Making feminized cannabis seeds by stressing
Benefits: 100% natural, easy. Cons: not very reliable, few feminized seeds.
The stress method is 100% natural and easy, but not very reliable. If you don’t harvest a female cannabis plant, even when she is fully ripe, she can produce male flowers in a last-ditch effort to reproduce. This pollen will yield feminized seed when you use it to fertilize another female cannabis plant.
The problem with this method is that some species will naturally never form male flowers at all. In addition, in this way you are selecting plants that have the property to become hermaphrodites. Every time you make seeds like this you increase this property, which is not desirable. Finally, this method produces very little pollen and cannot produce much seed. The only advantage of this way of making female seeds is that it is 100% natural and that the plants are still safe to smoke after they have become hermaphrodite, as this is no longer the case with the use of silver water.
Making feminized cannabis seeds with silver water
Pros: You can make female seeds from any female plant (even varieties that are only available as clones), the method is reliable, you can make as many feminized seeds as you want. Disadvantages: you need colloidal silver (silver water), although the progeny of your treated plants is 100% safe for consumption, any plant that has been in contact with silver water is no longer safe to smoke. (Some growers only spray the silver water on the lower branches and just smoke the rest of the weed. This is possible, but be very careful and make sure that the silver water does not come into contact with the weed you are going to smoke! This is not recommended.)
This way is also used by the seed companies to produce their feminized seeds due to the above-mentioned advantages. When a female weed plant is exposed to a solution of silver particles suspended in distilled water, the plant will also grow male reproduction organs. This solution is called colloidal silver or silver water and you can buy it online or make it yourself. When you buy it, make sure it has 30 PPM (parts per million) or more silver particles.
To treat your plant, spray it daily with silver water from the start of the flowering phase. Continue the daily treatment until you see the first male ‘balls’, or flowers. This takes on average about two weeks. When the male flowers start blooming, you can collect the pollen to fertilize another female plant. Unlike with the stress method, you are not selecting the hermaphroditic trait. This method also yields much more pollen than the stress method.
Disadvantages
The disadvantage of this method is that the treated cannabis plant is no longer suitable for smoking. That’s why you have to throw the plant away after you’ve collected the pollen. Also, make sure that you clean all used items such as plant sprayers and the like so that the silver water cannot accidentally come into contact with other plants.
This spray is available online through many suppliers, easily located with a web search.