Basics
Plant biology, life cycle, photoperiod vs auto, sex, first grows.
Buyer beware: potency labels, strain names and other claims that don't hold up
Flower labelled above about 35% total cannabinoids is not credible: cannabinoids are made only in trichome heads, and bud is mostly bract, stem and leaf, so numbers like that belong to concentrates or to inflated testing. Studies show potency results vary systematically between labs, and retail flower labels often overstate THC. Be equally sceptical of strain names that promise effects, terpene totals far above the ~2% average, and 'indica for the couch, sativa for energy'.
Cannabis growing and breeding glossary
Plain-language definitions of the growing, botany and breeding terms used across GenetixBay, with notes where the popular meaning differs from the scientific one.
Cannabis plant biology: the parts and what they do
Cannabis sativa is a fast-growing annual herb in the hemp family. Most plants are either male or female, it flowers in response to long nights (unless it carries autoflower genetics), and the cannabinoids and terpenes growers want are made in glandular trichomes concentrated on the female flower heads.
Male, female and hermaphrodite cannabis: how sex works
Cannabis is dioecious: females are XX and males XY, and the species has kept separate sexes stably for millennia. Hermaphrodite (intersex) plants are unwanted outliers, mostly the result of bad breeding such as repeated selfing, careless feminising and untested seed; stress reveals the weakness in susceptible plants. Cull herm-prone plants and never breed from them. Seed from a female's own male flowers is almost all female, which is how feminised seed works and why herm tendency passes straight on.
Photoperiod vs autoflower, and how autoflowering is inherited
Photoperiod cannabis flowers when nights get long; autoflowering (day-neutral) cannabis flowers by age, even under 18-24 h light. In the populations studied so far, autoflowering behaves as a single recessive gene (Autoflower1, on chromosome 1): a photoperiod x auto F1 is all photoperiod, and about 1 in 4 of its F2 plants are autos.
Regular, feminised, autoflower or clone: choosing your starting material
Regular seed gives about half males and is what breeders need; feminised seed gives nearly all females and suits growers who want flower; autoflowers flower by age; clones copy one known plant but can carry pests and viroids. Each choice changes what you can do next.
The cannabis life cycle, stage by stage
Cannabis goes from seed to seedling (1-3 weeks), vegetative growth (2-8+ weeks indoors, set by the grower for photoperiod plants), transition, flowering (about 7-12 weeks for most drug-type cultivars, longer for some tropical types) and ripening, then harvest, drying and curing. Photoperiod plants flower when nights are long enough; autoflowers flower by age.
Your first grow: a plan from seed to jar
For a first indoor grow, use one to four plants of a reputable feminised autoflower or photoperiod line in a tent, a good LED, quality soil or coco, a pH and EC meter, and a journal. Keep the targets simple: steady temperature and humidity, light to about 400-600 µmol/m²/s in veg and 600-900 in flower, water by weight, and harvest by trichomes.
