Seeds, Clones, Auto, Photo, oh my! A Cannabis Primer.

For those just getting started in legal Missouri Medical Marijuana Program cultivation, it can be a challenge to understand the basics. There are 30 ways to do everything and are gads of technical jargon and abbreviations that add to the confusion. I mean, what’s OLS anyway? Can’t we just type it out? 🙂

The first thing I recommend to all folks is to network with peers. No one will give the straight scoop like a fellow patient cultivator. They have nothing to sell (usually) and are more than happy to share their experiences. Other patient cultivators can tell you where to get seeds and clones as well, which is key! Let’s start off with the birds and the bees, shall we?

No Boys Allowed!
Cannabis is a dioecious plant, meaning that it comes in both male and female forms. ‘Regular’ seeds are generally about a 50/50 mix of males and females. For those folks wanting to grow their own medicine you are interested in the floral clusters (not stems, roots, or leaves) from an un-pollinated female plant. When the female cannabis plant spends its life-cycle without making seed, it will make a LOT more medicine (not just in terms of volume of flowers, but also in quantity of cannabinoids). Unless you plan to breed and are serious about it, male plants should be culled as soon as they are identified.

Clones / Cuttings / Cuts
Whatever you call them, these little ladies are the product of asexual propagation and can made from male or female stock. When female soft-tissue cuttings are taken, we often call the source plant a ‘mom.’ I use this technique to multiply a quality females for flowering, but also to preserve a particular cultivar. Cuttings are great because they are genetically identical to the parental stock. BEWARE: Acquiring cuttings from friends is the #1 best way to import pests into your grow space. However tempting, my suggestion is to resist the urge with steely-eyed determination.

Seeds, generally
As you would expect, cannabis seeds are generally the result of male pollen fertilizing female ovule. The most viable seeds are carried until after the end of the female plants life-cycle and are allowed to fully mature nestled in their bracts. When possible, get your seeds from reputable breeders. A good quality seed can cost as much as $10/seed. I don’t like to pay much more than that because you’re just paying for the hype. Then again, modern breeders do excellent work, and they need to put food on the table as well.

Seeds, regular
Regular seeds are referred to as such because these are the seeds as nature intended them to be and will have an even distribution of potential male and female plants. Raising regular seeds are just a little more challenging because it will take 4 – 6 weeks before you can identify and cull the males. However, the most stable genetics can be found in regular seeds.

Seeds, feminized
Feminized seeds will produce female plants upwards of 98% of the time. They are created by inducing intersex (male) flowers on a female plant. This pollen carries only XX gametes. Therefore, when they fertilize an XX ovule, a female seed must result. There are no XY’s to make male plants. If you are a first time grower I recommend feminized seeds as they will eliminate the extra time needed for proper sexing of plants.

Seeds, Auto-flowering
“Auto’s” can be a fun way to get started as well, particularly if you have very limited growing space. I recommend feminized auto-flowering seeds for anyone with these space limitations. These beauties will do just as their name implies, they will flower in a given amount of time regardless of what you do with your lights. Although I was skeptical at first, you can really grow some fine medicine from these little miracles of modern cannabis breeding.

Photoperiodism
For the most part, the cannabis lifecycle is very much determined by day/night length. This is true of just about any cannabis plant with sufficient cannbinoids to have interest in and is a behavior all cannabis naturalized in temperate and tropical environments exhibit. These cannabis plants are often referred to as ‘photo’ varieties (as opposed to the auto-flowering, which we’ll get back to).

Outdoors in Missouri, ‘photo’ cannabis plants will start to undergo a sexual change just after the summer solstice. Within just a couple weeks these plants will end their vegetative phase and enter into their flowering phase. At which point cannabis plants will begin to clearly show its sex and start its reproductive cycle. This process is triggered by the changing light/dark periods; shortening of days and lengthening of nights. Hence, cannabis is photoperiodic.

Indoors, controlling ‘photo’ cannabis is pretty simple. Timers control lights and the cultivator will do well to set their timers to 18hr/6hr (on/off) in order to keep cannabis in its vegetative state, and then 12hr/12hr (on/off) in order to “flip” them into flowering mode.

Cannabis Sativa-ruderalis is a variety of cannabis, usually very low in cannabinoids, that naturalized in the far north where the summer growing season is very short. In order to survive, these plants evolved the knack of beginning flowering as soon as they hit sexual maturity (about 30 days from seed), and not to wait on the sunlight. After all, in those climate extremes an early arrival of winter could destroy an entire generation if these plants don’t reproduce at first opportunity.

Enter some clever, innovative cannabis breeders who have found ways to cross photoperiod cannabis and auto-flowering ruderalis. These crosses keep the auto-flowering traits as well as the traits to produce the copious quantities of cannabinoids we seek for our ailments. Gotta’ love science!

I’m only scratching the surface with this article, but hopefully it sets up the basics in such as way that you can start your cultivation adventures with a bit more confidence. Let me know what you want to read about next.

Happy Harvests!
–The Lit Farmer–

Published by Eric

Lit Naturals founder, Eric McSwain, serves as Chairman of the Board for the Missouri Cannabis Industry Association. He is also a certified caregiver and patient. Eric's wife is also a caregiver and he also mentors several other caregivers in the state of Missouri. Eric's passion is for educating patients in the use of cannabis as well as at-home cultivation.

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