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Ordering Cannabis Seeds: 7 Hot Tips

Anyone looking to buy quality marijuana seeds online easily winds up stuck in a labyrinth of countless seed banks. Ideal as this may sound with a new grow season up ahead, but with so much to choose from, how do you know which is your best choice? This blog sees you off to a good start with some handy tips that allow any grower for ordering cannabis seeds online that get you the best quality and the best match for your personal taste and preferences.

Ordering Cannabis Seeds Online

There are plenty of seeds suppliers out there. In fact, the internet seems rife with them, but some seed banks are simply better than others. You’ll stumble upon businesses that only remain active for a year before vanishing without a trace. Other suppliers have been active for years, with lots of satisfied customers and great, stable genetics that keep even veteran growers coming back for more.

We cannot overstate the importance of ordering cannabis seeds that meet the highest quality standards. Only the finest genetics can get you premium harvest results; and all the quality DNA is contained in the tiny natural miracles we call cannabis seeds.

But how do you pick the best seeds supplier where ordering cannabis seeds is most likely to bear those premium fruits? If you keep the tips you’ll find below in mind while ordering, you’re on your way to find your best personal match.

1. The Main Concern: Finding A Reliable Seed Supplier

First off, the most important step is finding a good, reliable supplier. It’s the only way growers can get their hands on the finest strains that live up to expectations. Since the sector is dominated by online stores that sometimes operate almost anonymously, this is an attractive market for online scammers and other dodgy subjects.

Even though it may seem attractive to get your seeds at the lowest prices, there are other important factors to consider. You can verify the reliability of your chosen seeds suppliers by checking review sites such as Google Reviews. The reviews you’ll find will show you whether they are a wise choice for buying cannabis seeds online.

2. Check Out The Customer Service

Shipping organic materials is always tricky business, especially for seed banks that operate on an international level. Shipments can get lost in the mail, or become damaged to the point where the seeds are no longer fit for use. That’s why good seed banks invest in proper customer service, taking care to work with their clients to find fitting solutions in case anything goes wrong – even if the company isn’t to blame.

Here again, reviews are your go-to check. Pay specific attention to reviews starting with a dissatisfied customer and ending with a smile. These can tell you a lot about an online store’s customer service. Also check websites for reliable shipping options and safe payment methods. Taken together, these factors determine the stature of online seed banks where satisfied grower customers happily order their cannabis seeds.

Amsterdam Genetics reviews google — Check out customer reviews!

3. Read Product Information

Another important criterion to look out for is the quality of information provided. Does a seedbank only give a summary of seeds and a simple order page, or do they have a lovingly created and stylish website? Any serious enterprise will invest in a great user experience. The site ought to appear well-tended, with its own characteristic look and feel.

Be sure to pick a company that is not afraid to share information, too. This includes information on all the strains as well as blogs with tips and info on growing cannabis, useful for novice growers and experts alike. Good images instead of stock photos are an indicator, too, as is the number of recent blogs. This is another substantial investment for any serious seedbank that serves as an indicator of their sincere business approach.

4. Regular, Feminized, Or Autoflower?

To make growing as easy as can be, a whole army of experts have been working hard to develop a dizzying range of cannabis varieties. The regular cannabis plants represent the original stock, which were then used to develop feminized and autoflower cannabis strains tailored to the needs of regular growers. We’ll explain the differences below.

Ordering Feminized Cannabis Seeds

Only female or feminized cannabis plants produce the much-coveted flower buds loaded with THC, CBD, and other cannabinoids. Females develop these for males to pollinate, in order to raise new generations of plants. Most growers have no use for male cannabis plants, as these contain little or no active cannabis compounds. Chances of new plants being male or female are about fifty/fifty. If you want to avoid having to discard half of all your plants, feminized cannabis seeds are your best option. This ensures your plants are females almost 100% of the time.

Buying Regular Seeds

In contrast to feminized seeds, regular cannabis seeds contain both male and female specimens at about equal rates. Statistically, that would make 50% of all seedlings males – and why would anyone want that considering their lack of harvestable flowers?

Well, thing is, you need males for crossbreeding. That makes growing regular seeds a creative connoisseur’s choice, most suited for those already familiar with the art of cannabis growing. Any grower looking for a new challenge or anxious to add their own unique strain to their name: feel free to give them a try!

Autoflowers

Unless stated otherwise, the seeds you are considering will yield photoperiod plants after germination. This means the plant switches from growth to flowering as soon as it receives fewer hours of light; a natural sign that summer is past its peak. This property makes it tricky to find the right time for planting seeds outdoors, particularly so in countries where the weather can turn in early autumn.

Autoflower cannabis plants, however, will start flowering once they have reached a certain point in their vegetative stage. They obviously still need light to thrive, but the light does not determine when they start flowering. They also tend to require less time before being ready to harvest; this could be as soon as after nine weeks. Some photoperiod plants, by contrast, can take four to six months before the growth and flowering stages are complete.

On the other hand, most autoflower plants don’t grow as big as the average photoperiod plant. Then again, this property of autoflower marijuana seeds may in fact be an advantage for hobby growers. Smaller plants are easier to squeeze in on a tight balcony, grow tent, or vegetable plot.

