Regular Seeds and the Plants Nobody Keeps

Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: smaller every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a dwindling group of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is easy to see that as obsolescence. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door expands. Every female-only line began as a regular one, each new cross needs a male at some point in its pedigree, and the diversity of cannabis genetics that survives at all survives because someone held onto regular seed. Specialists such as https://breederregularseeds.com carry lines that trace to the 1980s, offered in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a single plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male contributes, what a grower gives up by never seeing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a clone.

What a Male Plant Is Actually For

The easy account of a male cannabis plant is „the one that makes pollen“, and to a flower grower that is all it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed which follows, and that half is selected with the same care as the female.

A male passes on growth habit, vigour, maturation time, resistance to mould and pests, trichome production and the terpene chemistry just as the female does; it just expresses several of those qualities less since it never grows a finished flower. Those who breed with regular seed spend at least as much time choosing males as females, which is the work that a feminized cross borrows and can never replicate. Feminizing a female gives pollen; it cannot provide a second line of selected genes.

What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed

A great deal of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, reversed and pollinated with itself. Every round of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after two rounds what remains is essentially one plant expressed across slightly different ways.

That is acceptable for a consumer who needs that one plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses emerge: hermaphrodite tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but not in the selected clone disappear from the gene pool altogether. A decade of such breeding produces a market full with variations of the same few plants, and a anyone wanting to make something different discovers there is nothing left to work with. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the reservoir that replenishes the market, and that reservoir can only persist if people grows it.

Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About

Articles on selecting females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is scarce, because most people do not keep one past the first week of flower to look. For a grower producing seed, the following are the signs breeders look for.

• Timing. A male that shows sex first and matures at the same pace as the females is more useful than a very early one that sheds pollen before the female is receptive.
• Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that resembles the intended female habit are passed on; a stretched, floppy male passes that on too.
• Stability. A male that also shows female pistils under ordinary stress is rejected without exception; the trait is the last thing anyone wants carrying into a line.
• Restraint. Plants that release enormous amounts of pollen early are frequently the less desirable genetically; many breeders favour moderate producers.
• Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower sac and smell it. A male with trichomes on its sepals and a strong scent indicates it holds the terpene genes that are worth passing on.

Thinking in Numbers

The mistake first-time regular-seed growers fall into is treating a pack as 10 attempts at the same plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a genuine outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the point of running it is to observe the range and select from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, so a pack of 10 seeds gives something like five females to evaluate and five males to discard or assess for breeding. Within the females, expect noticeable differences: height, finishing time, smell, density, tolerance. This variation is not a failure in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the strongest female and male now owns something a feminized pack can never offer: a line of selected parents which are their own.

Three Ways to Cross

Holding chosen parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and here the choices multiply. The main methods cover most of what home breeders attempt.

• Backcross. Cross a selected seedling again to one of its parents to fix a specific trait. It narrows the range quickly and is useful when a single plant has something worth concentrating and the other brought mostly vigour.
• Open pollination. Allow each male reach each female. It keeps the whole range of the line, produces a large volume of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are kept going, and it is the correct method when the goal is preservation not refinement.
• Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few chosen females, every other plant else culled. The seeds carry the qualities of two specific plants and express less spread than the original pack. Done over generations with consistent choices, this is how a new line is made.

Each of these need only a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical reversal that feminized production does.

The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars

A number of lines have never feminized and probably never will be: landraces collected from regions where cannabis grew for centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of indoor breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the breeders keeping them treat the population as the whole value, and reversing a single clone would destroy exactly what makes the line worth keeping.

Growing a landrace from regular seed is a different experience from running a modern hybrid. Expect wide variation, long flowering periods in tropical lines, tall plants, and qualities that make sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. There will be also aromas and effects that no longer appear in the commercial market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of origin and the generation it has been reproduced from the first collection.

When the Library Is the Wrong Shop

Nothing of the above turns regular seed into the right option for everyone, and pretending that it is would the category no service.

A grower with room for three plants who wants each one of them to flower is better served with feminized seed. The same is anyone unable to inspect the plants each day around the start of flower, since a missed male in a small space ruins everything inside days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a pack they cannot choose from. And anyone who wants a specific clone-only cut reproduced as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a two-parent cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to select, to hold onto and eventually to produce something new; for anyone else the regular shelf is safely ignored where it is.

Before You Buy

Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs sealed inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed import is restricted there. Seed law varies widely by country: in many places buying seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others both are permitted under licence or both is. Checking the rules where you live is the buyer’s job, and no part of this article is legal advice.