How Many Seeds To Order???

Hello and welcome to the thread.

Can some of the more experienced breeders maybe give me info as to how many F1 seeds a person needs to purchase to get that "Special" keeper. And what defines a "Special" keeper? Is it the plant the most closely resembles the original parent? Or is it personal preference?

Let the discussion begin...

EDIT: And how do you go about it? Start at one point and grow the seeds and just always keep the best one as mother?

COuld be just one
might need a 100

dukeanthony said:

COuld be just one
might need a 100

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And what do you then compare them to? Themselves?

If I understand the question, you're asking how many seeds you'll need to buy to obtain a perfect example of a strain? That isn't a question that can be answered. How long is a piece of string?

You should aim to find an example of the strain that adequately meets your personal objectives in terms of growth rate, flavour, potency and yield, within your growing environment. One grower might strive for a plant that reaches maturity quickly and yields big, where another might strive for the tastiest most potent smoke possible without concern for total weight. The more seeds you buy and try the closer you will be able to come to your ideal plant characteristics, but each seed you evaluate will cost you in terms of time and effort.

How many seeds to buy initially will probably depend on how much growing space and time you want to devote to growing each seed to maturity and evaluating the finished product. You can only make accurate comparisons between individual plants if they are grown in identical conditions, so you will have to compare your plants with one another. You'd need to grow each under the same type of lights, in the same medium, to the same schedule and feed them the same nutrients. You can't make valid conclusions by comparing your plants with others grown in a different environment, as differences could be due to any number of factors other than plant genetics.

If you have loads of growing space then you could grow a large number of seeds simultaneously. Weed out any obvious runts, take clones of each of the rest to retain a copy of the genetics, and flower/harvest before comparing the end results based on whatever criteria you're looking for. On a large scale grow if may be feasible to select your favorite plant from amongst dozens of seeds. If you're growing in a small closet and can only flower one plant at a time then it might take you a year to flower and evaluate just five or six seeds. Whether there's a plant amongst those seeds that stands out from the crowd will be down to pot luck.

Realistically speaking if you're growing on a small scale from seed it will be more a case of searching for a reasonable example of a good strain, something that gives you acceptable results in your environment, rather than searching for the perfect example. Unless you're dedicated to achieving perfection then the best of five seeds will probably serve you almost as well as the best of fifty, though without all the effort.

One pack should be enough to set you up for life. You make your own seed from that and then replace the best keeper when you find something better.

Muffy said:

One pack should be enough to set you up for life. You make your own seed from that and then replace the best keeper when you find something better.

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Interesting.. But would that not yield F2 seeds then? If so can someone explain to me then how big a difference is there between F1 and F2? If i understand what i have read correctly, you will just receive bigger variations of the orginal parents with F2?

So what does that then mean? I can go the F2 root... but the process MIGHT take waaaay longer.. ??

This makes completely sence and answers my question. I appreciate the post and insight.

MrBosco said:

If I understand the question, you're asking how many seeds you'll need to buy to obtain a perfect example of a strain? That isn't a question that can be answered. How long is a piece of string?

You should aim to find an example of the strain that adequately meets your personal objectives in terms of growth rate, flavour, potency and yield, within your growing environment. One grower might strive for a plant that reaches maturity quickly and yields big, where another might strive for the tastiest most potent smoke possible with.....

Click to expand...

Dakyne said:

Interesting.. But would that not yield F2 seeds then? If so can someone explain to me then how big a difference is there between F1 and F2? If i understand what i have read correctly, you will just receive bigger variations of the orginal parents with F2?

So what does that then mean? I can go the F2 root... but the process MIGHT take waaaay longer.. ??

Click to expand...

I'm no expert so take what I say with a splash of salt, but from what I understand you are correct: inbreeding amongst the first generation of a hybrid strain from stable parents (F1) will produce 2nd generation seeds (F2) which will have a wider variety of the original parent plant characteristics than the first generation. The degree of variation will depend on how different the parent plants were from one another, and how stable the parent genetics were in the first place. This F2 variation is a good thing if you're trying to improve on the F1 plant in some way as it gives you a greater variety of plants from which to choose, but a bad thing if you're trying to sell a consistent quality of seed.