5. Check The Parent Strains

Most seed suppleirs give an overview of their strains’ effects. However, trustworthy suppliers also reveal the parent strains used to produce their seeds. That gives growers an indication of any celeb genetics used, genetic stability, and steady grow results.

Fatkid's cake genetics — Our Fatkid’s Cake packs some hot parent genetics – we’re happy to share them!

That’s always good to know: not just in view of future effects and harvest yields, but also for estimating reliability of germination, growth, and flowering prospects. This type of strain info really helps increase any grower’s chances of a well-deserved prime homegrown harvest!

6. More Isn’t Always Better

When it comes to weed seed genetics, more isn’t necessarily better. That means an online seed bank offering two hundred different strains is by no means ten times as good as a supplier listing twenty different cannabis strains to order. Strain strength, stability, taste and effects are the key criteria.

Compare it to restaurants. Even though a menu with over a hundred different dishes may be impressive to see, wouldn’t you prefer a chef with ten amazing recipes that are cooked to perfection, because the whole kitchen crew knows exactly how to prepare them just right?

7. Stay True To Your Own Taste

As a final tip, always remember to stay true to your own personal taste as you order cannabis seeds. If you like a strong haze high that hits you right in the head, pick seeds to match. If you’re looking for a bodybuzz that focuses on your body, you should have plenty of options, too.

Perhaps you’re looking for seeds that help you keep stress, pain, or bleak moods under control? Pay attention to those strain descriptions to find out about specific medicinal qualities. When it comes to that, high CBD strains can be worth a try as well.

Obviously though, your personal preference in ordering cannabis seeds is a matter of taste first and foremost. Why not go for a nice refreshing fruity flavour, for instance? Or how about treating yourself by ordering cannabis seeds with a touch of chocolate in their bouquet? Diesel fumes, earthy tones, and even cheesy aromas are out there too. Take a few moments to think about what you like best: it will make ordering cannabis seeds a true matter of your own good taste!

Ordering Cannabis Seeds: Find That Perfect Match

As you can see, even after you find the finest quality seeds, all growers should pick the strain that is the best match for their personal taste! We all have our preferences for specific highs; and fortunately, cannabis plants offer ample variation to meet any individual need. From a medicinal point of view, you have plenty of options to choose from. For recreational consumers, the range of options is even more extensive, from happy effect strains to relaxing genetics, and from an uplifting buzz to creative highs.

With these tips handy, even rookie growers can succeed at ordering the best cannabis seeds online. Well alright, here’s one more tip to see you off: your most convenient next step is to simply click the button below – success guaranteed!

Straight To The Best Seeds!

As soon as you’re done ordering cannabis seeds, you’re all set to kick off that grow. Amsterdam genetics will ship your seeds on the day you order if you place it before midday Amsterdam time. Before you know it, you’ll be germinating your own cannabis seeds to get cracking. That means you’re all set to rifle through our blogs and gather the Grow Know-How you’ll need to put those premium seeds to use!

Plant Breeding 2: DNA & Evolution

In the second part of our blog series on plant breeding, we zoom in on DNA, the genetic code contained in every cell of all living plants. DNA is the key that unlocks all plant traits. Whenever breeders aim to develop better, stronger plants, they select the best DNA for crossbreeding, creating a new generation that carries the desirable traits this DNA represents.

Plant Breeding And DNA

Plant breeding is a respectable profession carried out by specialists, but its basic principles are fairly easy to understand. Plant breeding revolves around the selection of specific traits. These traits are genetic traits they are encoded in the DNA stored in every cell of each living plant.

In essence, DNA is a biochemical code: a kind of recipe used by cells to produce certain proteins. These proteins allow the organism (i.e., the plant) to grow, to change colour or shape, to protect itself from disease, or to produce more fruits and flowers. The essence of plant breeding, therefore, is selecting the DNA of an outstanding plant, and then reproducing it to ensure that both the DNA and the outstanding traits it represents return in the next generation of plants.

cannabis breeding dna — The structure of DNA.

DNA, or desoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule of an exceptional length. You can find DNA in the nucleus of every cell of all plant and animal species. Basically, DNA molecules are like cookbooks containing thousands of recipes, each written using four ‘letters’: A, T, C, and G. Of course, these are not actual letters, but four different chemical structures called nucleotides. These four nucleotides are adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G).

A DNA molecule looks like a twin spiral, also know as a double helix. You will recognise the shape of DNA in the Amsterdam Genetics logo, blended with the triple crosses of the Amsterdam city emblem. That makes perfect sense, because we have grown famous by the cannabis seeds we have developed. That development is all about decades of careful plant breeding using the finest DNA in existence.

The Evolution Of DNA

DNA molecules are found in the core of the cells of every plant. There other forms of DNA that reside in less central parts of plant cells, too, such as mitochondrial DNA and certain particles in the cell’s plasma. We will not go into these types of DNA here, however, since that would needlessly complicate matters.

Most of the time, the long-winded, outstretched molecules of DNA’s double helix structure reside in the cell’s nucleus in a compact, rolled-up form. We call this contracted, robust form of DNA molecules ‘chromosomes’. The only moment when these chromosomes ‘stretch out’ into the winding strings of DNA is during cell division, which science usually refers to as mitosis.

dna plant breeding — The plant, its cells, the nucleus containing chromosomes, and the DNA in the plant’s genes.

