Of course it’s an origin story. Little attempt at humor there.
Started with bag seed decades ago, as most of us have. Plant 100 seeds hope like heck to get maybe a third of them female. Sexing the plants to extract the males before they mature and spread that pollen, hoping you pulled all the males…cuz some may turn overnight. If I got five healthy females it was considered lucky. Which is one reason cloning became so popular. Inferior lighting compared to today, growing rooms put together with no real expertise, grow media was basically dirt.
Then…it all changed almost overnight. Legalized Medical Marijuana was the reason. We became ‘caregivers’. We were allowed to grow a limited amount of bud for our clients. It had to be good…great…all the time. We used clones back then. It was 2008 in Michigan where I live. 3 of us were growing, one guy took off the California to work for the Humboldt Seed Company developing new strains, Paul and I took over the grow. Paul was schooled about cannabis growing in Spain and brought all that knowledge back.
We continued using clones…we tried feminized seeds to keep our heads in the seed and soil game. It was ok… he continued with clones…I retired. I grew for my wife and myself along with some special friends. It was still all a stealth grow.
Autoflowers were just coming to get available with good to great reviews on the strength of the product. Still had to buy the seeds from overseas which was let’s say…not legal. Plus the seeds were expensive any where from 20 bucks a seed to 40 for the really desirable strains. Took about 3 weeks to come in the mail and could get confiscated at any point along the way. Then individual states started complete legalization. Overseas seed banks started doing business here. Prices tumbled for seeds, averaging 10 dollars per. Then U.S. breeders started their own seed banks. Seeds got much better, fresher, better germination rates.
I can now buy Autoflower seeds from a Michigan breeder for as low as 12 dollars for 2 seeds for a bunch of different strains all of which are more potent than the Medicinal cannabis we grew back then. Pricing for 10 seeds is around 45 bucks. $4.50 per seed, not bad. My germination rate is at 100% for those seeds. Germination to harvest in approximately 11 weeks. Fertilization is minimal, autos don’t like a lot of fertilizer. No sexing all are female. No light cycles, auto means auto.
So you can see seeds are really not all that expensive, great breeding has done most of the work.
= new reply since forum marked as read
