Here are the results from my latest seed sprouting adventure:
Started with a 15-pack of regular seeds and ended up with 5 females ready for flower.
So if I want to end up with 15 females ready to flower, I would need to sprout 45 seeds. (The math is rough due to small sample size, but you get the idea.)
That’s a lot of seeds! Maybe this explains why fems are more popular with most growers – especially those who have plant count limits.
What do you think?
Is your ratio better?
Here’s more detail if anyone is interested…
Started with a pack of 15 regular seeds .
12 seeds germinated successfully.
Three seedlings had “issues” and were culled within a couple of weeks.
Nine plants were upgraded to buckets, but one of them ended up being culled for persistent PM.
Out of the remaining 8 plants, 3 were males.
So I ended up with 5 good plants to go into 12/12.
there is variance. i have had better and worse luck. perhaps there are ways to improve your outcomes. you can still have bad outcomes with fem seeds…i do occasionally.
@Manky I always pop twice the amount of regs compared to the number of females you want and add another 10 for bad seedlings and non sprouters. If you do organic its no big deal a 1g pot and go 6-8 weeks and that is enough time to ID male or female typically. While fems are nice I still prefer regs anyday I am not afraid of males in the garden. If you wind up with too many females give them away or be ruthless in your culling since you will have the choice of females. Typically I look at structure only for that and whack any that do not meet expectations.
Yeah, id agree that generally planting 2x the seeds is reasonable. I actually tend to have more females than males on average…
I think your bigger problem is not the ratio of male: female, but germination and getting them through veg.
Looking at your results another way, you only got 3 males out of 15 seeds.
I find it’s very rare for a seed not to germinate for me. Sometimes the shells have to be cracked by hand. You lost 20% in germination. Then another 25% of your seedlings, then another 11% of your plants to PM. You lost about as many plants as you expected to cull. That’s going to skew your results.
Wish I could disagree, but you are correct.
I’m pretty good at sprouting seeds and taking care of seedlings, but my environment is a bit harsh for a variety of reasons – one of which is inconsistent humidity.
On the bright side, I recently installed a couple of extra dehumidifiers in the garage for better coverage and fault tolerance.
Another positive note: Plants that actually make it to the flip always finish strong.
If you are culling plants based on inconsistent humidity then yeah I would suggest popping a couple packs at a time compared to just one, even if fems. Like you said your numbers show that you lose or cull half of them if popped properly (fresh seed, all good quality seed, etc)
I’m in the same boat
Whenever I’ve got really good seeds for some or other reason I’ve always ended up with less than half the pack up and healthy
I think it’s like a “under pressure” thing because when I plant seeds I’ve made I seem to always get way better results
Always puzzles me…
But… I’m always happy if I end up with a couple healthy females and or males cause I then generally f2 everything and dust anything else that’s flowering to give me loads more beans and crosses to play with…that’s where the funs at…
Making my own seeds has definitely changed my perspective when it comes to culling weaklings.
When I pay a lot for seeds, I tend to hold onto plants longer and try harder fixing problems. Seedlings have to be in bad shape to get culled early.
Compared to pollen chucks, where I’m ruthless and don’t try to fix anything. If a seedling is stunted or develops an issue like PM, out it goes!
Each drop is a diceroll, it’s not exactly 50/50
Correction: each drop IS a 50/50 on male or female, but 10 dropped seeds doesn’t mean 5 and 5. That’s where the diceroll comes in, on the higher numbers
@Manky solid point but not everyone is looking for a keeper when running fems, they just want good solid reliable smoke, and, a little pheno variance between plants is a nice treat
Out of 12, maybe 5 female expected. It’s going to be 50% pretty much everytime in the big picture. So, maybe it’s 8 females or 4. If I pop 12, I’ll probably look for 1, 2 keepers at best. So I guess 1 or 2 really beefy girls is my expectation and I think it’s about as likely to get a great plant whether popping 4 fems or 10 regs. I tend to live by the idea that regs can tolerate more stress, but I can’t show any science truly supporting that right this second
if you want to do that with what you have you just veg a little longer and take threenine clones off of each of the girls you have and then flip the girls in veg and smoke that while you wait on the rest.
With regular seeds I believe with most varieties the ratios will become closer to 50/50 male to female as the sample size increases. With small sample sizes it’s easier to have a trend showing that is abnormal compared to the normal distribution across a larger sample size. Some regular varieties like Haze and other tropical types seem to display a higher frequency of females to males compared to other varieties and I’m not really sure why that is.
@Manky with regards to the topic of discussion and your question, it depends on the pack. Some packs are polyhybrids whereas others are worked a bit more. Some are feminized and some are regular. I expect them to perform realistically given known provenance and when provenance is unknown or otherwise dubious I don’t set high expectations. I think it’s realistic to think if one wants to have 15 females from regular seeds that it would take approximately 20-40 or so, and to hedge on success on a single attempt then it would be wise to round that figure up a few to 45.
Something I think is cool to see is the regular seeds pack you started seeds from is a 15 count pack. Regulars in 10 packs with similarly performing seeds at a premium price would have been more of a bummer for sure. Great topic of discussion it’s neat to hear the thoughts and opinions of others. Many blessings and much love
This is CORRECT, why cause I only started TWO of the F4 CripXmas A from tester sprouts, and only one plant went on and was a female, which ironically is a closer pheno of its mother and why I’ve kept it. Now the seeds from IT crossed to my double Xmas male, those 3 tester sprouts just sexed all male, so I got snake eyes there, but ALL 3 Island Crippy x BX2 turned out FEMALE, so it’s a pre-determined coding that’s not known until triggered by photoperiod of light. I was discouraged ALL A2 turned male, but I know each seed that successfully germinates and makes maturity IS a roll of the proverbial dice. Getting my variegated mutant dwarf from 2 SEEDS IS like rolling the 7