After chromosomes unfold into double DNA helices, their code of ATCG molecules can be copied. This simple fact is key to understanding the secret of the evolution of all life on earth. During mitosis, cells are able to replicate and split into two new cells, each carrying inside the exact DNA of the original cell. To do so, the cell unwinds its DNA string, after which the entire molecule splits open like a microscopic zipper.

These two halves expose their parts of the genetic ATCG code to a ‘copier molecule’ called messenger RNA, which is similar in structure to DNA. Each A locks onto a T, while every C connects with a G, and vice versa. This results in two identical copies of what used to be one double helix; each with the exact identical DNA cookbook full of recipes on board. That means both new cells will display the same traits displayed by the original cell. This process is known as heredity. It is the basis of modern genetics, a sub-discipline of biology that constitutes the scientific foundation of plant breeding.

Heredity

Heredity is a continuous process seen in all living organisms. It is how plants and animals replace old, dead cells by new copies. It is also how your cannabis plant (or your cactus or cat) grows: by turning one cell into two new cells the organism increases in size, from the very first cells originating from conception down to the gigantic clumps of cells that make up a giant sequoia tree or blue whale.

Cell division heredity also explain why you resemble your parents, and why people who live in the same part of the world for a long time are more like each other. Moreover, it account for the principles that underpin plant breeding, and therefore also why you get to order cannabis seeds that grow into the carefully bred strains you like to grow.

Reproduction And Copying DNA

Alright. So now we know that every cell of a plant contains the same DNA; and that these DNA cookbooks can copy themselves to create new cells. You may wonder at this point how this mechanism is so essential to plant breeding.

Well, in fact, there is one crucial aspect that we have not mentioned so far. In addition to the mitosis process described above, there is another type of cell division called meiosis. In the case of mitosis, the DNA contained in the chromosomes splits in half, too, but after that, the process changes. The cells divides itself into two reproductive cells, each carrying only half of the original double helix DNA in its nucleus.

These ‘half DNA cells’ are capable of merging with the reproductive cells of other plants. In the case of cannabis plants, male pollen cells can merge with reproductive cells found in the flowers of female plants. This happens during pollination: something that growers usually try to prevent at all costs, while breeders actively promote it as an essential step in creating new crossbreeds!

cell division evolution weed — A DNA molecule splits into two strands of genetic code.

When two different reproductive cells merge together, something extraordinary happens. A new cell is formed, containing a spontaneous combination of bits of DNA from both the mother and father plants. This is a bit like throwing lots and lots of dice: the number of possible outcomes is astronomical because there are so many different genes available to form new combinations.

These new DNA combinations determine the genetic content of the seeds formed by pollinated mother plants (and which growers usually don’t want to find in their harvest). Once mitosis is complete, the parent plants have successfully managed to reproduce.

This new and wholly unique DNA code forms the basis for a new individual: the seed representing the next generation as the ‘baby’ or offspring of its parent plants. If that seed manages to germinate and grow up to become a new plant, it will display traits inherited from both parents. It has no choice in the matter; after all, every single cell of this new organism contains the same mix of genetic recipes provided by the mother and father plants. The predictability of this outcome is what breeders use to their advantage in plant breeding.

How Breeders Guide Plant Evolution

After this in-depth explanation of how DNA, cell division, and heredity work, we finally arrive in the domain of actual plant breeding. The following applies equally to breeding tomato plants, apple trees, or cannabis. Breeders of all plant species use the same insights into genetics to guide the evolution of the apple, tomato, or cannabis varieties they work with.

Out in the wild, among landrace populations, evolution is powered by reproduction and spontaneous DNA mutations (due to random changes or copying errors). Sometimes, recipes from the genetic cookbook are copied with a few mistakes. Most of the time, these copying errors change nothing: these mutations happen all the time in all organisms, consisting of billions of cells that keep on dividing. With so much copying going on, mistakes are bound to happen. In most of these cases, the error has no effect: nothing changes for the cell or the organism.

However, on very rare occasions, these copying errors do produce new DNA combinations that do change the cell. Usually, such mutated cells need to replicate many times over before they can have an effect on the organism (the plant) as a whole. Such effects generally tend to have negative consequences, such as disease, flawed metabolism, or structural problems like misshapen leaves.

dna apples — Different DNA combinations are the key to new variants of apples, tomatoes, and cannabis…

Genius Genetics: Spontaneous Mutation

In certain exceptional cases, however, these spontaneous mutations happen to be improvements –random strokes of genetic genius. This occurs when the new trait offers the individual some kind of advantage over the ‘normal’ specimens of its generation. Suppose your cannabis seeds contains some spontaneously mutated DNA, turning it into a plant that is twice as resistant to bud rot as all other plants of that strain. There is a real chance that your plant and its buds will survive the mould infection, while the ‘normal’ plants don’t produce any useful harvest at all. The question is: would you throw this one plant away because apparently, it contains mutated DNA?

No, of course you wouldn’t. This is in fact the exact same decision that plant breeders try to make. Whenever the notice an exceptionally beautiful, large, strong, or tasty (i.e., ‘good’) specimen, they select that plant for crossbreeding into a new generation of plants that inherit the spontaneous mutation. This is how plant breeding can create new strains, such as the one with better resistance against bud rot in the example above.

