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Cannabis Strains

All the cannabis strains: what are all the pros and cons?

It can be tricky picking and choosing which cannabis strains you’d like to grow. This is why the powers that be at South Africa’s Leading Cannabis Destination want to clear up some misconceptions.

So, there are four main varieties, namely: regular, feminized, auto-flowering, and CBD rich seeds.

Let’s get into it!

Regular Cannabis Seeds

When we refer to normal or regular seeds we’re referring to the seeds you find at the bottom of your bankie. For those who don’t know, marijuana is a dioecious plant, or a plant with set genders. There are males and females, as well as hermaphrodites.

What you want as a cannabis consumer is the female bud. With your regular seed you have no idea of the gender. For those who like it “old school”, growing organically from harvested seeds is a challenge.

In recent years most professional growers have moved away from using regular seeds. But let’s go through the motions and list the pros and cons when comparing them to other cannabis strains.

Pros

When you’re growing regular seeds you’re actually able to do some breeding as you can cross-pollinate strains to generate new ones. With the other strains you simply can’t. But if you’re keen in building your own seed bank you need to have both genders of plants.

Cons

Yeah, it can be costly to invest in a plant you can’t actually smoke. Also, you invest time into ensuring that the plant stays alive. And, the final downer is the fact that when half the crop is male, your yield will be reduced. Which is a big bummer.

Feminised marijuana seeds

Developed in the late 90s, feminised seeds came about as growers wanted to guarantee their crop developed into females. As you’d expect, these strains weren’t exactly great in terms of quality, stability, and they also had increased cases of hermaphroditism.

This being said, with constant breeding, these seeds are far better nowadays. And because of this they’ve forced sales of regular seeds to become the smaller share of the market.

Pros

The major pro of feminised seeds is they are cost effective and can now guarantee that your crop will be female.

Cons

If you are looking at breeding your own strain you won’t be able to use feminised seeds as they won’t be able to produce seeds by themselves.

Autoflowering seeds

As the name suggests these seeds take a shorter period of time to flower. Making their world debut around 2008, they have become a popular choice for growers with shorter growing times, as well as tougher environmental conditions. They are also popular with with inexperienced growers as they are fairly tough.

This toughness is due to the fact that they were cross bred with ruderals. A ruderal is a plant species that settles in disturbed lands. Sometimes this can occur naturally, or in the case of cannabis it can be introduced by humans. Most ruderal are smaller cannabis plants that have taken root in frigid climates. These strains also needed to flower quickly, as the season was shorter in the those areas.

There is still a debate about whether the ruderal should be considered its own sub-species of cannabis like indica or sativa.

As you can imagine, breeders are still working their magic to increase yields, aromas, and effects (they are also feminised). But we can say they’re epic. So, how does autoflowering measure up to the other cannabis strains?

Pros

When you’ve picked autoflowering seeds, you’ve got a need for speed, and they deliver. Flowering periods can vary, but with any autoflowering strain you need to ensure that in two and half months you top your plants.

They are also very easy to manage as they are tougher and smaller in size. If you are growing on your balcony you can grow an autoflowering strain.

And the final bonus is they are super easy to grow. Stick it in or outdoors, they don’t care.

Cons

If you are looking at breeding your own strain you won’t be able to use feminised seeds as they won’t be able to produce seeds by themselves.

CBD cannabis seeds

Yes, you can now grow your own CBD strain. We’ve spoken about the benefits of CBD a million and one time, as well as selling all the products.

These seeds do come as feminised, autoflowering varieties. So, what are the pros and cons.

Pros

You make plants that are CBD heavy. And you get all the good things that the CBD does.

Cons

You’re not going to get high…

Concluding about cannabis strains

At the end of the day it’s up to what you want from your crop. So, make a pros and cons list for yourself.

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