Starting Your Own Seed Bank is a Great Way to Get New Strains

starting a marijuana seed bank

If you’ve been growing cannabis, odds are that you have come across a few male plants in your day. This is of course if you didn’t buy feminized seeds. Myself – I love to buy swhaggy street weed because it’s one of the best ways to get a wide variety of seeds at low cost. Especially if the weed hits you and has seeds, it means that if grown properly – you can get some pretty potent weed on the cheap.

In most cases, growers get rid of male plants because they have crazy cross-pollinating abilities. That’s because cannabis pollen can travel more than 10-miles. So if you have some gnarly cannabis growing – you won’t want to have a male anywhere near it because the moment that the male plant begins to pollenate a female plant – the production of THC stops.

This is why cannabis growers prefer to have an “all-female cast” when growing because you can maximize THC production and make more potent weed. However, after a few crop cycles – you’ll probably want to do something “more” with your cannabis growing. In these cases, let me show you how you can start your own seed bank by cross breeding weed.

Make a Weed Sex Box!

One of the major issues with breeding cannabis is cross-pollination. Especially if you have multiple males from different plants. The only way to ensure that there is no cross pollination is to create a separate space for the males.

Fortunately, you won’t need a monster area to do this or even expensive lights. All you really need is enough lumens to be able to induce the flowering cycle – 6000 lumens at least. You can pull this off with something as simple as two big CFL lights.

Next, you’d want to ensure that there is no leakage or space for the pollen to escape from. Additionally, if you do have the space – I’d recommend making the grow box or area in an entirely separate place. This way you minimize the chances of a pollen-spill.

Once you have this space – you can take all of your male plants [the ones from good genetics] and move it into this spot. Then, simply let them go through the flowering cycle.

You’ll notice that the male plant starts producing pollen from very young. Unlike female cannabis that takes time to develop the flower – a male plant will pollenate a week or two into the flowering cycle. The pollen sacks bust open and from it spills the pollen which then would travel to the female to impregnate her.

What you can do is wait until there is enough pollen, take a plastic zip-lock or even a plastic or glass container, and simply harvest the pollen. Be sure to label the pollen correctly. Build up a pollen stash from different genetics.

Now you’ve got yourself one part of the equation.

Finding the right female

My journey into cross-breeding started one day when I left a plant outside in the cold. It got to below 6º C, which is far too cold for cannabis. The plant magically survived, except – it was deformed. Fortunately, it still started to flower.

What strain was this? Gorilla Glue! Fortunately, from the two Gorilla Glue seeds I planted – one was a male and the other was female. Considering that I only have about 6 more Gorilla Glue seeds – I decided to cross breed the two and multiply my seed stash.

Why? Because by itself, the Gorilla Glue is very potent and bushes out very nicely. Especially if you decide to prune it to bush it.

The male was moved away from my other females and separated by a room. I then, allowed the male to continue to grow – but with less light as to control the pollen production.

When I tapped the plant once – I noticed a bunch of pollen fall from its sacks, and that’s when I decided to sex the two plants.

Sexing your cannabis plants

Now that both the male and female were producing flower, I took the female and brought her to the male. I picked up the male and simply tapped it as I held it over the female. The pollen fell towards the pistils and I put it back.

Now, it’s a waiting game – and in all likeliness, I’ll follow the sexing protocol one more time. Will this produce a lot of seeds? Probably…but that’s the point. I want to get as many seeds from this one plant as possible – that way I can have a major stash of Gorilla Glue and with the pollen on hand, I can now begin to cross breed with other plants I find.

For example, if I find a plant that produces more bud than the gorilla glue – I’d cross breed it with the gorilla glue and as a result, would birth a new strain.