Cannabis DNA And Plant Breeding

The evolution of every landrace of all plant species, and indeed, of all natural life, is based on these spontaneous mutations. Every new generation produces some mutants that differ from the normal specimens. Most of the time, they go unnoticed; other mutants are weaker, and some even die because of their mutations. Sometimes, though, these random mutations offer distinct advantages that improve a specimen’s chances of survival and reproduction compared to other individuals.

This usually occurs when the evolutionary pressure or selection pressure in the environment shifts, for instance when climate conditions change, or when a new predator or disease enters the scene. Suddenly, the existing genetics are no longer ideal; and so the mutants get their chance to shine. This is the famous (and often misunderstood) principle of ‘survival of the fittest’: the individuals that are best suited to deal with the new circumstances have the best chances to survive and reproduce, thus passing on their DNA to the next generation.

When this happens, the chances of seeing the advantageous mutation return in more specimens of the next generation increases. If the new situation persists, this ‘mutant offspring’ then has better chances of spreading their DNA to the next generation in turn, and so on. This is how new traits spread across populations.

This is how Charles Darwin’s important principle of natural selection works: the environment randomly ‘selects’ which specimens are best suited to survive. The fittest individuals tend to survive and pass on their DNA to following generations.

Natural Selection, Or Breeder’s Direction?

Now, don’t make the mistake of thinking that there is some kind of ‘plan’ behind this mighty evolutionary mechanism. And don’t think that ‘fitness’ is anything like what you do at the gym. Whoever is fittest, and therefore has better chances of survival, is determined in retrospect by the brute force to which they are exposed by the environment. There is no-one who ‘decided’ that cows with horns have better chances of survival than cows without. These horns are simply the outcome of a long sequence of random mutations, each of which happened to extend some minor advantage over the all other cows.

Ultimately, evolutionary pressure In the environment determines whether mutations ‘work’ or not, and whether they will return in future generations.

Beyond that, the randomness and whimsical spontaneity of natural selection is, unscientifically stated, quite a messy affair without any ‘intentional’ purpose to guide it. Sexual reproduction is very much like rolling the dice and hoping for the best.

This messy process does come with a number of advantages, though – otherwise, evolution probably wouldn’t have been the success story it appears to be. It leads to ever-greater diversity within species, as well as giving rise to new species with their own strong traits to help them survive in their specific habitats. Whenever new diseases come into play, there is a pretty good chance that some individuals happen to be resilient due to some random mutation that seemed useless up to that point.

dna cannabis — Our strains contain the most wonderful ancient genetics…

Plant Breeding And DNA: The Risks

On the other hand, a lack of diversity can prove disastrous for any species. If you take plant breeding too far, the consequences can be dire indeed. This has been proven time and again in the history of breeding. The danger comes from crating monocultures: species consisting of only near-identical specimens with the same DNA.

If such monocultures encounter new diseases and pests, climate change, or other evolutionary pressures, they run a real risk of total extinction. That means no more new generations, and the end of its carefully bred genetic line. If that happens to your favourite haze strain, you’re out of luck. If it affects major food crops, as is currently happening with bananas for instance, it can lead to famine and widespread human misery.

This is the main reason for the expeditions of so-called strain hunters: they search for the original resilience of landraces to try and avert disasters like these. These adventurers are as likely to be hunting for ancient potato variants as for original cannabis strains.

Although breeders are a plant-loving lot, they tend to be less fond of evolution’s capricious nature, for understandable reasons. Firstly, evolution is a sluggish process: it took billions of years for the first living cells to evolve into worthwhile haze strains or successful growers, after all.

In a more concrete sense, growers can’t afford to wait millions of years until random mutations produce the specific new trait they are after. That is why breeders exchange the robustness of natural selection for the technical efficiency of goal-directed plant breeding.

Plant Breeding & Amsterdam Genetics DNA

This explains why breeders prefer to help evolution along; and this is the process we call plant breeding. Centuries of breeding experience have taught farmers and breeders much: we have been watching our crops reproduce long before we even knew that cells, DNA, and evolution existed. That is how we invented clever techniques to progressively develop the best traits of our most important plant species.

dna amsterdam genetics — Quality is in our genes…

This also explains how we get to relish the taste of those gorgeously plump, sweet, and juicy red tomatoes with every evening meal. Moreover, after dinner, we get to enjoy the finest, strongest, tastiest cannabis strains that mankind managed to create. And best of all, you can find the finest examples of these carefully bred genetics in our online store: Amsterdam Genetics is at the apex of a long chain spanning millennia of evolution and professional cannabis breeding!

Order Our Finest DNA Here

Each of our strains is the result of careful crossbreeding between historically successful strains, derived from ancient landraces through years of well-considered selection.. This, then, is cannabis plant breeding in a nutshell.

If you want to find out how you can direct this process of crossbreeding and selection for yourself, be sure to continue reading the next parts in our plant breeding blog series!

Cannabis Seeds Or Cuttings?

