

In a home grown set up, it may not be possible (or desirable) to grow from std seeds so why not stack your bet. Not everyone has the space to clone, or to grow out both sexes.
I've been on forums for years (various topics). Over time it has proven itself that opinions are like belly buttons, where we find a lot of elitists. There is nothing wrong with that. We are here seeking advice/knowledge but, there is more than one way to skin a cat. In the end is what ever is best for the individual. In my 60s it is nice that "choices" are available and IMMHO as long as we can grow "our" medicine all "should"be golden

 

[ahortator]

I would make the opposite question. Why so many people like so much feminized seeds and reject the old way of using males, to the point of many seedbanks only offer feminized seeds in their catalog?

Feminized seeds usually are much more expensive than their normal counterparts with males. Sometimes in normal strains it is really difficult to find a male. If you want more female plants you can simply take cuttings. If you don't like males then chop them. If you want to make seeds you must only allow to live the one or two best males.

With feminized seeds one thing is theory and other is the real life. It is a fact you will find more intersexed plants. Sexed plants are not as vigorous as normal ones. Not all breeders or seedbanks are as serious in their work as Chimera or Sam Skunkman. If you want to make seeds you must spray a female or female clone at the right times with STS or CS. So you need to buy those chemicals or make them at home.

Also feminized autoflowering strains, you cannot take cuttings or keep a mother and you need STS or CS in order to make seeds. Which involve some degree of knowledge that not everybody knows.

Finally if Cannabis has been always reproduced with males and females (and intersexed too), why we think now it is better to steal the plants the possibility to reproduce by themselves in the wild?

Of course everyone is free to grow what they want to grow and smoke. Of course, until the boys in blue knock at your door

 

[indabonga]

In regular seeds u have the hybrid vigor... Gorilla glue 4 it's from a fem seed?

 

[therevverend]

Several reasons not to like feminized seeds. Myself if I have the choice I always take regular seeds.

1. You can make your own seeds. Feminized seeds the breeder holds you hostage. As a side note it's a technique known and used by plant breeders. Monsanto is notorious for it. Sell non-sexual seeds so the customer has to keep coming back to buy more.

2. Feminized seeds increase the chance of hermaphrodites. This problem isn't as bad as you used to be. If you talk to old growers, over 50, most of them don't want anything to do with feminized seeds. Before the widespread use of colloidal silver most feminized seeds were created by stress or using females that created very few male flowers. Even today there's ignorant breeders using this method. In the old days you were almost guaranteed to find several herms in a pack of feminized seeds.
It's been discussed quite a bit lately, many more cannabis plants are hermaphrodites then people think. As long as they're grown without stress they don't turn. When these plants are selfed to create feminized seeds the hermaphrodite traits get fixed into the genetics.

3. Bad genetics. If a plant is selfed with itself it's an extreme form of inbreeding. You can fix favorable traits but you can also fix unfavorable traits. This can be avoided by breeding two different female plants together. Even so you aren't getting the full mix of male and female DNA that makes for a complete roll of the dice. I'll take the vigor of a male and female union every time.

Breeders do a much better job these days. A lot more information out there. Feminized seeds are a reliable product and it comes down to what your needs are as a grower.

 

[mr.brunch]

Fems are excellent, never had a hermie one yet

Only drawback I can see is if you want the original cross of an original strain ( say Jack Herer- just as an example) you have to have reg seeds as any fem versions are clearly not using the parent plants (m/f) to make them.

They are perfect for people who don’t have access to clones, and they keep plant numbers down.