Starting planning your cannabis garden in the first few months of the year is a fantastic way to get a head start on the outdoor growing season, which runs from March to November depending on where you reside.
When states have varying degrees of legality, navigating the cannabis seed market can be difficult. This article will address all of your seed-buying questions so you can get started growing your own cannabis.
Is purchasing marijuana seeds legal?
Marijuana seeds, like flower, edibles, and concentrates, are considered cannabis products. Their legality is determined by the state in which you reside. People who live in states that have legalized adult usage can buy, grow, and sell seeds within their own state, but seeds cannot transcend state borders. People who live in states that have legalized medical marijuana can only buy seeds if they have a medical card.
Outside of the United States, seed banks can sell seeds for “memorabilia,” but it is unlawful to smuggle seeds into the country, and Customs will seize any cannabis seeds found in packages or on a person.
Where can I get marijuana seeds?
Many well-known seed banks are located in nations where cannabis regulations are less restrictive, such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Spain, and other European countries. Seed banks stock seeds from a wide range of breeders.
You can acquire seeds in your own state, either through a dispensary or through a specific seed firm like ours, Strange Genetics, if your state has legalized adult-use marijuana or has a medicinal marijuana program.
Is it possible to buy cannabis seeds online?
You’ll need to decide what strain you want to grow and which breeder you want to buy from before ordering seeds online.
Because cannabis is still illegal in the United States, finding information on seed banks and breeders can be difficult. Breeders with a long track record and a strong reputation are usually a smart place to begin.
You can also conduct some research and locate an online grow journal that details the entire growing process of a particular strain from a specific breeder. You’ll be able to read over another grower’s precise notes and see photos of the ultimate outcomes through these.
If you succeed in growing some seeds and are pleased with the results, try growing another strain from the same breeder and see how it goes.
Is it true that dispensaries offer cannabis seeds?
Seeds are sold in some medicinal and adult-use dispensaries, but not all. Check ahead of time or call to see whether they sell seeds. While purchasing marijuana seeds from a dispensary is significantly more convenient, your options will be limited compared to shopping online.
Staff at the dispensary should be able to provide you with information about the seeds they sell, but keep in mind that many dispensaries specialize on selling flower and other end-products. It’s a good idea to contact ahead and speak with the staff to see if they know anything about seeds and can provide you with specialized growing advice.
When buying marijuana seeds, here’s how to spot high-quality genetics
The term “unstable genetics” refers to the fact that the provenance of a seed is unknown. When you buy a packet of seeds, make sure it or the breeder who generated it can tell you where the seeds came from and how they were crossed and/or backcrossed to get the seed you’re holding. It might be anything and the product of bad breeding procedures if you can’t get a seed’s history.
Professional breeders usually put their strains through several rounds of backcrossing to stabilize the genetics and ensure consistent plants that reflect those genetics. An inexperienced breeder might cross a male and a female once and sell the resulting seeds as a new hybrid strain, but professional breeders usually put their strains through several rounds of backcrossing to stabilize the genetics and ensure consistent plants that reflect those genetics.
Which cannabis strain should I grow?
When it comes to harvest time, even one marijuana plant can generate a lot of buds, so choose a strain you enjoy. When you go to the dispensary or smoke with friends, make a mental note of which strains you like and look for seeds of those strains when you want to start growing them.
Because certain strains are more resistant to mold and pests than others, if you’re new to growing, you might want to start with one of the easier ones.
Some strains also require more time to mature than others. If you reside in a place that gets cold and wet early in the season, you may want to grow a faster marijuana strain, depending on whether you’re growing indoors or outside. Indicas, for example, are noted for blossoming more quickly than sativas.
When purchasing high-quality seeds, you should have access to all of this information.
What makes regular, feminized, and autoflower seeds different?
Regular Seeds:
You’ll get a mix of males and females if you buy a packet of regular seeds. Many growers prefer these to feminized or autoflower seeds since they haven’t been backcrossed (basically inbred) as much. Once the seeds’ reproductive organs appear during the flowering period, sex them out and destroy the males, as they don’t create buds and will pollinate females, resulting in seeded flowers.
Feminized Seeds:
Seeds can be feminized, which means you can just plant them in soil and watch them grow into buds. Growing these seeds eliminates the procedure of sexing out plants and discarding the males, as they are certain to produce bud-producing females.
It also lowers the chances of a rogue male infiltrating your crop—just one male can pollinate a large crop, prompting your females to concentrate their efforts on seed production rather than buds.
Autoflower Seeds:
Autoflower plants go from vegetative to flowering as they get older, not as their light cycle changes. They have a short grow-to-harvest time, and can be harvested in as little as 2 12 to 3 months after the seeds are planted. Autoflower seeds have the disadvantage of being less potent, but they are ideal for people who want to produce cannabis but don’t want to spend a lot of time doing so.
What are the prices of marijuana seeds?
Cannabis seeds are commonly sold in packs of 10 or 12 seeds and start at roughly $70 per pack. High-end genetics can cost anything from $200 to $500 each box.
Feminized and autoflower seeds are more expensive since they require more breeding work and take shorter time for the grower to produce buds.
I’m not sure how many seeds I should buy. Will they all make it out alive?
Even if you buy seeds from a respected breeder, a percentage of them will not germinate when you grow a large number of them. Always assume that a quarter of the seeds you plant will not germinate or will die off.
Some seeds will not germinate and will have to be thrown because they will turn out to be males when grown in ordinary soil. Some gendered seeds will not germinate, but because there will be no males, a higher percentage of them will grow into flowering plants.