Anyone intending to grow cannabis has to decide whether to start with seeds or cuttings. Since both will develop into full-grown plants, you may wonder which is the best choice. Cannabis seeds can be stored for a long time, they’re strong, and they come in a wealth of strains to choose from. Cuttings, on the other hand, have a head start in the early growth stages, but they are more fragile than seeds. So which are best, cannabis seeds or cuttings? Read this blog to make a well-founded decision!

Cannabis Seeds Or Cuttings: The Differences

If you plan to grow weed, you will have to decide between working with either cannabis seeds or cuttings. Both will grow to become full-sized, mature plants with buds to harvest. They do, however, present two quite different ways to start your grow.

Cannabis seeds are the natural means by which pollinated female plants secure the species’ continued existence. Seeds contain the genetic information of both the male and female parent plant. If you plant a seed, it will germinate and eventually grow into a unique mature specimen.

That marks an important difference between cannabis seeds and cuttings. Cuttings are obtained by carefully removing a branch from the original plant. If you stick this cutting into the soil, it will develop roots and grow into a fully functional plant. Such cuttings, however, are genetically identical to the plant from which they were cut, so in fact, they are clones.

What’s The Smart Move: Order Seeds Or Cuttings?

As you can see, cuttings and seeds provide growers with two option for starting their grow. So which is the smart choice, then, to order seeds or cutting? The big advantage of using cuttings is starting out with a plant that has already developed into a semi-mature specimen. That means they are a few steps ahead of seeds, which gives them a bit of a head start. However, there are a few considerable downsides to working with cuttings that you should know about before you begin.

First off, cuttings are harder to come by, and you generally have fewer strains to choose from compared to ordering seeds. Moreover, cuttings are often weaker than plants grown from seed. Shipping them safely is trickier too, plus you run a serious risk of inviting disease and other problems into your grow room along with any cuttings you receive.

Perhaps most importantly, though, seeds represent the natural start of a cannabis plant’s life cycle. Every single cannabis seed is a tiny miracle of nature, containing all that is needed to grow into a strong, nature plant full of flower buds loaded with THC, terpenes, and other natural compounds that growers love. This dedicated blog will teach you all there is to know about the world of wonder hidden inside cannabis seeds.

Using cannabis seeds too start your grow, by contrast, comes with a number of distinct advantages that cuttings will not grant. Below, we list the most important benefits of growing cannabis seeds.

Cannabis Seeds Or Cuttings? The Main Benefits

1 Seeds are cheaper

It never hurts to make a few smart savings on your grow budget. That makes the fact that seeds are cheaper than cuttings a nice benefit to begin with. The difference in price is explained in part by the fact that in many countries, cannabis seeds are legal while cuttings are not. From a purely economic point of view, that makes seeds the better choice.

2 Better chance of strong, healthy plants

Plants grown from cuttings will not develop their own taproot. Since the plant started out as a branch cut from a full-grown plant, it will only form lateral roots after you plant it in the soil.

This is a very real difference compared to plants grown from seed. As soon as seeds germinate, the first radicle that emerges grows straight down into the soil to form the taproot, firmly anchoring the plant into the ground. This makes cannabis plants grown from seed stronger than cuttings.

3 Plenty Of Choice

A quick glance at the seeds in our online store will show you that you are spoiled for choice using seed for grows. This is a major factor when deciding whether to use seeds or cuttings. Starting out with a cutting seriously limits your options. Generally speaking, vendors only sell their most popular strains as cuttings.

If you choose to work with seeds, you can choose between all the celebrity strains as well as the more specialist types, including specific scents, high CBD percentages, or particular effects. Examples include strains that can offer relief from pain, fatigue, or depression, as well as uplifting strains or genetics to spark creativity. Fans of a physical bodybuzz or a high that focuses on the brain will also enjoy the additional options that seeds provide.

4 A Pesticide-Free Start

One of the main disadvantages of cuttings is their tendency to introduce pathogens and parasites to your grow environment. You run quite serious risks of contracting bacteria and viruses that can ruin your cutting as well as any other plants you may have. Treating young cuttings with pesticides is recommended: not your ideal starting point, to be sure.

If you prefer healthy and environmentally friendly growing methods instead, working with cannabis seeds is the better choice. It reduces your chance of contracting bugs and disease as well as facilitating organic grow efforts.

5 Only Female Plants

So is choosing between seeds or cuttings a difficult decision? Well, to be fair, it really isn’t, especially since you no longer need to select female seeds to grow. Years ago, before the arrival of feminized seeds, cuttings had the advantage of being all-female, guaranteed. Today, however, just about any seeds you can order are feminized, guaranteeing over 98% female specimens for any feminized seeds you purchase.

6 Legal Issues

Legal issues are yet another good reason to prefer seeds over cuttings. Purchasing seeds is legal in many countries, in contrast to buying cuttings. If you get stopped with a few seeds in your pocket, there is nothing to worry about. However, if you carry around a batch of cuttings, that’s an altogether different story. That makes choosing between cannabis seeds or cuttings more than a matter of quality: it’s a major legal decision, too…

7 Glorious Genetics

The best thing about growing cannabis from seed is the chance of growing a unique plant full of wonderful traits. Every single plant you grow from seed has its own unique genetics. This adds to the variety, resulting in plants with striking and wonderful properties that give you much more than you hoped for. If that happens, you are of course entirely free to take your own cuttings from that seed-grown plant and propagate the unique genetics you have produced.

