How to Grow Cannabis Seeds (Germination, Planting, + Feeding)

Growing Cannabis From Seed

Starting from seeds definitely has its benefits and compared to clones, especially when you’re trying to get the exact phenotype and the genetics that you’re looking for. Regardless if you’re using a bag seed or you grabbed some high-quality Cannabis seeds online,

Now, one big advantage by growing from seed is as you’re going to have a tap root in comparison to a fibrous root with a clone, that’s going to be a lot hardier, stronger, and more ideal when you’re trying to have a mother plant.

When germinating weed seeds, there are multiple ways to do it, but how I personally prefer to do it is by utilizing the paper towel method.

It’s kind of old school, but it’s worked for years and for me it works pretty quickly.

1. You’ll want to start by moistening 2 pieces of paper towel; usually, the cheaper brands work better since the more expensive ones tend to be thicker and the roots can weave through there with sucks when you’re actually trying to plant the seed.

2. Place 3 to 5 seeds about an inch or so apart in the paper towel, then you’ll want to fold it over making sure that you enclose those Cannabis seeds in between the paper towel thoroughly.

3. Then I’ll put it in a zip-top bag, sealed up for 24 to 48 hours, making sure that moisture stays locked in thoroughly.

4. After about 24 hours, you should see the seeds have cracked open and are showing a small, whitetail of sorts, which is the taproot.

At that point, they’re ready to be planted.

Planting Cannabis Seeds

1. When planting your Cannabis seeds, you’ll start by filling a small container with your medium. I use a coco mix consisting of perlite and Great White Mycorrhizae.

2. If you’re using bottled products, I suggest starting out by using a weaker strength solution, roughly ⅓ to ¼ strength, which you’ll want to mix into clean water only (preferably from a reverse osmosis system).

3. Take that weaker nutrient solution and moisten in the medium with a thoroughly.

4. After the medium settles, push or poke a hole about ¼ of the way down into the container then lightly dust the hole with Great White.

5. Place the seed, tap root down, into the hole and then cover it up with a medium. Gently, feed the plant a little more of the weaker solution.

Usually within about 24 hours that seed has popped through and you start to see it actually growing.

Now we’re going to start feeding the Cannabis seedling.

Image credit: theleafonline.com

Feeding Cannabis Seedlings

I usually do about ⅓ strength when I’m starting out and I’ll increase gradually ⅓ each week until I’m feeding at full strength.

For the first week, I feed at ⅓ strength, second week, ⅔ strength, and the third-week full strength.

Now, this basically helps your plant acclimate through that process of actually growing into a plant. At this point, they’re going to be a little bit weaker so you’ve got to make sure that you’re not beating them up too much.

Make sure that the wind isn’t blowing too directly on them, but at the same time, they need to have adequate airflow.

As for lighting, I tend to keep my lights roughly 1 to 2 feet above my seedlings, but you may need to increase or decrease that height depending on what you’re using. For me, I’m using a T5 so I’ll usually keep it about a foot away.

How Many Times to Feed Seedlings

When it comes to feeding Cannabis seedlings, I’ve heard a variety of opinions on how often it shoud be done. The main thing to keep in mind is everyone has different varibles, so there truly isn’t a “one-size fits all” suggestion.

With that being said, I personally feed my plants two times per week, sometimes three depending on the strain and then water as needed.

When I water, I use ph balanced water along with some cal/mag since I’m using a coco blend. I notice the plants are much healthier when implementing some cal/mag early on and continue using it all the way up until 2 weeks prior to harvest.

Wrapping It All Up

Now, as I mentioned before with seedlings, the nice thing about them is that they can grow into a lot of hardier, stronger plants due to that taproot.

Don’t get me wrong, you can still get a really nice plant from a clone and some people will start their mother plant from that, but with my experience starting a mother plant from seed, I usually get the best results as well as the most stable genetics.

So again, this is just how I germinate and how a lot of other growers do as well, but there are multiple ways to germinate Cannabis seeds, essentially this is just what works best for me.

I’ve tried a lot of different methods. I put seeds directly in the coco, I’ve dropped them in water for 24 hours, etc. There’s a lot of different ways that you can do it and really whatever works best for you is what is the best solution.

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