Despite genetic breakthroughs like feminized and auto flowering seeds, sometimes, you just can’t beat the original.
Regular cannabis seeds are totally natural, without any chemical or genetic modification. They’re pure seeds bred from male and female plants, producing 50/50 male and female seeds.
Regular cannabis seeds are often cheaper than feminized ones and usually do a better job retaining each parent plant’s THC and CBD profiles.
You can collect the best regular cannabis seeds in the world directly from Greybeard Seeds, with discreet international postage and multiple payment options.
Browse Greybeard’s collection of regular seeds below, using the filter to pick the perfect strain for your collection.
Cannabis breeders need regular cannabis seeds too, well, breed. Unlike feminized seeds, which produce exclusively female plants, regular cannabis seeds have a 50/50% chance of being either. Sometimes, however, they can also be intersex or hermaphrodite.
Crossing different cultivars has been taking place since the cultivation of all plants began, Sometimes because you want a better yield, a higher profile of a specific cannabinoid, a particular color or smell, perhaps. If you’re going to breed, you need a male. Offspring doesn’t happen without a male and a female.
Secondly, for cloning. Producing the same cannabis plant across a crop.
If you’re a hobby grower, you may be better off sourcing a feminized seed or an auto flower. But suppose you want the best in unfiltered cannabis genetics. In that case, regular cannabis seeds are not genetically modified and ensure that a particular variety is as close to its roots as possible.
Growing regular cannabis seeds is just like growing feminized seeds, really. Other than needing to watch out for a male. That being said, you need to consider a few things.
Your seeds need to be transplanted, meaning, to avoid them getting root bound, they should be repotted at least twice in their cycle. This is for the best results in terms of yield. Regular cannabis seeds can grow rigorously!
Male plants have to be removed unless you’re running a breeding program! Leaving a male in a crop of females means you’ll breed more plants but won’t be able to cultivate them for the buds. Don’t throw males out though, you can use the leaves.
Once your seeds have arrived you can begin planting practically straight away. When you’re growing cannabis indoors, the space you choose will be really important. Many cannabis plants grow fast, and they can get tall and unruly if you don’t look after them properly.
Here are the other main factors that you need to consider:
Setting up your light system takes some thought. This isn’t just about a few lamps here and there. You can buy specially made grow cupboards which are really good if you are stuck for space or want to keep your plants limited to one area. Lights can be standard CFL or the new LEDs. You could go for a traditional high-power sodium or metal halide lamps as well.
One thing you need to consider is the heat that these lights create. Place them too close your growing cannabis plant and you will burn the leaves and damage it. The other factor is whether you put your lights on a timer or not. This can save you forgetting to switch on or off on time – don’t forget the hours of light you expose your plant to are going to be critical.
There are plenty of different ways to germinate seeds and it’s not that difficult. This is where you get the seed to spring into life and form a small shoot ready for planting.
You can place seeds directly into your main pot if you don’t want the hassle of transferring later. Some people prefer to put their seeds on dampened paper towel and then transfer once they germinate just to make sure everything’s working properly. You can also buy specially made germinating stations.
Much will depend on your personal preference but what you generally need are three key ingredients: Water, a stable, warmish temperature and the right location.
There are two stages to the development of a cannabis plant. These are the vegetative phase where the stems and leaves grow and the flowering phase where your buds begin to develop.
The vegetative stage when growing cannabis requires lots of light. You will need your indoor bulbs trained on the plant for around 18 hours a day to keep it in this stage and this will last indefinitely if you maintain the same light levels.
The average time for the vegetative stage can be anything from 2 to 8 weeks. The longer you leave it, the more your plant will grow.
During this time, you may want to prune your plant, make sure it is watered regularly and use feeding solutions to keep the nutrient levels up. The amount of work you need to do will depend on the strain you choose but the general rule of thumb is not to overdo the feeding and to allow it grow as naturally as possible.
The flowering stage takes between 6 and 12 weeks. Outdoors this will happen naturally with the daylight changing as the season moves on. Indoors you need to give it a little nudge by reducing the amount of light you provide. This means changing to a 12-hour light/dark cycle.
This all applies to photoperiod strains which tend to make up most of the products on the market. If you’ve bought auto flowering seeds, however, they will go into the flowering stage without you changing the light levels.
The next big decision you will need to make is when to harvest your growing cannabis crop. Most strains come with instructions from the breeder which include how long you should keep in the vegetative state and how long you should flower for.
If you want to be more accurate you need to look at the stigma of your flowering plant. This is the central stalk inside the flower and when it is ready to harvest, they change from white to orange. The other, more popular method is to keep an eye on the many trichomes that cover the surface of the flower bud as these change from white to amber as the plant matures.
Harvesting is the fun part of growing cannabis and there are different ways to do it. The aim is to make sure you disturb the buds with their amber trichomes as little as possible. Some people focus in on these and cut round them, others take whole branches that they hang up to dry.
Even though you have harvested your crop, you aren’t quite finished with growing cannabis. The final stage is to dry and then cure your plant. First check all the buds to make sure there are no problems such as mold.
Drying requires you to have good ventilation around the cannabis and a temperature of about 21°C with low humidity. Chose a safe place to do this as it’s going to take as much as a couple of weeks. You’ll know it is finished when the stems snap rather than bend or dried petals flake off. Your buds should feel a little waxy and that’s because of the resin they contain so don’t worry about this.
Curing is about adding aroma to your cannabis and is a vital part of the process. For this you need dark and an airtight jar. Put you buds in the jar, screw the top on and put somewhere like a cupboard. For the first few days you should open the jar to let out the old air and some new in, a process that is sometimes called ‘burping’.
Curing can take quite a few weeks but the longer you leave your cannabis buds, the better it will taste. Most experts suggest anything between 4 and 8 weeks.