And if you prefer using regular, non-feminized seeds instead of feminized ones, you can start your own breeding experiments at home. Crossbreed different plants and strains to produce your own unique seeds and grow singular new varieties at minimum cost. And if that sounds a bit far-flung for you, there’s years and years of professional breeder experience to rely on, culminating in the most wonderful genetics any grower could ask for.

Premium Cannabis Seeds Or Cuttings With Risks

As you can see, growing weed from cannabis seeds is the best way to get premium buds. They give you the best chance of raising robust, healthy plants while offering great choice of strains to work with, and they add sustainability benefits to your grow practices.

If you’re still fretting over whether to choose cannabis seeds or cuttings, consider the advantage of a seed’s shelf life compare to a cloned cutting. If you don’t have the space or time to plant all your seeds at once, you can store them for years if you keep them in a dark, dry, and cool place. If you’ve bought a cutting, your only option is to get it into the ground right away, or risk watching it wither and die in a matter of days or even hours.

And obviously, this is before we consider the ease and convenience of ordering our cannabis seeds online and just waiting for the postman to deliver them at your doorstep. If you had any lingering doubts as to whether growing with seeds or cutting is the better choice, allow us to make things easy for you!

If you’ve made your decision and plan to start growing cannabis, we trust you can make the smart choice between seeds and cuttings. Be sure to check our extensive collection of seeds. You’ll find the finest feminized strains, special CBD genetics, and fast, easy autoflower seeds. We have strains to match any taste and preference, from choco to fruity and from hazy sativas to the most gorgeous indica and kush cannabis seeds.

Pick The Best Seeds

If you look at our premium genetics, or better yet, grow some at home, you’ll experience for yourself that choosing between cannabis seeds or cuttings is in fact very easy. So, are you starting to wonder what you can do to make the seeds of your choice grow even bigger and better? Read up on our expanding series of Grow Blogs to rake in premium harvests with casual ease!

Cannabis Seeds: What Growers Should Know

Cannabis seeds are tiny miracles of nature. As a grower, you may be more interested in the plants that emerge from your seeds; but if you stop and think about it, it is pretty useful to know just what a cannabis seed is and how to treat it. That is why this blog shows you just what sort of first-class material you get when you order our premium marijuana seeds.

What Are Cannabis Seeds, Anyway?

The moment you get your Amsterdam Genetics cannabis seeds delivered to your doorstep, you’re literally holding the foundation of growing cannabis in your hands. After all, there can be no growth or flowering without seeds – and therefore, no flower buds to harvest and enjoy.

But what exactly is a cannabis seed? Don’t be alarmed, but you are actually holding a baby here: a tiny, living creature carrying inside all it needs to grow into a strong mature cannabis plant, with roots, branches, leaves, and of course, those big bulging flower buds full of the trichomes we’re after!

best cannabis seeds — …And you’ll find those genes in our premium cannabis seeds!

We can almost hear you think: “Living creatures? No way! They look dead to me; and besides, they won’t do anything until I germinate them by adding water?” Well, it’s a perfectly understandable mistake, but you’re wrong. Cannabis seeds are far from dead: they’re just in a dormant state, waiting for the perfect moment to start growing.

In fact, a seed is a complete plant embryo, just like a foetus growing in a mammal’s womb or a chick in its egg waiting to hatch. Cannabis seeds are key to the reproduction and survival of marijuana strains, carrying the DNA of its parent plants and all the biological structures needed to give the ‘kid plant’ a good start in life as soon as you decide to grow it.

The dormant state of cannabis seeds is similar to hibernation in animals. All the biochemical processes are either paused or slowed down to near-standstill. This allows a seed to survive for a very long time before starting to grow. This is super convenient for growers, allowing them to order the strains they love and store them for future use – they can stay viable for years if you treat them right.

Basically, as long as you keep them dry, cool, and safely stowed away, they will wait patiently until you are ready for germination. We’ll get to that point later, though; for now, we’ll explain just where all those cannabis seeds come from in the first place.

Where Do Cannabis Seeds Come From?

Marijuana seeds are produced by female cannabis plants. They have special reproductive organs for doing so, which most growers will recognise as the tiny ‘hairs’ called pistils that indicate whether buds are ready to harvest yet. In fact, however, these hairs are intended to collect the pollen spread by male plants, which they distribute by air as soon as they start flowering themselves.

After pollination, female flowers start to produce seeds containing the combined DNA of both the mother and father plants. Out in the wild, that’s just marvellous, because this is how new generations secure the survival of the species: parent plants will die after flowering since cannabis is an annual plant.

Growers, by contrast, usually want anything but seeds in their flower buds, because they will reduce the amount of cannabinoids (CBD, THC, and many others) and tasty terpenes produced. The prefect harvest consists of ‘sinsemilla’ weed, which is Spanish for ‘without seeds’.

White Choco cannabis seeds — Our legendary White Choco seeds are bursting with prime genetics…

Contrary to growers, cannabis breeders are very much interested in the seeds cannabis plants produce. They use them for plant breeding programmes that allow seedbanks like Amsterdam Genetics to keep developing better, stronger, and tastier strains.

