by Nebula Haze
Are those REAL, actual cannabis seeds in your hand? If you’re about to start growing weed, you want to be growing the good stuff. Every home grower should start with seeds from a trusted seed source (like Seedsman, Seed Supreme, or North Atlantic Seed Co., etc.).
Real cannabis seeds look like this.
If you see dark “Tiger Stripes”, it means the seed is fully mature and it has not lost its tiger stripe “skin”. So at the very least, you know that cannabis seed matured fully on the plant and hasn’t been overly handled.
But lots of “less than ideal” looking seeds produce some of the best plants and buds. Remember, if a seed sprouts and grows a healthy cannabis seedling, it was a viable seed even if it was pale, flimsy, or small.
The tan seed here in the front lost its dark tiger stripe coating, but sprouted just as well as the others. The best way to tell if a seed is viable is try to germinate it.
Small, pale, flimsy seeds are less likely to germinate. It’s not that the following seeds were mature and lost their coat, like the tan front seed in the above picture. These cannabis seeds are premature, which means they never fully developed.
Premature vs Mature seeds
I was curious and germinated all the above seeds, including the underdeveloped ones. The pale seeds sprouted at much lower rates than the fully formed seeds. Of the two pale-seed seedlings that did sprout, one grew like a regular seedling, but the other seedling was a runt/stunted.
Here are those same cannabis seeds again, with a camera flash, to help you see the differences between the seeds in different types of light.
Here’s another closeup of real, viable cannabis seeds. The shells can look a bit different depending on the strain and how the seeds were harvested and handled.
Here’s a picture of a real cannabis seedling.
When your cannabis seed first sprouts, the seedling should look like this, with two round leaves. These two round “cotyledon” leaves were fully formed inside the shell.
Then, two leaves with jagged edges start growing from the center. These are the first “true” weed leaves, which your seedling grew all by itself.
If you start with good seeds, even if you run into problems along the way, you’ll end up with good weed at the end.
That little Mandarin Cookies seedling grew these greasy, potent buds, even though the grower made mistakes. Great seeds make great weed.
But if you start with low-quality seeds, you’ll end up with poor bud quality even if you do everything perfect. Seeds are seriously the most important investment in your grow journal. And good cannabis seeds can be cheap if you shop around.
Check out what one of our growers got from “mystery” weed seeds. Growers deserve better! Invest in good seeds and save yourself the heartache.
Note: Hemp and cannabis are the same species of plant, and their seeds look identical. It’s crucial for every home grower to get seeds from a proven seed source that serves home growers to make sure you grow what you want to grow.
In this next picture, check out the cannabis seeds towards the left. On some of the seeds, the dark brown tiger stripe coating is partly rubbed off, so you can see the tan mosaic pattern underneath.
All these seeds germinated (all viable seeds).
Estimate the likelihood of genuine marijuana seeds.
- Seeds came directly from good weed – 99.9999% of seeds are cannabis seeds (learn about the pros and cons of growing bagseed)
- Bought cannabis seeds from a trusted source – 99.9999% of seeds are cannabis seeds (these are the seeds sources I use)
- Seeds from social media or individual growers – The better you know the person, the more likely you got real cannabis seeds.
- Seeds from that sketchy friend – Chance of fake cannabis seeds skyrockets. Make sure to check your seeds closely against the cannabis seed and seedling pictures!
Here’s where you can get trustworthy weed seeds.
- Seed Supreme – Florida, United States
- ILGM (I Love Growing Marijuana) – California, United States
- MSNL (Marijuana Seeds Netherlands) – Amsterdam seed bank now ships from US, Canada & UK
- North Atlantic Seed Co. – Maine, United States
- Seedsman – Ships from US & Europe
- Other – Did we miss anyone you like? Let us know.
These are the seed sources I use to grow weed, and are consistent top choices when we survey our students and readers.
My most recent harvest used cannabis seeds from Seedsman, Seed Supreme, and North Atlantic Seed Co.
Check out the grow journal. A bountiful harvest!
Harvest great smelling, dense, potent buds with proven home harvest techniques. By Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside, authors of GrowWeedEasy.com.
Give me total guidance next harvest.
Learn how to grow better weed (5 core principles)
