Home Breeding Basics for Beginners 

Mt Zion Seed Cooperative is thrilled to provide you with a beginner’s guide on breeding your own cannabis strains, highlighting the exceptional genetics available at Garden Supply Plug. We are excited to encourage home breeding by offering these remarkable seeds sourced from Garden Supply Plug, aiming to help you embark on your journey to create unique strains.

Breeding involves identifying the desired traits you wish to cultivate. You can focus on breeding for trait stability, a diverse range of traits, specific medical attributes, terpene profiles, or increased yield, among other possibilities. Breeding can be complex, but the experience is the best teacher, so don’t hesitate to experiment fearlessly.

Once you have selected your parent strains based on your goals and anticipated crosses, it becomes as simple as choosing your mother and father plants. If you opt for open pollination, even within two genetic lines, you will preserve a greater level of diversity. Alternatively, by selecting only one male and one female plant and eliminating the rest, you will narrow down the expressed traits in the resulting seeds. Another approach is to have one mother plant with multiple fathers, which maintains a more consistent matrilineal line while introducing variety through multiple fathers.

Let’s take an example to illustrate this process. Suppose I want to cross my prized cultivar, Zion Train, with the Peaches regular seeds offered by Garden Supply Plug from Greenhand Genetics. I personally find this cross appealing because I would like to introduce peach terpenes to complement the sweet lemon-lime aroma of Zion Train. Additionally, the Peaches strain has an intriguing father, the llama sanglug. The bud structure showcased in the pictures also caught my attention, and I’m curious to observe the phenotypic differences that may arise from the foxtail lineage.

In my approach, I would start with 10 seeds of each strain, carefully selecting the best five males and females from both. Then, I would allow them all to cross-pollinate, leading to the next generation of offspring. When creating F2 (second filial) generations, the aim is often to begin stabilizing desired traits—a long-term labor of love.

Growing male cannabis plants is not significantly different from growing females, but you may notice that males tend to finish earlier and start flowering sooner than females. Typically, I would cut down the male plants two weeks before the females, although this timeline can vary depending on the strain. It’s important to be mindful of mold prevention and curing techniques. Even in a seed run, you can obtain excellent material for making hash and other cannabis products. Personally, I still enjoy smoking joints made from seeded marijuana years after the harvest. Simply remove the seeds and savor the rewards of your hard work.

We hope this guide provides you with valuable insights into the basics of breeding your own cannabis strains. Remember, breeding is an exciting and ever-evolving journey, and there’s no better way to learn than by diving in and gaining firsthand experience. At Mt Zion Seed Cooperative, we’re here to support and inspire your exploration of cannabis genetics.

Happy breeding and may your efforts yield extraordinary results!