I am planning my second grow. Unfortunately during my first grow I had a disappointing amount of females. To avoid this bummer in the future, would feminized seeds be the solution? I've heard that feminized seeds often turn out herm. and that yield is decreased. Can anybody shed light on these rumors for me?

Feminised seeds are produced from a genetic female plant that has had one or more of it's branches treated with hormones, this forces the plant to produce some male flowers. The pollen is used from these male flowers to pollinate the rest of the female flowers thus producing seeds that do not contain a male chromosome. Whilst that means they cannot be male, it also means that they carry a hermaphrodite chromosome alongside the female one, so they can be female or genetic hermaphrodites.

Fortunately, and this is where feminised seeds become marketable, the ratio of females to genetic hermpahrodites is much larger than for standard seeds ratio of males to females. The feminised seeds on average should produce a 0-20% hermaphrodite to female ratio wheras the standard seeds male to female ratio is 50%.

That also means that by growing feminised seeds you have up to a 20% chance out of 10 seeds to get a genetic hermphrodite as well as the same risk of standard seeds of plants turning hermaphrodite via environmental influences.

The bottom line therefore is, that you have a much greater chance of getting hermaphrodites with feminised seeds than standard seeds but you're also virtually guaranteed some pure genetic females if you grow out enough seeds which you aren't with standard seeds. This simply means that if you go down the feminised route, keep a very watchful eye out for any hermaphrodite plants that if not spotted can pollinate all your other females.

The reason that yield is decreased is because in plants that hermie, some of their yield is taken up with male flowers and if allowed to heavily pollinate the other females their energy will switch to seed making and not bud and flower making. Lightly pollinated plants simply carry on making flowers and lose little if any yield because of it.

Interesting article shows that different people experiement with different ways to achieve the same goal.

Henk admits that when Dutch Passion first released feminized seeds in November 1998, many people were skeptical.

"It was very difficult to make these seeds," he explained. "There were several years of experiments that went into this. At first, we relied on the fact that if you let females flower a long time without getting pollen, near the end of their life cycle some will try to pollinate themselves. But this did not produce a reliable amount of pollen. Then, we tried hormone and chemical agents. The hormone produced pollen, but it also affected the plants in other ways that we didn't like. We tried other applications, and found some that could change basic female plants into plants that produced pollen, which we then used to fertilize other 100% female plants to produce what we used to call ‘female seeds.'

"A lot of people think we have created hermaphrodites, but we take 100% female clones, and apply a safe chemical so the clones produce abundant male flowers. Then we take that pollen and fertilize other females with it. Seeds from this method will usually grow out female.

"In the beginning, some people were telling us that the seeds weren't producing all females, but we've discovered some strains don't work well with this process, and some of the success depends on the way they're grown. Now, we aren't getting those complaints. I sell a guy 300 seeds, and 298 of them grow out female. We are seeing that level of reliability."

Research and improvement

As with any new technology, Dutch Passion's feminized strains have experienced growing pains. Some varieties have not adapted well to the feminizing procedure and are no longer sold. Henk no longer calls his special seeds female, either.

"They are not female seeds," he explains. "They are seeds that have been created a certain way to produce female plants, but it is not accurate to call them female seeds. We call them feminized seeds – there is a difference."

An luscious female Green Spirit on display at the Cannabis Cup.Henk says it's a lot harder to produce feminized seeds than regular seeds, and he has to be careful about feminizer technology and its resultant pollen. As with Terminator Seed technology utilized by greedy corporations like Monsanto (the company has designed food crops that produce sterile seeds, forcing farmers to buy new seeds from Monsanto every year), plants grown from feminized seeds cannot reproduce naturally; at best, they can be cloned.

If you are growing marijuana so you can produce your own seeds, Dutch Passion's feminized varieties are not for you. For most other growers, feminized seeds offer obvious advantages. Outdoor growers can plant in remote locations knowing they will not have to return during early autumn and remove male plants. All growers can count on increased yields: instead of the average sixty to forty percent female to male ratio, virtually every seed planted will result in a female producing harvestable buds.

Feminine recipe

Dutch Passion's feminizer testing program revealed that grow room factors can be manipulated to produce better female to male ratios. The female-inducing recipe, to be implemented during the first month of growth, involves providing: 1) more nitrogen, less potassium; 2) more halide (blue spectrum) and less high pressure sodium (red spectrum) lighting; 3) shorter light cycles; 4) a grow medium of 6.6 to 6.8 pH; 5) lower temperatures and higher humidity, plus higher soil moisture; 6) minimized stress (cloning and other stressors can destabilize plants, causing them to go male or hermaphrodite).

Henk is constantly running experiments to fine-tune his feminizer technology. He removed Purple Star from his feminized line because of poor results. Some feminized varieties produce between 80 and 90% females rather than 100%, and a few hermaphrodites have occurred in isolated test crops. Henk has found that Green Spirit, Mazar, Masterkush, Oasis, Blueberry, Buddha, Voodoo, Purple #1 and Trance are the most reliable feminized seeds; he's working to increase the range and dependability of Dutch Passion feminized offerings.

"The difference with Dutch Passion is that we are keeping the trust of our customers by making sure our seeds give them what they expect," Henk says. "We concentrate on ripeness, freshness, and size, and we strive to make strains grow out true. Our goal is to maximize the yield our customers get. I wish I had had Dutch Passion seed company to buy from when I was 18."

nice find mogie

Great research! Thanks for the input!

feminized seed are ok to use, i use them on my outdoor grows it helps not having to cull out males, altho you can end up with hermies, i would choose a good breeder to buy fem. seeds from, i get mine from female seeds.nl, paradise and soma also sells quality feminized seeds. keep stress to a minimum and you will be fine, but if you are growing inside i'd use regular seeds and find a pheno you like and clone the hell out of her that way you don't need seeds unless you want another strain, also you can take a clone of the mom and make your own seeds and crosses etc. either way good luck!

LJ

GROW ON!

I agree ljjr you just clone and you don't need any more seeds unless you want another strain. That is the only way you are sure of getting a female 100% of the time.

Mogie, thanks for the article. A good friend of mine recently checked the package of some feminized seeds he brought back from the Dam and they are Dutch Passion brand, Skunk #11. I think he plans to grow some. So it sounds like Dutch Passion is reliable and has done their homework and that if you plant one or two the chances are pretty good that you'll have females that do not "hermi". At least that's what I got from the article.

Another question I have is whether or not most seeds available online are feminized or not? Nirvana has good prices compared to Dutch Passion but I don't want 10 random seeds that I have to sex or keep an eye on. I want to plant and forget or plant and have the high expectation of a female.

Not all seeds online are feminised - they usually say if they are, and they're usually twice the price of standard seeds.

"I want to plant and forget"

If this is what you want to do, don't grow Cannabis.