Choosing a Marijuana Strain

What seed strain you should pick

There are numerous questions that arise when talking about marijuana seeds. Do you know what varieties you prefer? Or is your preference a hybrid of more than one variety? Where is the best location to grow, and which location are you actually going to be able to use? What is your intent for growing, simply hobby use or sharing and experimentation with your friends? Is your growing preference within a Sea of Green (also known as SOG) or would you prefer to grow larger marijuana plants? We are here to help you find the answers to these simple questions and more, plus we will help you narrow down which marijuana seed variety will work best for you. Read on!

Indica and Sativa seeds

Don’t get overwhelmed when looking through the huge selection of available marijuana seed varieties that the internet has to offer. It really can be a simple process to choose which marijuana seeds to buy. Looking at the different varieties will lead you down two paths: the sativa marijuana variety and the Indica marijuana variety.

Sativa marijuana strains

The first of the two extremes is the Sativa marijuana plant. This plant looks more spindly and gaunt than its counterpart. The sativa grows to be a tall marijuana plant with narrow, light green leaves. This variety can grow to be as tall as 20 feet | 6 meters in just one season if grown outside, and grows much faster than other varieties. The sativa variety came from areas such as Southeast Asia, Mexico, Colombia and Thailand. Once your marijuana plants have started to flower, it can take as little as ten weeks or as long as 16 weeks to reach maturity. You will notice flavors that range from sweet to fruity to earthy, depending on each crop. You will also enjoy a cerebral and energetic stone from this variety of marijuana.

Indica marijuana strains

The Indica variety of marijuana plant came to us from Tibet, Morocco and Afghanistan-places in the world known for their ability to grow hash. This variety of marijuana plant stays much shorter and denser than the sativa variety of marijuana plants. Once your plants start to flower, maturity is typically reached in much less time, from six weeks to eight weeks. The buds of this variety of marijuana plan will be quite dense and thicker than its counterpart and the aroma and flavor can be sweet with a hint of fruit or sourer like a skunk. These marijuana buds do not mind the cooler weather conditions of higher latitudes, but you will notice a pungent aroma with the buds of the Indica variety of marijuana. The smell is often likened to that of body odor, and the smoke of the buds will typically make you cough. However, the best parts of the Indica variety of marijuana plant will give you a social high that will usually help relax you, allowing you to become more in tuned with the environment around you without the negative side effect of over-analyzing or over-thinking about your experience.

Hybrid marijuana strains

When you combine two different varieties of marijuana plants and have two parent plants that are pure and unrelated, you will wind up with a hybrid marijuana plant and marijuana seeds. Most people do this for the type of growth that works with their growing location. You will need the pollen from the male strain of marijuana plant to pollenate the female strain of marijuana plant of a different variety in order to make a hybrid. Typically people will combine a strain, like sativa, that has a smooth taste with another strain, like Indica, that gives a higher yield. The seeds will then reproduce multiple generations with the same characteristics so long as the parents were true breeders to begin with.

Indoor vs. Outdoor

Where you live and the climates you typically experience will determine if the variety of marijuana plants you want to grow can be grown outside or not. When you buy seeds that say “outdoor” or “indoor/outdoor”, they will list when the marijuana seeds should flower. You need to pay close attention to this so that you know if you can grow your marijuana plants outside. If they are hybrid marijuana seeds, you will find that the Indica vs. sativa ratio will determine this time. It is important to make sure your marijuana plants can mature before frost will hit your area or harsh weather will become your reality. Keep in mind, if you have a sativa-heavy hybrid, it will take longer to mature and be ready to harvest. For those with a longer growing season, you should be able to grow almost any variety of marijuana seed outdoors. Each determination is only a guess and will change depending on your local weather conditions during the growing season. If you have a long growing season then you just have to go off of each plant’s description when figuring out which variety to grow.

Height of marijuana plants

One thing to keep in mind is that when you see the height of the marijuana plant on the package that it is for mature marijuana plants. Indoor plants give growers the ability to control how much growth occurs before beginning the flowering process, and since an artificial light cannot get to leaves that are 3 feet | 90 cm or deeper, this allows growers to keep their plants shorter. Once a grower flips the lighting schedule to 12 hours of light followed by 12 hours of dark, marijuana plants will begin to flower in one to two weeks. Your marijuana plants will keep growing, usually 6-14″ | 15-35 cm, while getting ready to flower, but once flowering starts, growth will stop. Again, how much Indica and how much sativa you have in your plant will usually give you a good idea as to how much growth to expect, with the sativa variety of marijuana plant growing the most. Flowering should usually be started when the plants are 18-24″ | 45-60 cm so they will stop growing around 36″ | 90 cm, but the amount of time this takes will depend on what mixture your marijuana plants have and how you have conditioned your growing location.

Potency of marijuana plants

Every variety of marijuana seed is potent. Just how potent your marijuana crop becomes depends on how you grow your marijuana seeds into plants and how mature you let your marijuana plants become. THC comes from the glands of the marijuana plant that creates resin when the plant is maturing. The purpose behind these resin glands is to shield each marijuana plant from becoming too dry under the heat of sunlight. It stands to reason that a hot and dry environment is going to give more of the resin than a hot and moist environment, so keeping the humidity down where you grow your marijuana while it flowers is going to give you the best results. However, even if you force a lot of resin out of an Indica variety of marijuana plant, you will still not get as strong or pure of a stone as you would out of a sativa variety of marijuana plant. Just keep this in mind when choosing which variety of marijuana plant to grow.

Yield of marijuana plants

Each variety of marijuana seed is going to give an approximate yield, but it all depends on how each marijuana plant is grown and how the growing environment is conditioned. If you grow inside, then your lights are not going to penetrate as far down into the plants, so you will get a better yield if you grow a lot of small plants. You will find that your best yield will come from the Indica variety of marijuana seeds or a hybrid of an Indica. Sativa marijuana plants often give a lower yield but a stronger stone. Indoor marijuana seed yield is basically limited by how well lit each growing environment is, not which variety of marijuana seeds you use. Conditioned growing environments will give a yield that directly relates back to how much Indica and sativa varieties of marijuana are in the hybrid mixture. Each grower can maximize the potential of each marijuana plant by experimentation on how to grow each variety of marijuana seed best.

Flowering times for marijuana plants

The length of time it takes a marijuana plant to flower will only give you an idea as to how long it will take the plant to mature, but indoor plants can be forced to flower so this is not always accurate. All growers have to do is strictly regulate the light of the plants to 12 hours of light and 12 hours without light. Each marijuana plant is different, but this seems to be built into the DNA of the plant species as a whole. You will find that Indica varieties of marijuana plants flower quite quickly over the sativa variety of marijuana plants, and a hybrid mixture will flower based off of how much of each variety is in the hybrid. You also need to include how long the marijuana plants were allowed to mature before you started the flowering process. The sativa variety of marijuana plant can quickly outgrow its environment which can make it to where flowering is not going to give the same yield for that plant. If you compare the time it takes for both varieties to get to the right maturity and then flower, you will likely end up with a very similar time schedule for your plants no matter which variety of marijuana plant you choose.