Feminised seeds are one of the greatest advances in cannabis growing. Growers used to grow more plants than they need, in the chance of having enough females. But now, cannabis seeds are available, that are pretty much guaranteed to be female. In this guide we will explain how to make Feminised cannabis seeds for yourself.
Using these techniques you will be able to preserve your favourite strain in seed form, instead of keeping a mother. You will also be able to begin breeding your own feminised cannabis plants! You can cross 2 females, of your favourite strains together, and as a result have thousands of feminised cannabis seeds at your disposal.
If you are going to make feminised cannabis seeds for the first time, then feel free to ask for help in our cannabis growers forum
How Feminised Cannabis Seeds are Made
For professional cannabis breeders, there is a long process of find the best female specimens, from a particular strain they would like to turn into seed. This could be 2 plants of the same strain, or a combination of two. They both, must be female cannabis plants!
Essentially, what happens is, a chemical called “Colloidal Silver” is sprayed onto one of the female plants, as they finish their vegetative growth and head into flower. Most growers will do this when they flip the lights to 12/12 to induce flowering.
The Colloidal silver, will encourage the female plant, to grow male reproductive organs and pollen. But, the genetics of the pollen produced is still female. Usually, pollen will come from a male cannabis plant and carry male genetics. This will give you regular seeds with a 50% chance of being male or female.
By using colloidal silver, you will ensure both parents of your seeds, are genetically female. So that means, only female genes will be passed down resulting in female plants. This is how feminised cannabis seeds are made.
What is colloidal silver?
To put it simply as possible, Colloidal silver is microparticles of silver that are suspended with electrolysis in pure distilled water. It sounds very complex, but it is very easy and inexpensive to make. You can also buy it from many grow shops online.
The silver ions in colloidal silver act as an ethylene inhibitor. This will force female plants to produce male flowers. These flowers will have pollen that has only female chromosomes.
You will need a solution that’s between 20ppm and 30ppm. Weaker solutions than this maybe bring male flowers that have little or no viable pollen. If you make colloidal Silver yourself, use a PPM/TDS meter to measure the solution.
When to Spray Your Female with Colloidal Silver for Best Results?
Most growers will start to spray the female plant they would like to grow male flowers on, a few days before inducing the plant into flowering. You will continue to spray the plant, every day, for 2-3 weeks before you see male flowers form.
If you’re not sure your plant is a female, then wait until you see pistils to confirm that they are, before applying CS. The result will be the same, just a little later on in the process.
How Often to Spray the Colloidal Silver?
Some growers will male flowers with just 5 days of spraying! Most will see them in 10 days, but generally about 2 weeks should is enough time.
Take things such as the strength of the colloid silver, how much you spray, and how often into consideration. Keep spraying, everyday, until you start seeing male flowers or “bananas” form. It generally takes a few weeks before you see them, so be patient.
Once you’ve sprayed a plant with colloidal silver, do not use it for extracts or smoke it. The silver microparticles are absorbed into the plant via the foliar feed. Even if you were to wash the buds, there will still be plenty of CS in the plant matter. This plant is now for breeding purposes only!
How to Pollinate a Cannabis Plant
Sometimes, the feminised pollen sacs do not open naturally. You may have to help the flowers open to reach the pollen. Cut them off and manually open them. Then just brush them against the pistils of the untreated female/s .
Also, turn the fans up in your grow room if possible. This will blow the pollen around the room more. For best results, and more seeds, it is a better idea, to manually extract the sacs from the treated female. Gather the pollen up and use a small makeup brush to apply it all to the white pistols across the untreated plant.
Self-pollination
You can make feminised cannabis seeds, with one single female plant. By creating feminised pollen on a female plant, you can use that pollen to pollinate itself. This will happen naturally, but manual extraction and pollination would result in better coverage, and produce more seeds.
You should let the female flower for a couple weeks before starting to apply CS. So that you plenty of bud sites as targets to apply the pollen.
How to Conserve a Mother Plant by Making Feminised Seeds.
You can use the techniques above, to preserve the strain of your mother plants. Some growers will keep a mother plant because it has some outstanding characteristics, and the genetics, need to be kept!
But sometimes, things happen, and you may not be able to keep a plant around for a while, and you have to destroy your mother plant.
Take a few cuttings from the mother, and let them root. When they are ready, veg them for a few weeks. When you the cuttings are big enough, and you are planning to flip them, start with the treatment of colloidal silver, and at the same time, flip your mother plant into flower.
After a couple of weeks, you mother plant will be showing signs of white pistols, and your cuttings will show signs of male organs.
Manually extract all of the pollen sacs, and use that to pollinate as much of the mother as possible. The more you can cover the more seeds you will have.
When you can start growing again, you can use these seeds to regrow your favourite strain. The phenotype may be a little different. But you will be close, and you will have hundreds maybe even thousands of seeds to hunt for the next phenotype.
Make you own Colloidal Silver!
Colloidal silver is so relatively easy to make, if you can grow cannabis, you can make this stuff. The entire system is very simple, and very effective if you follow the basics. You can follow this simple guide: How to Make Colloidal Silver.
