Differences between Autoflower vs Feminized Seeds
Autoflower vs Feminized
Getting into growing cannabis can be intimidating. So many questions need to be answered even before a seed is purchased.
Do I grow outdoors?
Is indoors a better option for me?
What equipment do I need for each growing environment?
Do I plan on having multiple strains growing at the same time?
These are all great questions, and we answered those questions on our blog. In this article, we're going to be explaining the difference between autoflower and feminized cannabis seeds.
Learn the best way of Growing Autoflower with LED Lights
Let's go!
Feminized Seeds
What is amazing about cannabis is that there are both male and female plants. Both plants have similarities, but they are very different.
The male cannabis plant is what produces hemp. Anything hemp-related, shower curtains, rope, hoodies, t-shirts, etc., is from the male cannabis plant. Even protein-filled hemp seeds are harvested from the male cannabis plant. Hemp milk, butter, and oil all come from this versatile plant.
Hemp for Victory indeed.
Hemp Cannabis Plant
Feminized meaning
As we mentioned above, cannabis has both male and female plants. The female marijuana plant is what produces the flowers. The flowers are what cannabis users grind up and smoke. They are loaded with THC and sometimes CBD.
In order for the female plants to grow the maximum amount of THC-filled buds, they must be separated from the male plants. If a male plant pollinates a female cannabis plant, the female plant will work on producing seeds rather than flowers. This results in a low yield of precious bud but tons of cannabis seeds.
All it takes is one male plant nearby to pollinate hundreds of female plants! That is one frisky male.
Feminized vs regular seeds
Now that we understand the difference between male and female cannabis plants, we can begin to understand why feminized seeds are so important.
Unidentified cannabis seeds can grow a male or female plant. It is impossible to tell what sex the plant is by looking at the seeds. What you need to do is grow the seeds. After a few weeks, you'll see if your plant is male or female.
When you receive a bag of feminized cannabis seeds, you are guaranteed that all the plants will be female. Having all your seeds be females saves a cannabis grower weeks of precious growing time and space since you know all your seeds are females.
If you are purchasing feminized seeds, it is essential to buy seeds from a reputable seed bank. Different seed banks have many policies, so proceed cautiously before buying seeds. For people looking to purchase cannabis seeds in the USA, we recommend ILGM.com.
Read our article about Feminized Cannabis seeds variety packs
Autoflowering Seeds
Autoflowering seeds have become very popular over the past decade. These cannabis seeds are incredible because they require less maintenance than their photoperiod counterparts.
There are two stages to cannabis growth.
Stage 1: The vegetative stage. This is where the plant begins its growth journey from a tiny seed to a massive plant. The plant only grows taller and more leaves in the vegetative state.
Stage 2: The flowering stage. After your cannabis plant has grown enough, it begins to produce flowers. These are the flowers that are harvested for smoking and other cannabis medicine.
Autoflower seeds automatically go into their flowering stage without changing their light schedule. See our section on Photoperiod seeds below.
Benefits of Autoflowers:
Easy to grow.
Great for beginners.
Costs less than photoperiod plants
Ideal for indoor growing
Fast seed to harvest time of 0-12 weeks
Do not require a specific light schedule
Smaller grow size so you can grow multiple plants at once.
Autoflower grow outdoors
A common question we get asked is if you can grow autoflowers outdoors. The answer is yes you can!
Since autoflowers can flower, even with 24 hours of straight daylight, they are definitely suitable for outdoor grows.
Cloning Autoflower
Freshly rooted cannabis clone.
One of the biggest downsides of growing auto flowering plants is that you can’t clone them. A clone is when you take a cutting from a mother plant. You place the cutting into a growing medium such as Rockwool or soil and over a week or two, you’ll have a brand new cannabis plant!
You can read more about cloning in our Cannabis Clones vs Seeds article.
Autoflower seeds USA
Buying cannabis seeds from a reputable seed bank is a must. Here are our top choices for autoflower seeds that ship to the USA.
ILGM.com (US-based)
Seedsman.com (Spain)
Marijuana-seeds.nl MSNL (Netherlands)
Photoperiod Cannabis Plants
Now we'll move on to photoperiod seeds and how they are different from autoflowering cannabis seeds. Photoperiod means the period of daylight every twenty-four hours. Photoperiod plants need a specific amount of light to determine if they are in stage 1 or stage 2 of cannabis growth.
Photoperiod plants have a much longer growing cycle than autoflowers. This can be a blessing or a curse. If you are a beginner grower, you want to get to try your first home-grown bud as soon as possible. With photoperiod plants, it could take up to 18 weeks before you can even harvest the flowers.
Photoperiod Seeds
How do you make photoperiod seeds change from vegetative growth to flowering? Great question!
As we stated above, photoperiod cannabis plants rely on a specific amount of light. This amount of light tells the plant what stage of growth it needs to be in. So, we can keep a photoperiod plant in its vegetative state for as long as we want. This will result in a giant plant that will hopefully produce us more of that precious THC filled bud.
Keep in mind; if you are growing outdoors, there is nothing you can do to make your photoperiod plants go into flower. This is because growing outdoors solely relies on the sun as your light source. This means that you'll have to wait until the days start to shorten before your cannabis produces buds.
If you grow outdoors, your ideal planting time is from March-June. This will allow the plants maximum growth before the harvest months of September and November.
Photoperiod Flowering
So many tops!
Photoperiod seeds need less light to go into their flowering phase. So we need to reduce the amount of light that the plant is getting so it can flower. When you reduce the amount of light a cannabis plant receives, it knows its life is coming to an end and works on growing flowers.
An indoor cannabis grower can simply set his/her grow light for 12 hours on and 12 hours off, which will cause the plant to produce flowers. Easy enough, right.
Vegetative grow light schedules:
24 hours on
18 hours on/6 hours off
Flowering grow light schedule:
12 hours on/12 hours off
I'm sure there are others who will say that there are better light schedules, but the above schedules will give you a good baseline of how much light your cannabis needs for each stage of growth.
Benefits of Photoperiod Seeds
Produces larger plants
Ideal for outdoor growing
Can be grown indoors with proper training
Higher THC than autoflowers
Can use High-Stress Training or Low-Stress Training to increase yields
Can be cloned
Ready to get into growing autoflowers? Try out our awesome mix packs.
Autoflowering vs Feminized Conclusion
As you can see from reading the above, there are many pros and cons to autoflower and photoperiod seeds.
If you are just getting started on your cannabis journey, you can't go wrong with starting with autoflower cannabis seeds. If growing is something you want to experiment with without a considerable investment in high-end grow equipment, autoflowers are the way to go.
What kind of cannabis plants do you like to grow? Share your thoughts and comments below. Please remember to keep all your comments kind and constructive. We are all here to learn and create a stronger cannabis community.
Here's to your growing success!
The Autoflowering Cannabis Seeds Team
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