You could decide to try and create your own unique crossbreeds, but as our special breeding blog series explains, that’s a complicated affair taking quite a bit of patience and expertise. Fortunately, there’s no real need to do so: anyone can order top notch cannabis seeds from a catalogue like ours, containing the finest genetics for any taste and liking ready to order from the comfort of your home!

Cannabis Seeds Up Close: What’s Inside?

Once you start to zoom in on the anatomy of cannabis seeds, you’ll discover just what kind of natural biotechnology marvels they truly are. The cross-section included below shows the most important organs and components that make up these miniature baby plants.

The Shell And First Leaves

The exterior wall of a seed is called seed shell, or testa in Latin. Weed seeds have a hard testa casing to protect the insides from external influences. Out in the wild, this helps seeds reach good grow spots in safety (carried in the fur of passing animals, for instance, or in the droppings of deer nibbling on the buds). In less natural conditions, this helps seed suppliers ship their products by mail, while allowing growers to store them until the outdoor season starts, or until they’re ready for a new indoor run.

Hidden deep within the seed lies the germ, which is the actual embryo from which the plant will grow. In the case of cannabis seeds, the germ consists of a plume with a growth tip (apex) and a set of two cotyledon leaves. Upon germination, this [plume] starts to grow up towards the (day) light to become the stem of the plant.

The cotyledons are the first two leaves that emerge as soon as your seed becomes a seedling. These ‘baby levaes’ do not yet have the characteristic serrated shape of cannabis fan leaves. They serve as the plant’s first solar panels, meant specifically to catch the first light needed for the photosynthesis that will fuel further growth.

Roots And Nutrition

At the other end of a germinated cannabis seed, you will see the first tiny root emerge from the testa shell. This radicle will go on to become the taproot that anchors the plant in the soil. After some time, lateral roots form and expand sideways to form a comprehensive root system that supplies the plant with water and nutrients from the soil.

This is why like roots, germinating cannabis seeds need to be able to ‘breathe’. The soil has to be loose enough to allow sufficient uptake volumes, or the plant may suffocate (damp off) and even die.

The final crucial component of cannabis seeds is the so-called endosperm. This is a seed’s onboard food supply, required to make the first dash towards the light, after which the cotyledon leaves and roots take over and let the seedling fend for itself. The endosperm also explains why many seeds are edible: they contain lots of starch, and if you ever had sunflower seeds, you’ll know they can be tasty to boot.

How Cannabis Seeds Germinate

You can read all about the best way to germinate cannabis seeds in this dedicated germination blog. We will just explain what a seed needs to ‘pop’ here. First, it needs water to ‘wake up’ and end the dormant state. The other basic condition is temperature: all seeds require a specific temperature range to germinate, which is slightly above room temperature for cannabis seeds, conveniently.

Some growers use special heating mats underneath their germination platforms to help al seeds pop at the same time, but that just adds to efficiency rather than being necessary. Finally, some seeds require light to trigger the germination process, but most seeds, including cannabis seeds, pop in the dark instead. That makes perfect sense: after all, the soil in which they naturally germinate is pitch black, too.

If you order cannabis seeds online, these conditions are easy to mimic by placing them between two damp sheets of kitchen towel, covered by two plates to keep them dark, warm, and damp. But as we already mentioned, you’ll read all about successful germination in our dedicated blog, or on the leaflet you’ll receive with your Amsterdam Genetics seeds order.

Various Types Of Cannabis Seeds

The Amsterdam Genetics online store has cannabis seeds in a variety of strains and flavours in a comprehensive premium selection. Our collection can be divided into three types of different genetics, classified as Regular, Feminized, and Autoflower seeds.

A pack of Regular seeds contains roughly equal numbers of male and female seeds. That means you won’t know in advance which plants will be males or females. This can be a distinct advantage, for instance if you plan to breed your own strains using our genetics. Be careful not to pollinate females unintentionally, however, or they will produce their own seeds that will negatively affect the quality of your harvest.

Feminized cannabis seeds are bred specifically to grow into female plants in at least 98% of all cases. That makes them a smart and safe choice for most growers. You’ll still need to pay attention, though, as feminized seeds are still natural products, but you have a good chance of raising only females full of fat flower buds bristling with active compounds to harvest.

The third category covers our autoflower cannabis seeds. At Amsterdam genetics, all autoflowers are also feminized cannabis seeds, but they possess another trait that sets them apart from the rest.

In contrast to other strains, autoflowers determine their own best time to start flowering. This is highly useful, as you won’t need to stick to seasonal changes outdoors; and moreover, autoflowers tend to grow and flower faster than most non-autoflower strains. That means more harvests, even if you don’t have much room to grow.

Ordering And Growing The Perfect Cannabis Seeds

So there you have it: you now know what is hidden inside the magical natural miracles we call cannabis seeds. You have seen which types exist, and how you should treat them if you want to watch them grow into strong, healthy cannabis plants. That means you are now ready to start ordering your own! Our collection offers the finest strains to choose from, ranging from haze to kush and from indica to sativa dominant.

We have cannabis seeds in the most delicious flavours, carrying the scent of fruits and chocolate, cheese aromas, or even diesel fumes. You’ll also find high CBD seeds here, but most of our strains pack high levels of THC and fragrant terpenes to produce a high that matches your individual taste.

