Walk through most seed shops today and the regular section is a shelf at the back: shorter every year, priced cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and picked up by a dwindling group of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to see that as the end of a technology. It is closer to the truth to see it as a library shrinking while the paperback rack next door expands. Every feminized line started as a regular one, each new cross requires a male at some point in its history, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that exists at all survives only because somebody held onto regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines going back to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds since a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the argument for that half-male pack: what the male is for, what a grower gives up by not growing one, and how to get value with a pack instead of a clone.
What a Male Plant Is Actually For
The easy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and to a flower grower that is all it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and that half is selected with the same care as the female.
A male contributes growth habit, vigour, flowering speed, tolerance to mould and pests, resin production and the aromatic chemistry just as the female does; it simply shows several of those traits less since it never produce a smokable flower. Breeders who work with regular seed spend as much time choosing males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross inherits and cannot replicate. Reversing a female yields pollen; it does not provide a different set of selected genes.
What Happens When Lines Are Only Selfed
Much of the feminized catalogue is made from S1 seeds: a one popular clone, treated and pollinated with itself. Every generation of that selfing cuts in half the surviving genetic variation, and after two generations what is left is close to one plant repeated across marginally different forms.
This is fine for a grower who wants that single plant. It is a problem for everyone downstream. Hidden faults emerge: intersex tendencies, weak stems, sensitivity to one particular mould. Traits that existed in the parent line but not in the chosen clone disappear out of the population entirely. A generation of this leaves a market full with variations of the same few plants, and a breeder trying to create something different discovers there is nothing left to cross. Regular seed from a true outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the market, and that reservoir only persist if people keep growing it.
Selecting the Plant Nobody Writes About
Guides on choosing females are everywhere; advice on choosing males is rare, since most people do not keep one long enough to look. For a grower making seed, these are the signs breeders watch for.
- Stability. Any male that at the same time forms female pistils under normal stress is discarded without exception; the tendency is the last thing worth breeding into a line.
- Structure. Short internodes, a thick main stem and a frame that resembles the intended female shape are inherited; a lanky, floppy male passes that down too.
- Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a flower cluster and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong aroma suggests it carries the resin genes worth keeping.
- Restraint. Plants that dump enormous amounts of pollen early are often the least desirable in other respects; many breeders favour moderate producers.
What 10 Seeds Actually Give You
A error new regular-seed growers make is seeing a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a slice of a population, and the point of growing it is to observe the spread and select from it.
About half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds gives around five females to evaluate and five males to either discard or assess for breeding. Among the females, expect real differences: height, finishing time, smell, density, resistance. This variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack can never supply: a pair of selected parents that are theirs.
Making Your Own Seed
Owning selected parents is only worth something if producing the next generation, and there the options multiply. The main approaches cover most of what home breeders do.
- Open pollination. Let every male reach every female. It preserves the whole range of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and involves no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are kept going, and it is the right approach when the goal is preservation rather than improvement.
- Backcross. Cross a chosen offspring back to one of its original parents to fix a specific trait. It narrows the range fast and is used when one plant shows something worth concentrating and the other brought mainly vigour.
- Selected cross. One chosen male to one or a few picked females, every other plant else removed. The offspring inherit the traits of two specific plants and show narrower variation than the parent pack. Done over generations with consistent selection, this is how a stable line is made.
All three need nothing more than a separate space for the male, a soft brush or a small bag, and a few weeks. Not one of them calls for the chemical treatment that feminized seed-making requires.
The Seeds That Only Exist as Regulars
A number of lines have never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and old hybrids from the first decades of modern breeding. They are available as regular seed since the people maintaining them treat the population as the whole value, and selfing a single plant would erase exactly what makes the line worth the trouble of keeping.
Growing a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering periods in equatorial lines, tall plants, and qualities that made sense in a mountain valley but not in a tent. Expect also aromas and chemistry that do not exist in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a dedicated landrace and heirloom section, with each line marked with its origin of collection and the generation it has been grown out since the first collection.
Who Should Not Buy Regular Seeds
Nothing of the above turns regular seed the best option for everyone, and pretending that it is would the category no service.
A grower with space for three plants who wants every one of them to flower is far better served with feminized seed. The same is anyone who cannot afford to check the plants every day during the onset of flower, because a missed male in a small space ruins everything within days. Someone running a single autoflower on a balcony gets no use from a population they cannot select from. And a buyer who is after a known famous plant repeated as closely as possible is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who intends to choose, to keep and eventually to produce something of their own; for everyone else the regular shelf is best ignored where it is.
Ordering and the Law
Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in plain packaging with the original packs intact inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law varies sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as collectables while germinating them is not, and in others the two are permitted under licence or neither is. Knowing the position where you live is the buyer’s job, and nothing of this article should be read as legal advice.