Within the various types of strains that can be found on the market, it’s important to differentiate between feminized photoperiodic cannabis seeds and autoflowering seeds, as this affects their life cycle as well as their general needs.
Photoperiodic Seeds and Autoflowering Seeds
Cannabis plants need a decent amount of light to grow and flower correctly regardless of the type of seed. There are feminized and autoflowering seeds, both of which need light to grow properly, although there are two main differences:
- Feminized strains grow and flower depending on the amount of light received.
- Autoflowering strains grow and flower regardless of the light periods.
Photo-Periodic Cannabis Seeds
Photo-periodic cannabis plants can be either feminized or regular, although the most common type is feminized.
This type of strain starts to flower once they’ve reached their adult stage and notice a reduction in light hours. In indoor grows, you can easily control light periods; they need 10h light and 6h darkness during the growth period and 12h light/12h darkness in order to flower and stay flowering.
Thanks to this, you can obtain mother plants and make your own clones and cuttings while your other plants are still growing under 18/6h light – if they stay this way they will never flower, although they do need maintenance.
Types of photo-periodic plants
Feminized cannabis seeds are obtained by pollinating the flowers on a female plant using reverted male pollen (a female turned male using STS or silver thiosulfate)
You can cross a reverted male with a female of the same strain, or you can also cross it with a female of a different strain. If you cross the same strains, you’ll obtain much more stable results.
Benefits of feminized Cannabis Seeds
- Optimized performance: if your objective is to obtain sinsemilla cannabis flowers, and you’re growing entirely feminized plants, you’re guaranteed 100% female flowers and you won’t have to spend extra time getting rid of male plants.
- Better control over your plant size: feminized plants grow and flower according to the light they receive. Indoors you can adjust growing times depending on the amount of space you have. Feminized plants take about 30 days, generally, to reach adulthood if they’ve been given the right conditions.
- High yield: regardless of the yield each individual feminized plant (which is usually more than autoflowering plants), you’ll be able to maximize your yield while controlling growth and without having to get rid of males.
Outdoors, you should be planting feminized seeds in the right season (you can also plant a round of autoflowering seeds which you can harvest while you wait for the feminized plants to mature). If you want to know more about growing feminized seeds, check out our post on how to grow feminized plants outdoors.
- Regular Cannabis Seeds
Regular photo-periodic cannabis seeds are obtained via pollenating female flowers using pollen obtained from male plants that haven’t been reverted.
This type of seed produces either male or female plants. Once your plants begin showing their sex, you’ll need to separate them or get rid of the males unless you plan on growing new strains using both male and female plants.
About 50% of all regular seeds produce male plants and 50% produce female plants, although this may vary if you give them specific climate conditions such as high temperatures. If you’re intention is to produce cannabis flowers, you’ll need to plant twice as many seeds in order to get rid of any male plants at the start of the flowering period.
Benefits of Growing Regular Seeds
- More genetic diversity: regular cannabis seeds aren’t obtained from crossing two identical plants, but rather similar or different plants, therefore they produce a wider genetic spectrum which means that they’ll produce many different phenotypes. This allows you to find rare or unique strains much easier than by growing feminized seeds.
- Easier to make hybrids: you can grow male plants from regular seeds, which gives you the possibility to cross your males with females, obtaining your very own regular seeds.
Autoflowering Cannabis Seeds
Over the past few years, a significant number of seed banks have also started to offer automatic cannabis seeds, also known as autoflowering cannabis seeds.
Autoflowering plants can be created in three different ways:
- By crossing photo-periodic strains with Ruderalis plants. This type of plant is capable of flowering as it grows, regardless of the amount of light it receives.
- By crossing autoflowering strains with photo-periodic strains.
- Crossing autoflowering plants with other autoflowering plants.
As a result, you’ll be able to obtain plants that take about 25 days to finish growing and then begin flowering automatically without needing a specific photo-period.
Many autoflowering plants are already feminized, as they tend to be used for discreet growing in small areas for maximum yield.
Although autoflowering strains are capable of producing high quality results nowadays, the amount you can harvest and the quality is occasionally inferior to that of feminized plants. However, there are a series of advantages to growing autoflowering strains that we’re going to go through now.
Benefits to Growing Autoflowering Cannabis Plants
- Highly discreet: thanks to their limited growth and flowering period, they usually only grow to about a meter tall.
- Fast harvests: you can plant autoflowering plants at the start of the season (around the start of March in the northern hemisphere, and September in the Southern Hemisphere) which allows you to harvest up to 3 times while your other plants are growing and flowering.
- Easy to grow: due to how fast their life cycle is, they’re less likely to be infested by insects or fungi, as well as taking much less time to grow which reduce the amount of time and effort that they require to grow.
- Growing all year round: if your climate allows for it (minimum temperatures of 15 degrees Celsius at the most, no less) you can grow all year round. During the growing season is when you’ll get the best results.
If you want to grow fast indoor plants we recommend choosing fast-flowering feminized strains rather than autoflowering strains, such as Jamaican Dream or your own clones; indoor autoflowering strains produce less yield under the exact same conditions and in the same time as fast-flowering feminized plants.
If you need to know more about growing auto plants, check out our post on how to grow autoflowering plants outdoors.
What Cannabis Seeds Should I Pick for My Grow?
The type of seeds you grow should depend on the characteristics of the seed (photo-periodic, autoflowering, feminized, regular…) as well as the type of grow you want to set-up.
Each grower is free to set-up their plants however they want. However, we’re going to go through a series of recommendations to help you figure out which type of seed you should plant. We’ll also do a quick review of the benefits and characteristics we mentioned above.
When to Plant Feminized Seeds
- Outdoors: when the climate and light-hours are right for it, making sure all seeds are feminized. Allows you to make the most of your available space. High cannabinoids and yields.
- Indoors: when you have the space and means to obtain high quality cannabis flowers and optimize your growing area.
When to Plant Regular Seeds
- Indoors: if you want to cross plants in order to obtain new strains, seeds or for finding unique, rare strains thanks to the wide genetic spectrum.
- Outdoors: when your climate and light allows for it and you have a lot of space to grow in.
When to Plant Autoflowering Seeds
- Outdoors: these are ideal for harvesting while your photo-periodic feminized or regular plants grow and flower. They’re ideal for balconies, terraces and other small areas. Can be grown outside of summer if your climate allows for it without having to move them in and out.
- Indoors: we only recommend autos for super small areas. If you want to save time you can plant fast-flowering feminized seeds such as Critical + or Furious Candy, or use clones/cuttings.
