# regular seeds vs feminized



## DankHobbyist (Dec 13, 2014)

Until now I have just been into feminized seeds.  Is there much difference between feminized and regular as far as area is concerned.

I have 5x5 tent.   Starting seeds under 400 mh. After they sprout and get some leaves for the light I will switch to plasma.  Then add another plasma.  Then add the 400 in between them.  After that taking out the mh and introducing either gavita 600 or 750 and hardening them off before final transplant.  After that another week or so before flip.  What will be the difference between 10 regular seeds or 5 feminized.  Will I run out of room?  There are some breeders like Escobar that have caught my attention and am interested in possibly pursuing regular seeds and sexing em myself.  Any feedback welcomed.


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## DankHobbyist (Dec 14, 2014)

Will I have enough room to sex 10 plants under a 600?


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## zem (Dec 14, 2014)

feminized or not, this has nothing to do with plant size. i have tried to sex regular seeds before and back-crossed them and was successful, but requires time and dedication to complete


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## The Hemp Goddess (Dec 14, 2014)

Whether you have room for 10 plants or not depends on how large you let them get before you flower them and the strain you are running.  I recently had a Boy Scout Cookie that took up about 4 sq ft just by herself.  Sometimes though, I have smaller indica dominant that just never really get huge--little Christmas trees that take up a sq ft or so.  Strain has a lot to do with how big something gets.  Look at it this way--each plant will have a space that is 2.5 sq ft.--that is a space about 16" x 16".  Do you believe that is enough space?  Overcrowding plants will result in poor results.


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## DankHobbyist (Dec 14, 2014)

Enough room to sex the plants is what I am asking


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## Dman1234 (Dec 14, 2014)

Yes u will, not enough to grow them all out but enough room to sex them.


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## blowinthatloud (Dec 14, 2014)

I just vegged 10 to maturity under a 600 mh with no prob, all strong an healthy!


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## The Hemp Goddess (Dec 15, 2014)

zem said:


> feminized or not, this has nothing to do with plant size. i have tried to sex regular seeds before and back-crossed them and was successful, but requires time and dedication to complete



Zem, I am not understanding what you are saying here?  Regular seeds all show sex eventually and I don't understand the back-cross and the dedication it takes?  Are you talking about crossing a fem and a non fem?


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## The Hemp Goddess (Dec 15, 2014)

DankHobbyist said:


> Enough room to sex the plants is what I am asking



Probably yes, but my point was that some plants can get huge before they show sex.  So, you may or may not have room.  You probably could not get 10 strains that had a whole lot of sativa in them, while if growing indicas you could probably sex twice as many.  With this growing thing, when not growing clones, so much is strain dependent.  The problem would be the size of the space, not the size of the light--dank's got plenty of light going on.


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## zem (Dec 15, 2014)

The Hemp Goddess said:


> Zem, I am not understanding what you are saying here?  Regular seeds all show sex eventually and I don't understand the back-cross and the dedication it takes?  Are you talking about crossing a fem and a non fem?



I meant that I have back-crossed regular seeds from a F1 strain. that is I crossed a male with a mother then the resulting seeds planted to obtain a male that again is crossed with the mother, after repeating it several times I got seeds that are very consistent in phenotype. I never tried crossing fem with non-fem. I am not very knowledgeable in breeding, but have read somewhere that fem plants are useless for breeding, but I don't really know why...


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## The Hemp Goddess (Dec 15, 2014)

Got it.  Thanks for clarifying.  I just couldn't figure out what you were talking about.  I think this is something that a lot people who want to cross strains don't realize--that it takes several generations to get something stable.


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## Wetdog (Dec 15, 2014)

zem said:


> I meant that I have back-crossed regular seeds from a F1 strain. that is I crossed a male with a mother then the resulting seeds planted to obtain a male that again is crossed with the mother, after repeating it several times I got seeds that are very consistent in phenotype. I never tried crossing fem with non-fem. I am not very knowledgeable in breeding, but have read somewhere that fem plants are useless for breeding, but I don't really know why...



Supposedly, properly femmed seeds have no Y (male) chromosome thus making them unfit for breeding. Pretty much the same deal with a hermie, or at least a female hermie. I've never messed with femmed seeds either.

I'm doing very much the same thing you are, crossed a very nice male with clones from a strain I've been running for years. Took males from that F1 and crossed back to the same mother and repeated.

I'm on the F4 cross now. Had some problems with the clones so the F5 cross might have to wait till spring, but I did cross the F4 males with F4 female siblings and seeds seem to be developing nicely. I didn't bother crossing earlier siblings. Not much room and I didn't see a point to it till at least the F4 cross. Still going to do a F5 cross because I want as nearly pure to the mother (pure indica), as I can get before going for phenotype and crossing siblings.

