How To Germinate Seeds: A Beginners Guide

How to Germinate Seeds: The Beginning of Your Garden

Cannabis is typically grown from either a seed or a clone. Seeds contain genetic information from both parents and can express different combinations of their mother and father’s characteristics. Cloning, also known as propagation, is the process of rooting a cutting from one particular plant, which always produces a genetically identical plant to the more from which it was taken. In commercial cannabis production, growers usually plant several seeds from one strain, choose the healthiest plants, and take clones from those plants for further production. While clones can be great for consistently producing the same product, a plant grown from seed will typically become much more substantial and robust due to its rugged taproot.

At Growers Choice Seeds, we supply high-quality feminized seeds, which have been carefully bred to produce genetically solid and consistent plants. Once your seeds arrive, you’ll need to get them sprouting, and knowing how to germinate seeds is the first step to a thriving crop.

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Types of Seeds

While finding a clone might be possible for some people, it’s often quite challenging for most, making buying from a reputable seed bank and learning how to germinate seeds the obvious choice. And when you’re buying seeds, there are two main categories of seeds you will come across: regular seeds and feminized seeds.

When buying a package of regular seeds, you’ll receive roughly half female and half male, which allows gardeners to create their own seeds from pollination; however, this benefit of regular seeds is also its main drawback. If the goal is to yield usable buds, growers will need to grow their plants until their sex organs appear, at which point the males will need to be discarded. Sexing your marijuana plants is time-consuming and wasteful, and if you aren’t careful, even one male plant is enough to send your entire crop to seed.

A way of avoiding this lengthy process is by purchasing feminized seeds. Feminized seeds derive from a process of female self-pollination, with the resulting seeds having no male chromosomes. This ensures each seed will yield healthy buds.

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Germinating Your Cannabis Seeds

It is critical to know how to germinate seeds when growing marijuana. Germination is the simple process by which a seed develops a root and begins growing into a seedling. Knowing how to germinate seeds is the first step in producing medical-grade cannabis. While many people will throw their seeds in the ground and let them sprout, this can pose a few problems as cannabis seeds require consistent moisture, darkness, and a warm location. Depending on your outdoor environment, this can often be a bit tricky. For this reason, many gardeners have been choosing the following method for germinating their seeds.

Required Materials

Before you get started, you’ll need the following materials on hand, all of which you likely already have lying around your home:

Unbleached paper towels
Spring, rain, or distilled water
A glass
A dinner plate (no styrofoam)
Tweezers (don’t touch the seeds with your bare hands)

Once you have these things ready, you can start germinating.

Step 1:

The first thing you need to do is fill your glass with water, the temperature of which should be lukewarm. Place your seeds in the water and wait. The seeds shouldn’t be overcrowded in the cup, so if you have a lot of seeds, group them in fives per glass. The goal here is to wait until all the seeds have sunk to the bottom, which shouldn’t take more than a few hours, though if they aren’t falling, they might need a light tap for encouragement. Once they sink, move the cup to a warm and dark location. The temperature and darkness are critical, so don’t get lazy. If you’re having difficulty finding a good spot, the cupboard above your fridge can often work. Your seeds will need to stay here for 14 to 18 hours.

Note: Some people will scuff the shell of the cannabis seed with fine-grit sandpaper beforehand. This allows water to soak into the body and speed up the germination process.

Step 2:

After they have sat for the 14 to 18 hours (don’t get impatient as this is an essential step in how to germinate seeds), you’re going to want to place your seeds on a plate lined with several sheets of wet paper towel. You can pour the seeds, water and all, directly onto the paper towel or place them there with your tweezers. Next, fold over the paper towel to cover the seeds, and return them to their warm and dark location. When folding the paper towel, you want to be gentle, ensuring you don’t press hard on the seeds.

Step 3:

The next phase will be waiting for a taproot to develop on each seed. Check on your seeds each day, replacing the paper towel as it dries out, and soon enough, a root will grow. It will usually take seven days until the taproot develops, but some strains can take two weeks. The important thing is to wait until the taproot is a healthy length of about 2cm long. Once this happens, you can place them in their growing medium using your tweezers, and that’s how to germinate seeds!

Transplanting Germinated Seeds

After you know how to germinate seeds, the next step is to learn how to transplant them. If growing in soil, you will want to do the following:

Fill a 4-inch pot with loose, airy potting soil
Lightly water the soil (it should be wet but not drenched)
Poke a hole in the soil twice as deep as the seed is wide
Using your tweezers, gently lower them into the hole, taproot facing down
Cover the seeds with a light layer of soil

And that is the process of beginning to grow healthy marijuana plants. After germinating and planting your seeds, it won’t take long until they enter the seedling stage, which is when the real fun begins! Happy growing!