If you’ve decided that you’re interested in growing your own medical marijuana, shopping around for the best seeds for your personal needs can be overwhelming. As a beginning marijuana grower, navigating your way through the thousands of cannabis seeds on the market can be challenging.
Finding the perfect seeds to grow can be especially challenging when it comes to the different degrees of legality that different states offer. Is growing medical marijuana legal in Illinois? How do you get started growing your own medical marijuana?
In this guide, we’re going guide you through buying your first set of marijuana seeds online. Interested in learning how to get started growing marijuana from the comfort of your own home? Keep reading for more!
It’s legal to grow marijuana in Illinois, as long as you’ve registered with your state for growing marijuana to use for medical purposes. There are several health conditions that Illinois will accept medical marijuana as a treatment for. Some of these health conditions include cancer, fibromyalgia, PTSD, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and rheumatoid arthritis.
As long as you’re registered to use medical marijuana, you’ll have the ability to carry up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana on your person. In addition, you’ll be able to renew your prescription for medical marijuana every two weeks.
However, Illinois is expected to be one of the five states to completely legalize the use (including recreational) of marijuana by 2020.
As of right now, germinated marijuana seeds are not legal to grow in Illinois. Although, ungerminated marijuana seeds are considered to be an adult souvenir, which means that they can be legally bought and sold as a type of collector’s item.
Illinois is a beautiful place to live, but it certainly can get very cold in the winter. So cold that it can even reach below freezing! With it being so cold, how is it possible to grow marijuana, considering that this plant thrives in warmer temperatures?
Growing your marijuana plants indoors will ensure that you’re able to keep your plants alive and healthy during the cold winter months. Plus, you’ll be able to effectively control the environment that your plants are growing in.
As you’re looking through the market for different types of seeds, you’ll likely find with an overwhelming amount of options for you to choose from. While you may not have an understanding of the different types of seeds and what they’re good for, we’re here to guide you through that.
The type of seed that’ll work best for your personal needs will all depend on the amount of space that you have to work with, how much time you’re willing to dedicate to growing your seeds, and why you’re interested in growing your own marijuana plants. Here’s what you need to know:
Regular seeds contain a mixture of male and female marijuana plants. As a generalization, half of the mixture of the seeds that you receive will be female, while the other half will be male. However, this 50/50 mixture isn’t guaranteed in every shipment of regular seeds that you order.
In addition, there’s no way to guarantee the sex of the plants in the seeds that you receive. This is because you’re only able to identify the sex of a marijuana plant as it reaches the flowering stage.
To keep your female marijuana plants producing bud, it’s essential that you remove all of the male marijuana plants from your garden before they pollinate.
Since you have to identify the sex of your marijuana plants to ensure that your female plants produce bud, purchasing regular seeds can potentially serve as a challenge to beginners. However, if if you’re looking to play around with the genetics of your marijuana plants, regular seeds would be a great investment.
Over the years, cannabis experts have been able to develop ways to feminize seeds. Feminized seeds will only produce female marijuana plants, which means that you can plant these seeds and start growing your plants for buds.
As an alternative to regular seeds that are easier to manage for beginners, feminized seeds won’t produce any male marijuana plants. Using feminized seed will guarantee that you’re only growing bud producing female plants.
As an end result, you won’t have to dedicate as much time to grow your marijuana plants. This is because you won’t have to take the time to identify the sex of your plants and discard any of the male plants that you end up finding.
Autoflowering seeds automatically change from a vegetative state to a flowering state with age, without having to depend on the change of a light cycle to develop.
This type of seed has a lessened grow to harvest time, meaning that the bud from this type of seed can be harvested in at little as three months from the time you plant the seeds.
Marijuana plants are diecious, which means that separate plants produce female reproductive organs, while others product male reproductive organs. Since cannabis plants will grow to either become male or female, it’s important that you isolate your female marijuana plants to reap a high yield.
You can tell the sex of your cannabis plants by looking in between their nodes, which is where the branches and leaves extend from the stalk of the plant. At around six weeks of age, marijuana plants will begin to grow their reproductive organs. While it can be hard to tell with just your eye, using a magnifying glass will make it easier to identify the sex organs on your plants.
A female marijuana plant will have two bracts, which also contain a stigma that has a similar appearance to hair. Typically, female marijuana plants take a bit longer to show their reproductive organs than male plants do. In the earliest stages of pre-flowering, you’ll notice a few white wispy hairs growing where their buds are starting to form.
Male marijuana plants have sacs that have a similar appearance to topics or grapes, which are used to create and fill-up with pollen. If a male marijuana plant isn’t removed in time, the pollen sacs will eventually burst open and spread their pollen everywhere.
When you go to purchase your marijuana seeds, make sure that you avoid purchasing any seeds that say ‘unstable genetics’. This term means that the origins of the seed aren’t known.
Make sure that you purchase a packet of seeds that have information on where the seeds came from. If the packet of seeds doesn’t have the information, check with the breeder to learn how the seeds were bred and where they came from.
If the breeder refuses to provide you with the history of the seed, avoid purchasing from that dealer. Without the history of the seed, you won’t be able to tell if you’re purchasing high-quality cannabis seeds.
Even when you’ve purchased your seeds from a reputable seller, there’s no guarantee that all of your seeds are going to germinate. To ensure that you have enough marijuana plants, you should purchase two to four times more seeds than the number of plants you’re looking to grow. Purchasing extra seeds will provide you with wiggle room in case any seeds die off or if any don’t germinate.
If you end up buying regular marijuana seeds, buying extra seeds will account for any seeds that grow into male marijuana plants. Keep in mind that you stay inside of your state’s legal limit for growing marijuana plants.
While it may be tempting to purchase a bunch of cannabis seeds when you’re first learning how to grow marijuana, make sure that you start off small to ensure that you don’t get overwhelmed managing all of your plants. You can always work your way up to more plants at a later date, as long as you’re staying within your states’ legal limits.
To ensure that your journey of growing cannabis is successful, starting off with a small number of seeds will give you time to learn from any mistakes that you make.
We’ve compiled a short-list with eight of favourite easy-to-grow strains for our beginner growers, and those wanting to grow with a forgiving time schedule.
Are you interested in purchasing cannabis seeds that’ll thrive in Illinois? Click here to shop our collection of seeds!