To ensure the best results, make sure you’re:
- Using pure (distilled) water
- And Pure (999/.9999) silver
- Giving electrolysis enough time (if making your own CS)
Be Patient!
Also, when spraying your plant with Cs, make sure you are:
- Spraying with a strong-enough solution
- Covering the plant thoroughly enough (drench the whole plant)
- Treating regularly enough (Spray at least once a day)
- Spraying for long enough (2-3 weeks)
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@hemptoad Stootie has it right. Same process but a lot less spraying with STS and a better success rate of reversal too. With Colloidal Silver you need to spray every day vs using STS you spray every 5 days. That’s 30 sprays vs 6 sprays. STS is fairly easy to make or you can purchase it on the internet.
@hemptoad Iv only ever used colloidal silver but I think the biggest difference is you have to spray a lot more CS on the plant to get them to reverse than what you do using STS but im not sure if there’s any other differences.
Is there a major difference of using Colloidal Silver over Silver Thiosulfate? Ive been looking into silver thiosulfate to try to make some of my own fems
Sweet thread thanks.
I was going to do a seed run soon after reading bubbleaires ( sp? ) old strain base info again & seeing half the names are gone already,Many I wanted to try as well.
@twisted1 thanks. I must be just over doing it or otherwise my Aussie Colloidal Silver is shit. It’s distributed as a vitamin for human consumption?!? You wouldn’t catch me drinking it.
@aussie_jim No need to Ph the colloidal silver.
@monkeydo do you need to put bags with microholes on the branch you want to pollinate with one strain so does not take another strain? like they do with tobacco?
@monkeydo I can’t wait to see the future of this! Man….SO EXCITED! Once I can clone and make moms….its time to sex change some bitches 🤣🤣🤣
Yes it would deliver 2 separate crosses. That’s where I’m heading with my micros
I am thinking. I self pollinate one branch, and for another branch I use pollen from a second different plant. Would the pollinated plant then offer me 2.different strains ?? Hehe.
Check your profile setting Jim and be certain the email address is correct. Then look in your junk folder. Sometimes they are seen as spam but if you read them, or at least view them, they won’t go to junk. Hope this helps
Thanks for all the feed back. I thought I needed to spray for 2 weeks before flip. I can’t remember where I read these instructions.
Could it possibly be forgetting to pH the Colloidal Silver? I checked it this morning – 8.6pH I think it should be around 6 for foliar sprays. Rookie error!
Originally this plant was in a small tent/germination greenhouse with a bunch of clones. All clones are getting the same feed, under the same light and in the same medium. I would take this clone out, spray it, wait for it to dry and put it back each day. All my other clones are healthy and happy. Just this one has these symptoms, so I can only put it down to the spray. I have since taken it out of the tent to flip, but I am not sure it’s worth it. I only want enough pollen to seed one branch, but I might not get even that.
I would have replied sooner, but even though I am subscribed to this thread I am not getting notifications of new posts.
Cheers,
Jim
Nice Post. Would love to try it some time
Great post Macky thanks for the information 👍I’m not ready for this process but Its on my list and now there is a guide to do so💪
@twisted1 thanks brother. That’s sort of how I thought it worked. Made a note as I plan to try this on a micro scale.
@monkeydo I sprayed 1 branch of my plant daily just before lights out, this started the day i changed the light schedule for flower and took approximately 14 days.
The part of the plant i didn’t spray showed pistols a couple days before the sprayed branch started showing balls.
My plant didn’t have any ill effects other than a partial sex change.lol
Yer you spray the plant when its in flower. Not sure if CS can do this to the leaves, looks like a salt build up to me mate
I’m confused as I’ve never tried this but I was under the impression that the plant should be beginning flower to do this. Twisted, TG, and anyone else who has successfully used silver to reverse a plant, please school me on this. One day I will be trying this.
I don’t know why it’s stressing your plant tho. Sorry brother
Took some pictures of the unhappy clone and my Colloidal Silver.
@aussie_jim Post a pic of it. I sprayed a single branch on one of my plants and after 2 weeks it was growing balls on that branch, but it never looked different from the rest of the branches on that plant.
@macky is it normal for the plant to not like the Colloidal Silver? Possibly I am over doing it.
I have a clone I have been spraying to reverse every day for 2 weeks and it looks a bit sick. All my other clones are very healthy and happy.
I know if I got sprayed with some crazy chemicals to change my sex then I don’t think I would be very happy either.
Cheers,
Jim
Would there be any filial degeneration from this technique since we are dealing with a lot of hybrids for our grows?
Nah man, then they carry a hermie gene close in there Liniage, the seeds are more likely to be hermie, or will easily hermie, if the genes are there.
You can skip all the spraying and just force your plants to hermie….S1 fem seeds. Breeders like DJ Short use the technique all the time. I’ve done it to save genetics. Had a FPOG x Aliendawg Cherry that I forced to hermie. Raise the temp and interrupt the dark cycle….it’s ok because YOU are causing this to happen. The plant is not going hermie from bad genetics. Let it go longer if you do this as seeds need a bit more time to ripen than buds.