This has taken 3 years because I haven't been able to get 2 seed crops in every year. The second crop is a race with cold and it looks like cold wins again this year.:hairpull:  We'll see.

Wet


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## DankHobbyist (Dec 15, 2014)

Does this  inbreeding Hurt plants at all?


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## zem (Dec 16, 2014)

Wetdog said:


> Supposedly, properly femmed seeds have no Y (male) chromosome thus making them unfit for breeding. Pretty much the same deal with a hermie, or at least a female hermie. I've never messed with femmed seeds either.
> 
> I'm doing very much the same thing you are, crossed a very nice male with clones from a strain I've been running for years. Took males from that F1 and crossed back to the same mother and repeated.
> 
> ...



I did that years back with no regrets at all, I only got to the third cross that results in like 87.5% so they are not considered real F1 before the 4th cross when they get to the 93% but i had grown them several times now and they are great in similarity to the main mother plant.
what i did to speed up the process was that i got a male in some closed chamber, took pollen from it, then separated one plant, pollinated just a small portion like a couple of buds, then put the plant back to flowering. you don't have to do an entire seed crop, in order to get some seeds. you can even place a small clone from the mother under a cfl and let it bud and pollinate it


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## zem (Dec 16, 2014)

DankHobbyist said:


> Does this  inbreeding Hurt plants at all?



this is the only way that a breeder can make F1 seeds. it doesn't seem to harm plants' offspring like it does in humans


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## DankHobbyist (Dec 16, 2014)

Thanks real interesting stuff....  So recap   10 under 600 sexing plants no biggie if indica.   awesome.   I understand f1 etc thing better.  What would you call f1 f2 etc and what is a s1 s2 etc etc.  thanks.  Breeding seems easy now.  Thought I would need huge room etc etc.  this is reason people 12/12 from seed yes basically breeders?


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## Wetdog (Dec 16, 2014)

zem said:


> I did that years back with no regrets at all, I only got to the third cross that results in like 87.5% so they are not considered real F1 before the 4th cross when they get to the 93% but i had grown them several times now and they are great in similarity to the main mother plant.
> what i did to speed up the process was that i got a male in some closed chamber, took pollen from it, then separated one plant, pollinated just a small portion like a couple of buds, then put the plant back to flowering. you don't have to do an entire seed crop, in order to get some seeds. you can even place a small clone from the mother under a cfl and let it bud and pollinate it



Even easier, start some clones when you plant the seeds, 5 or 6 weeks later when the seedlings are showing sex the clones are well rooted. Then, *I* just pollinate the pre flowers on the clones. The pre flowers seem to give me the most viable seeds and the seeds develop quite nicely under veg lights (T-5 HO, 18/6).

The pollinated pre flowers was an experiment. The seeds developing under the 18/6 was part of that same experiment. Half the clones were brought in under the lights, the other half were left outside. I noticed no difference in seed viability from either batch.

Wet


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## Wetdog (Dec 16, 2014)

DankHobbyist said:


> Thanks real interesting stuff....  So recap   10 under 600 sexing plants no biggie if indica.   awesome.   I understand f1 etc thing better.  What would you call f1 f2 etc and what is a s1 s2 etc etc.  thanks.  Breeding seems easy now.  Thought I would need huge room etc etc.  this is reason people 12/12 from seed yes basically breeders?



No, 12/12 from seed are not breeders.

*I* am not a breeder, but simply trying to get seeds as close as I can to my now 'clone only' mother plant in case something happens to those mothers. I'll never get to 100%, but can get to 99%+with enough backcrossing.

Just be aware that there are a lot of *pollen chuckers* on the net calling themselves breeders and not all that many real deal serious breeders. Breeding isn't all that simple and crossing one named strain with another named strain is just pollen chucking. Developing a strain from various land races is breeding.

F1 stands for first filial generation. Never saw the S1 thing before mj forums, so IDK. Sibling crosses?????  If so, then my crossing of the F4 males and females would be a S1 cross. Really not sure though.

Wet


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## zem (Dec 16, 2014)

It is my understanding that above 90% is considered F1, IME 87.5% is surprisingly close to the original mother. I avoided pollinating preflowers in an effort to prevent hermie traits or undesirable traits, and always aimed at pollinating in mid flowering, but that was never based on real knoledge, just to stay safe....


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## DankHobbyist (Dec 17, 2014)

That's awesome stuff.  Basically breeding you have to have large plant count yes?


