“Some of that real sticky icky,” Snoop Dogg famously rapped, with “no stems, no sticks, and no seeds.” His words may resonate with you, if you may feel like you’re paying for nothing if you open up a fresh bag of bud and see lots of cannabis seeds dotted within. It may even feel like a violation of pot protocol, something that we should report to the weed authorities so that we can be sure seeds in weed are not a common occurrence. However, good things come in small packages and marijuana seeds are no exception. If you find those little dark orbs, you too can make your own bud, even if you’ve not got much of a green thumb.

Seed to Weed

The purchase of most dispensary weed has been so commodified and so processed that you may go weeks or even months finding nothing but good marijuana buds in a bag. Indeed, some dispensaries jealously guard their growing secrets and would be less than thrilled to know that any marijuana with seeds got into a customer’s purchase. Yet life finds a way and weed seeds can be grown into the real plant in a relatively short amount of time. “Three months from seed to weed” is a common phrase regarding marijuana growth, giving a rough timeline for growth. If you are wondering what to do with seeded bud and how long it will take, the answer is that you might be able to harvest a seed’s growth to fill up your new bong within as little as a single season. Here’s how the process works.

Growth Options

Most cannabis is grown through cloning rather than seeds. This simply means that roots and stems are removed from the mother plant and given their own soil space to grow further, much in the same way that a succulent can grow from a single offshoot. Seed germination tends to be slightly slower but allows for different variants and hybrids to be grown in ways that cloning simply can’t. What’s more, clones are susceptible to the problems that might have plagued their parents: seeds are less prone to diseases or hereditary conditions. However, seeds don’t have the certainty of a clone, since you don’t know what a seed truly is until it grows. You might find a rogue variant snuck in with your preferred strain, and perhaps is bringing its rogue genes to affect your crop. Most importantly, you don’t know if the plant will be male or female.

Boys and Girls

Cannabis has one of two sexes, males and females. The male plant is often referred to as hemp and has almost no THC; the female plant is referred to as marijuana and grows the buds that contain the good stuff that glues you to the couch after a long day. The growth process is identical for both, although you (frustratingly) won’t be able to tell which is which for a while. Start with a small container of good quality soil and simply poke the seed in, add a sprinkling of water, and let it sit in sunlight (or UV light, if you have a lamp) until a green shoot pokes out.

When growing marijuana with seeds, male plants have fewer leaves and thicker stalks, and as soon as you can find one, you want to remove it from the females. Males have pollen sacs that will fertilize females and produce a new generation of seeds. While this fertilization is beneficial to create new plants, it also causes female buds to grow much less THC. If your goal is to get a CBD-heavy strain, perhaps for medical use, that may be perfectly fine. But if your goal is to laugh at dumb jokes with your friends, it isn’t beneficial.

Time and Tide

You know a seed is ready for planting when it is dark and has a geometric pattern of stripes or dots on its surface. Usually, mature seeds can be rolled between your fingers without being crushed. If the seed is getting squished, it simply requires more time to cure and mature, about one to two months.

Move the plant to bigger and bigger containers as it grows. Give it good quantities of water, light, and plant food, while being sure to keep the bugs off it. Once the buds grow about the size of a grape, you know you’re good to harvest, dry, smoke, and enjoy.

Have you ever grown cannabis? Do you have processes or products that you have found to make the bud particularly good in quality? Let us know in the comments below which strains you have grown, and any advice to new growers!

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