When you decide to grow cannabis, you need to determine what type of cannabis seeds suit your growing conditions and what benefits you are looking for. There are different types of cannabis seeds available in the market, and most of the cannabis seed companies will first ask you the cannabis strain you want. The kind of cannabis strain you choose, whether cannabis Sativa or cannabis indica, depends on the benefits you want to reap from your cannabis buds. Do you want to grow cannabis for recreational or medical use? That is a question you need to ask yourself because some cannabis strains have high CBD and low THC (the high effect) for medical benefits, while high THC is suitable for recreational purposes.

Cannabis seeds are categorized into regular seeds, feminized seeds, and auto-flower seeds. Your choice mostly depends on your cannabis growing experience, your growing conditions, and how well you understand the process. Luckily, there are many guides online on cannabis cultivation that you can utilize to ensure you understand the process better. Each type has pros and cons, and here is an explanation of each class to help you make the best choice.

Regular cannabis seeds

Regular cannabis seeds usually result from breeding the female cannabis plant and the male cannabis plant. The male plant produces pollen, and the female produces ovules, so, in most cases, the regular seeds develop from hand pollination by the breeder. The breeder manually pollinates the ovule-bearing female plant with pollen grains from the male cannabis plant. The resulting cannabis seeds from hand pollination are similar to those produced by wild pollination of cannabis plants.

Pros

Regular cannabis seeds come in various cannabis strain combinations, such as Indica or Sativa dominant. They offer you an opportunity to experience the full expression of that genetic lineage. As such, they are very suitable for breeders who want to experiment with selective breeding with both female and male cannabis plants.

They are also cheap and easy to get. Many cannabis experts always advise beginner growers to start with regular seeds during their initial growing attempts. Although you are likely to make mistakes, regular seeds are inexpensive and easy to replace.

Cons

In regular cannabis seeds, the ratio of male to female remains unknown until the plants start flowering to present their sex, and it is highly probable that 50% of the plants will turn out to be male. Therefore, you could end up with a cannabis plantation full of male plants. While female cannabis plants produce the desired flower, male cannabis plants are undesirable unless you want to collect pollen for banking or experiment with selective breeding.

Feminized cannabis seeds

Feminized cannabis seeds grow into the desired female cannabis bud or flower. They are produced when the female cannabis plant is exposed to stressful conditions to produce the male flower or pollen grains. These stressful conditions may include intense UV light or heat, inadequate water, insufficient access to the male flower, intense herbivory, or spraying the plant with colloidal silver to introduce a chemical change in the plant that results in pollen production.

The male pollen pollinates the other female flowers, but because it is from a female cannabis plant, the resulting offspring are all female because of the lack of the y chromosome during reproduction.Many cannabis seed selling companies such as i49 publish definitive guides on how to cultivate feminized cannabis seeds.

Pros

If you want to produce the desired female buds without worrying about accidentally growing male cannabis plants, feminized cannabis seeds are the best choice for you to grow. 98% of feminized cannabis seeds turn out to be female plants upon cultivation.

Cons

Feminized cannabis seeds are not suitable if you are a breeder who wants to collect pollen for future use or experiment with selective breeding. They are also a bit expensive than the other types of cannabis seeds.

Auto-flower cannabis seeds

As earlier mentioned, there are different strains of cannabis. You may already know of cannabis Sativa and cannabis indica. However, there is a third strain of cannabis known as Cannabis Ruderalis, which evolved to survive the very cold climates of northern parts such as Europe and Russia. These regions are characterized by long winter climates and very short seasons of spring and summer. Therefore cannabis ruderalis adapted to those climates by developing fewer light requirements for seed germination and flowering hence auto-flowering cannabis seeds.

Rather than flowering per the daily light schedules, auto-flower cannabis plants will flower once they reach a particular maturation stage, most probably ten weeks from germination. Auto-flower cannabis seeds are mostly crossbreeds of modern-day strains (cannabis indica and Sativa) with cannabis ruderalis. These have a very different lifespan compared to strains originating closer to the equator. Due to the lack of sunlight for extended periods in regions closer to the north and south poles, auto-flower cannabis seeds are resilient so that no matter the amount of light present, they always find a way to finish up their life cycle.

Pros

Auto-flower cannabis seeds are suitable for a beginner cannabis grower as they do not need a complicated light system and cultivation plan. They also flower very quickly compared to the other types. Therefore they are the best if you don’t have much growing time or space.

Autoflower cannabis seeds produce short-statured plants, which is advantageous if you are trying to grow cannabis within a specific legal height limit. They also have buds high in CBD but with low THC making them suitable for medical cannabis users.

Cons

Auto-flower cannabis plants produce flowers with low THC content. Again, they have short-statured or small plants; therefore, they are not suitable if you are looking forward to producing a high quantity of cannabis buds.

Concluding thoughts

Whether you choose feminized seeds, regular seeds, or auto-flowering cannabis seeds, you can still produce high-quality weed. What makes the difference is that some types of seeds require a more careful hands-on approach than others. It depends on the time and work you are willing to put into the process. But before you select the cannabis seeds, consider your growing conditions, why you are growing the cannabis (medical or recreational use), your growing space, and how much effort you are ready to invest into the cultivation process.