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## JustAnotherAntMarching (Dec 17, 2014)

S = Selfed (reversed Female)  1 = first generation....


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## Rosebud (Dec 17, 2014)

DankHobbyist said:


> That's awesome stuff.  Basically breeding you have to have large plant count yes?



I am not a breeder, not even a pollen chucker, but i had a clone only for years and decided she was losing steam, (that may or may not be true, just my thoughts) Anyway I crossed her with some pollen of a male and got a nice cross. They are f1's right?  So I would need to keep a male from those seeds and re pollinate one of the f1's? What would I have then?  ANd don't say a mess. lol


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## zem (Dec 17, 2014)

Rosebud said:


> I am not a breeder, not even a pollen chucker, but i had a clone only for years and decided she was losing steam, (that may or may not be true, just my thoughts) Anyway I crossed her with some pollen of a male and got a nice cross. They are f1's right?  So I would need to keep a male from those seeds and re pollinate one of the f1's? What would I have then?  ANd don't say a mess. lol



well ahain it is only my understanding, that you don't yet have F1's rather those are F2 which are only 50% like the mother. to achieve F1 you need to take a male from the resulting seed and pollinate the mom, then get male from the result of that cross and cross mom again and again until you have done it 4-5x you will then have F1 with more than 90% similarity in genetic structure as the mom


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## Rosebud (Dec 17, 2014)

I no longer have the mom....:cry::cry::cry:  But thank you.


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## lyfespan (Dec 17, 2014)

Ok had another though about something. 

Can I grow out a feminized plant and pollinate her? What's the results?


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## Wetdog (Dec 17, 2014)

Rosebud said:


> I am not a breeder, not even a pollen chucker, but i had a clone only for years and decided she was losing steam, (that may or may not be true, just my thoughts) Anyway I crossed her with some pollen of a male and got a nice cross. They are f1's right?  So I would need to keep a male from those seeds and re pollinate one of the f1's? What would I have then?  ANd don't say a mess. lol



That would be an F2. Each cross would be another F#. IDK, you confused me. The seeds from the clone x nice male is F1. If by re pollinate the F1 you actually mean the clone and not another seed plant it would be clone x F1 and called F2. If two seedlings it would be F1 x F1 and also F2. You really need to note the crosses or it gets confusing in a hurry. The first would be noted as (clone) x F1(clone x nice male), the second (clone x nice male)F1 x (clone x nice male)F1 ~~~F2

I've seen orchid crosses that were like ((one type x another type) x (third type x fourth type)) X ((5 type x sixth type) x (2 more types, or any of the previous crosses)) 6 way or more crosses weren't all that unusual.

I think ZEM is a bit mistaken in that if 4 backcrosses make a F1, how do you keep track of the first 3? The 4 back crosses is approaching a stabile hybrid, but is not called an F1. The F1 is the first cross from 2 different parents (first filial cross).

I know I'd get terribly lost except that my female is the same clone when crossing with the male from each succeeding seed crop. I call her Tres, so it's Tres x F1, F2, F3, and so on. I did cross the F4 seedlings with each other and I'm going to have to figure out some nomenclature to sort all _that_ out.

The Robert C. Clarke book "Marijuana Botany" has an excellent section on breeding. Is it still in the RESOURCES section? I couldn't check while I was typing. Great book in any event.

Wet


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## Wetdog (Dec 17, 2014)

YESSSSSSS

Go to the Cultivation sub forum ....Then the Growing Resources sticky ...Then Breeding Guides ... and finally, Robert C. Clarke

Very helpful, but not dumbed down and may take more than one reading.

Wet


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## DankHobbyist (Dec 18, 2014)

Wetdog love your signature lol


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## firstime (Dec 19, 2014)

I have a question about an autoflower or should I look for another forum


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## DankHobbyist (Dec 19, 2014)

What's question?


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## Hushpuppy (Dec 21, 2014)

If it is about growing MJ, ffeeding, flowering, harvesting, drying, curing, curing, smoking, etc. don't be afraid to ask. We will answer and quite often we will have pretty decent answers


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## Wetdog (Dec 21, 2014)

Hushpuppy said:


> We will answer and quite often we will have pretty decent answers



_If not, we'll make something up that at least sounds decent._
:aok::rofl::rofl::bolt:

Sorry HP, that line was just sooo fat and right down the middle, I just couldn't resist.

Wet


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## Hushpuppy (Dec 22, 2014)

lol, that is why I said it like that. I knew if I tossed out a softball, someone would take a whack at it


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