If your mission is to grow crops from a good example of a famous F1 strain then yes, the F2 route would take longer and in reality you wouldn't really be growing the named F1 strain, you'd be growing some other combination of the parent strain characteristics. To take a real world example, Nirvana Chrystal is an F1 hybrid of White Widow and Northern Light. If you were to buy Chrystal seeds, inbreed them and grow from the F2 seed, then in a sense you'd be growing a new cross of White Widow and Northern Light genetics, not the F1 hybrid strain sold by Nirvana. That said, it will be very similar and if selected from a large enough pool of F2 plants you may find something better than the F1 parent.

From what I can make out the seed industry works something like this: you start by crossing Blue Horse with Red Donkey to get Purple Jackass #1. It smokes well and one of the parents featured in a good movie or song lyric, so you can sell this seed for loads of money and the offspring will be a fairly consistent shade of purple that roughly matches the pictures on your website. If you breed two of these first-generation Jackasses together though you'll get a variety of shades of purple from your F2 seed, with some red and some blue in there too. This is fine if you weren't quite happy with the original F1 shade of purple and you're looking for a plant with a little more blue in it to make clones, but you can't use F2 seed to grow consistent crops and you can't sell it for decent money as the buyer doesn't know what shade of purple he's getting. You'll have to invent a crap name like Purpleish Horseybeast and sell it at 4.99 for 10 seeds.

If however you select some F2 offspring that have exactly the shade of purple you want and breed them together (or with one of their parents) and then select from amongst the 3rd generation offspring and breed again, and repeat the process for eleven more generations, you will eventually have Dakne's Purple Jackass #14, a stable hybrid strain which is consistently the perfect shade of purple. Inbreeding amongst these stable Jackasses will produce fairly consistent seeds so you can sell it at a good price, so long as the parents are still in fashion. More than that though you can now breed your stable Purple Jackass #14 with Evil Zebra to produce a new horsey-themed F1 strain with lovely purple stripes and a fairly consistent portion of evil in every seed. Goldmine! Now to come up with a good name...

Dakyne said:

Interesting.. But would that not yield F2 seeds then? If so can someone explain to me then how big a difference is there between F1 and F2? If i understand what i have read correctly, you will just receive bigger variations of the orginal parents with F2?

So what does that then mean? I can go the F2 root... but the process MIGHT take waaaay longer.. ??

Click to expand...

You can go through thousands of F1s and not find the best representation of any particular variety. That "special keeper" you want is the best from a pack and then you only know how good she is when you find something better.

Get at least 2 or 3, I Always kill the first

Dakyne said:

Hello and welcome to the thread.

Can some of the more experienced breeders maybe give me info as to how many F1 seeds a person needs to purchase to get that "Special" keeper. And what defines a "Special" keeper? Is it the plant the most closely resembles the original parent? Or is it personal preference?

Let the discussion begin...

EDIT: And how do you go about it? Start at one point and grow the seeds and just always keep the best one as mother?

Click to expand...

It's a crap shoot. That doesn't mean you can't play the odds. It depends a great deal on the uniformity of the strain. The more variable the phenos the more plants you need to have a good shot at getting the phenos you want.

I did like your sarky answer to 'could be just one' but anytime you find a girl you really like, she could be your keeper regardless of what else is out there.

@Dakyne: Nice clear explanation of basic breeding. Thanks. 'Purple Jackass' !!

I usually buy 1 seed from a pick and mix, grow it out, make sure I like the general qualities of the plant, then I'll order a 5 pack and keep the strongest as a mother. If you are already familiar with the plant you can know how they look in comparison. And the higher class breeders have back crossed strains to where they are generally the same, the more you pay for the seed (in a lot of cases) and the better genetics are what's gonna give you stability.

Thank you all, it has now become more clear to me as to how to go about this.

I've read,on here, of people who grow out 100+ seeds(regular, not feminized) at a time looking for a keeper, after thinning out males(other than 1 or 2 if your breeding) and weaker plants it leaves a large group to pick from. I've even heard of serious breeders growing out that many only to not like the selection and start over... kinda like the quest for the holy grail.Buying 5 or 10 should get you a good mom or two though. Depends on how deep you want to go.