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How to Feminize Seeds

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The cannabis industry has evolved more in the last 15 years than it has in the last century. Society has also evolved, allowing cannabis and the idea of weed to slowly make its way into pop culture, with more and more strains available as well as accessories for smoking or consuming cannabis. Nowadays, pretty much anyone can grow cannabis in their own house with all of the necessary equipment to make their own strains. Years ago only a select few had access to such equipment. Today we’re going to show you how to feminize seeds. You won’t need many items to do so, and the ones you do need are easy enough to get.

Like most living creatures, cannabis plants need a male and a female specimen to reproduce; the male pollinates the female plant which causes seeds to grow. The resulting seeds have genes from both the mother and father plants, so it has a 50% possibility of being female or male. This is why you need to find a way to get your seeds by using just female plants, completely getting rid of male genes, which only leaves the possibility for female seeds.

how to feminize seeds

How to Feminize Seeds | Tutorial

Many growers know that if you stress out cannabis plants, they can easily become hermaphoridtes (a plant with both male and female sex organs) which end up creating male flowers that create pollen which then “impregnates” the plant and others around it. The issue with stress-caused hermaphrodite plants is that most of the resulting seeds tend to be hermaphrodites too, so it’s not the best method to use and it also stresses your plants out quite a lot.

In order to turn a female plant male without stressing it out, all you need is some Silver Thiosulfate, also known as STS. If you apply STS to female plants it will modify their ethylene levels, which is the hormone in charge of determining the sex of certain plants. This causes female plants to change sex and turn into males without the disadvantage of male genes.

Silver Thiosulfate

sodium thiosulphate

Making your own STS only takes about 15 to 20 minutes and you’ll need two ingredients: Sodium Thiosulphate and Silver Nitrate, both of which can easily be found in any pharmacy and on our webstore. Sodium Thiosulfate is a neutral chemical salt that’s used to reduce side-effects in some cancer treatments and can easily be bought without a prescription.

silver nitrate

You can acquire silver nitrate on our webstore, although some people prefer to extract it from other products that contain it, such as Argenpal, a product used to get rid of warts – each one of these little contains a very small amount of Silver Nitrate, so it’s probably better just to buy it directly without the need to spend more money or spend forever trying to extract the Silver Nitrate from the product itself. We stock Panreac Silver Nitrate, which may be a bit more expensive but you’re guaranteed the best quality, and it saves quite a lot of time.

How to Feminize Seeds | Making STS

Caution:

You’ll need protective material such as gloves, safety glasses and a face mask; STS can be quite toxic when inhaled and it can leave large burns on the skin. Make sure you don’t use any metallic objects when making STS – everything should be plastic, as metal can alter the composition and reduce efficiency.

Process:

Do not use metal instruments or tools in this process. The first thing you’ll need to do is grab a plastic cup and pour in 20ml of distilled water. Next, depending on your chosen method, get either 7 Argenpal sticks or 0.35g silver nitrate. If working with Argenplal, dilute the tips delicately in the water (the tip is where the silver nitrate is). Grab another plastic cup and add 30ml distilled water and 1.3g of sodium thiosulfate, mixing it slowly until it’s fully dissolved. Then, mix the contents of both glasses and mix slowly again – make sure to use a plastic spoon, no metal.

The result is 50ml of pure Silver Thiosulfate, much too potent to use on your plants, so you’ll need to water it down a bit. Add your Silver Thiosulfate to 400ml of distilled water, so you’ll have around 450ml of STS. Make sure to shake quite a lot until it’s completely mixed. It’s still much too concentrated to apply straight onto your plants; take 100ml of the mixture you just made and add it to 400ml mor of distilled water. You now have 500ml of a usable STS mixture that’s ready to be used on your plants.

Recommendation:

For maximum efficiency you’ll need to use it the same day you make it. If stored in a dark, cool space it can last up to 15 days but each day it’ll be a bit less potent. If you have it for over a week and haven’t used it we recommend making another batch if you want the best possible results.

How to Feminize Seeds | How to use STS

STS is used by spraying it on your plants leaves, making sure that it’s entirely covered and dripping. We recommend taking the plant away from your growing area before beginning the process, or the mixture might end up getting on your other plants too. You’ll need to begin applying it 4 or 5 days after flipping the lights, right before your lights go off. This allows you to spray the plant without worrying about the light burning your plants. After 10 days, you need to respray your plants, using the same process, covering the plant in the mixture and letting it soak in in the dark.

how to feminize seeds

The sprayed plant will begin growing male flowers with pollen with can then be used to pollinate whichever plant you want, causing seeds to appear that have absolutely no male genes in them. You can use the pollinated plant in order to make extracts from its resin; the amount of seeds it’ll produce will render it pretty much useless in as far as smokeable flowers. The plant that you’ve applied the STS to will need to be thrown away, as it’s much too toxic to do anything with and if you consume any of it, even its resin, you could run in to some health issues.

When should you polinate your plants?

In order to efficiently pollinate select plants, we recommend having two completely separate grow rooms or areas to work in. One should be for the plants that you’re planning on switching to male in order to obtain female polen; the other should be specifically for the plants that you plan on pollinating once you’ve reverted the other ones.

When using the pollen that you’ve collected from your reverted plants, you need to make sure that the plant that you plan on using it on is fully ready for it; this can depend on the strain you’re growing. The right time to begin applying feminized pollen is actually right when your plants begin to flow real flowers.

You generally want to use the pollen as fresh as possible on a plant that is fully ready to take it on, or else it simply might not work – it’s kind of like people, in that sense. Certain things need to be just right. To harvest large amounts of high quality seeds, you’re probably better off doing a few tests in order to find out when the right moment is. You can do this by testing it out on the same strain before going big.

How to Feminize Seeds | Make your own strains

When making your own seeds you can combine your favorite strains, resulting in a plant that you’ve created yourself that is 100% feminized. When you combine two strains, you’ll get various phenotypes with varying qualities and structures. It’s important that you use regular seeds to do this, as feminized ones are much too weak and might have issues such as stress and end up becoming hermaphrodites.

how to feminize seedsIn order to stabilize the genes in your resulting plants, you’ll need to select the phenotypes you like the most, meaning that you’ll need to grow quite a lot of the seeds that you get from your feminized plant. Then, take a clone from each plant and set them to flower in order to study their characteristics. Once you’re done, you’ll need to pick two mother plants, revert them and cross them with each other to get a more balanced version. This process is repeated as many times as necessary in order to create a balanced strain that has the characteristics you’re looking for.

Feminizing cannabis seeds is quite the process. You need to be able to keep perfect track and control of the timing when it comes to flowering and pollen yield if you want the best possible results. Take your time, do a few controlled tests and then you can start making large amounts of your own seeds.

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Erik Collado

Con más de 10 años de experiencia en la industria del cannabis, sus experiencias y aprendizaje son la base del éxito de GB The Green Brand.

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