An Awesome Cannabis Breeding Routine from The REv
Featuring: Red Sky
Howdy my esteemed homeskillets, awhile back I mentioned my cannabis breeding routine and got a lot of follow-up emails. It’s basically how I stay stocked up with killer smoke, while using selection routines, and breeding/making seeds. I’m gonna put it all here in greater detail.
You only gotta be good at a few specific things here, making hash, cloning, and growing healthy happy cannabis plants. The more familiar you are with cannabis and its different genetic expressions in general, the better. The more familiar you are with the specific cannabis genetics you are working with, expression-specific, the less time it will take for you to select sublime breeders, or just killer clones for that matter.
Depending on what genetics I am working with, and my available space mitigating factors, decides for me how many seeds to start off with. I can flower 8, 3.5-foot plants well using my current indoor space. I can have about a maximum of 30 clones/plants vegging as long as they are under 1-foot, and at 1 foot and above its more like 15 to 20 plants vegging. So, depending on your space and logistics, adjust accordingly, heh heh.
Cannabis Breeding Routine Beginnings
Recently I chose to start with 18 seeds. 6 of each: Black Poison, Candyman Haze, and Red Russian Skunk “f2s”. I like using seed germinating flats cut into 6-compartment sections each (see photo below). Now, since I am working with genetics that I am uber familiar with (2/3rds of them), within 10 days of them sprouting (90 to 100% germination rates) I was able to cull (kill) several I already knew weren’t my breeders. That put my total number of potential breeding sprouts to 10. I kept the most Skunk “f2s” because I am less familiar with their specific expression tendencies.
18 seeds to start out with is pretty typical when working with mostly familiar genetics. However, if I were growing plants/varieties that I was not familiar with I would have sprouted 12 seeds. Reason being is that I will have to take more of these individual plants all the way through flowering at least once—but I go twice usually—while keeping clones of them all, labeled.
Always use intense lighting to sprout under, and personally I would use at least 200- to 250-watt lights minimum. T5 lights will work here, but that’s like a bare minimum. You want your plants running high metabolism and maturing rapidly, powerful lights in a nice warm environment make this happen. Check out Kingdom Organic Seeds for some healthy, hearty, deadly, and highly exotic cannabis genetics for a sound start.
Clone Hunters Beginnings
Clone hunters have a large advantage here over breeders when it comes to available space. When clone hunting, that doesn’t include males. So, you guys/girls (clone hunters) can sprout twice as many seeds with the same space as me, because when they are 30 days old you will be culling about 50% of them, because they are males. I sprout my seeds on a 12/12 photoperiod for their first 10 days above ground, after that time I move them to a standard vegetative photoperiod of 18/6. This allows me to be able to sex them right at 30 days old; give or take a few days. You will have ample space for many little plants under 30 days of age, at which time you will be reducing that number by around 50%.
Cannabis Breeding Routine Options
Of course, you will be harvesting individual plants to be sampling before making your final selections. You may not find what you are looking for here, in which case you simply sprout more, “rinse and repeat” until you do—wink. This will all keep you in plenty of smoke along the way.
When you are actually seeding up your buds, you will not want to be smoking the leftovers after removing the seeds—yuk. However, you could vape this stuff and it would be okay, not great, but way better than smoking. My favorite option here is making dry sifted, and hand compacted hash-balls out of this cannabis leftover from removing seeds. Check this out: Making Hash from Cannabis the Easy Way– with Rev – Skunk Magazine.
Making hash well from your seeded up buds is a keystone skill when it comes to cannabis breeding routines, especially for making the whole process go faster—yup. As an example, say you have several females you have selected but not flowered yet. Assuming you have found at least one killer healthy/hearty male, you can just go ahead and do a pollinating flowering run. Because, when you harvest the seeds, you make separate hash-balls from each plant. Judging by how much hash you get from each plant of similar size—which tells you the amount of resin production—and, by how potent and impressive each plant’s resin profile is—by smoking the individual hash-balls—you can make final selections—boom!
Afterword
If you are working with new (to you) genetics/seeds, and you want to find the best breeders or clones, you really need to just select all the best females, hearty and healthy, and take them all the way through a flowering cycle. Harvest and label each plant. Save clones of each of these plants. Keep each plant separate once trimmed and dried; and labeled. Sample these each over the course of some time, a couple weeks or so. This will help you select the very best from your chosen few females.
Alternately, you can breed/pollinate them all and do the same thing as above except you make hash from them. When you harvest the seeds keep them separated by plant/labeled. When you make the hash you make a separate hash-ball (labeled) from each plant. See Clone Hunters Beginnings above. Then you can test out all the different females via their hash-balls. Just keep the seeds from your best plants. This way cuts down your overall time significantly. No weeds for you to smoke, but plenty of hashish, heh heh.
Words like “best” and “favorite” are highly subjective terms. Like peeps favorite music, or favorite movies. They’re all different, and fluid, changing along the way as your connoisseur side emerges. Just make sure to select what you like best, and you’ll do great.
That’s it for me today homies. I’m off to do some transplanting and book work—and maybe smoke a little hash—but I’ll be back here at SKUNK next Tuesday for the next Rev installment. Grab a copy of my TLO book here, True Living Organics 2nd Edition by The Rev, and learn how to grow all naturally in containers, supernaturally actually. L8r G8rs…
REv 😊
I'm The Rev, and I have been with SKUNK for about a decade now. I hail from Southern California, spent mucho time in Northern California, and now reside in Southern Oregon; always coastal. I am an all natural style cannabis grower and I have written a couple books on the subject - check out True Living Organics 2nd Edition on Amazon - I have been growing for over 45 years, and I have been breeding cannabis for over 30 years. Check out kingdomorganicseeds.com to see some exotic selections. Growing connoisseur cannabis is what I teach mostly, growing it in living soil without using liquid organic nutrients to feed the plant. I am also a highly skilled synthetics grower, hydroponics, aeroponics, DWC/SWC/NFT, Ebb and Flow, and soilless, but I cringe when smoking synthetic grown herbs, so for the last 15 years or so I preach the artisan style of all natural growing, specializing in container growing. Cheers and welcome aboard.