Pick The Perfect Seeds

If you feel you could use some help finding your perfect match in cannabis seeds, just check out this seed finder guide to help you along. And once you complete your order and you’re all set to start your grow, be sure to check out our extensive collection of Grow Blogs. They’re a great source of useful tips and easy techniques to make the most out of all the cannabis seed magic Amsterdam Genetics manages to squeeze inside!

Plant Breeding 1: The Basics

Every time a grower lets a cannabis seed germinate, they tap into a whole world of research and plant breeding expertise. Breeding cannabis strains has a long history behind it, stemming from ancient traditions of breeding other plants. This is fundamental knowledge for any grower, no matter whether you’re into tomato seeds or weed plants. That is why this blog series teaches you what plant breeding is, and how it impacts you as a grower and plant aficionado.

Plant Breeding: The Foundation Of All Modern Crops

Step inside a random supermarket or gardening centre, or shop for cannabis seeds at any online seeds bank, and you are bombarded with enough choice to make you dizzy. Tomatoes, cucumbers, geraniums, and cannabis strains: there’s so many different kinds that at times, it’s hard to see the forest for the plants.

So how is it that we have such dazzling options for choosing what’s for dinner, what to plant out in the garden, or which cannabis strain to enjoy? One way or another, it all comes down to plant breeding. By plant breeding we mean everything that growers, farmers, or breeders do to improve their crops, making them better suited for whatever purpose people want to use tomatoes, potted plants, or cannabis strains.

But what exactly constitutes an ‘improvement’? Trying to make a plant ‘better’ seems a rather subjective activity – it all depends on what you consider ‘good’ or ‘desirable’. To clarify the matter, and to understand what all those generations of growers and breeders have been up to, you will find a summary of the main goals of plant breeding below.

plant breeding grower — Plant breeding is the key to growing ever-better crops.

Why Use Plant Breeding?

Plant breeding always aims to improve certain crops, which in practice means making them more suitable for human use. Perhaps you sense the problem inherent in this aim, because after all, who decides what makes a ‘good’ crop?

We will turn to that question later; first, we will try to clarify why anyone would want to improve a tomato, a cucumber, or a cannabis plant in the first place.

In order to understand plant breeding, you need to know that most modern plants, vegetables, fruits, and cereals (and weed strains!) are nothing like their original ancestors: the so-called landraces. The tomatoes you find in your kitchen today are completely different from the tiny sour berries they once were. That difference is due to plant breeding.

For thousands of years, farmers and breeders have been selecting their crops for favourable traits, season upon season upon season. They then went on to crossbreed these chosen prime specimens with strong specimens of existing plants, to make sure these desirable properties would return in subsequent generations.

Within one or two generations, this kind of selection will usually not make much difference. However, if you continue to select the best specimens and keep on crossing them with what you already have, the differences between your selection and the original plants becomes ever clearer. Eventually, this produces the intended results of plant breeding: every next generation displays the breeder’s intended improvements more clearly than the ones before.

Plant Breeding: Selecting For Better Traits

Plant breeding is based on the same principles whether you are working with tomatoes or cannabis plants. In both cases, the breeder wishes to make certain traits return more prominently in the next generation. These desirable properties usually come down to the following:

Better yields;
Improved taste;
Better external appearance (colour, size, leaf shape, etc.);
Higher nutritional value (or stronger effects in case of cannabis);
Stronger plants with higher resilience against disease and weather influences.

As you can see, these plant breeding goals apply equally well to tomato plants as to cannabis strains. All growers want bigger harvests, better-tasting buds, beautiful purple flowers, healthy green leaves, more THC and terpenes for the ultimate high; and less risk of mould, disease, and pests.

When weed became increasingly popular over the second half of the twentieth century, enthusiasts all over the world started dabbling in cannabis plant breeding. Using the old strains and landraces they could get their hands on, they crossbred their classic cannabis varieties , until they finally developed the incredible range of strains we have available today.

To achieve that, they employed plant breeding techniques that had been perfected over centuries spent improving staple food crops such as wheat, vegetables, and fruits. The grower community, then, still owes a great deal to the efforts of breeders who were often forced to work behind the scenes.

Landraces And Ancient Genetics

Landraces are the original forms of crops improved through human cultivation. This means that alongside cannabis landraces, we also have tomato, banana, and potato landraces dating back millennia in some cases.

When it comes to old-school weed, professional ‘strain hunters’ actively venture into the wild to find such old landrace genetics. They do so in order to develop new strains that resemble their distant ancestors more closely than most contemporary strains. Such genetics ‘hunters’, or ‘archaeologists’ if you like, are also active in the search for primal potato or cereal varieties.

But why would anyone wish to use such old genetics rather than the present-day bred varieties we see in supermarkets and dispensaries? Surely, today’s weed, tomatoes, and potatoes are much better, stronger, and tastier than their predecessors used to be?

This is true in a sense; and yet, demand for landraces and their prehistoric genetics is on the rise. This is largely due to breeders’ unrelenting efforts to keep developing new varieties of potatoes and bananas – plant breeding, in other words.

The History Of Plant Breeding

Plant breeding is as old as mankind’s first attempts to grow their own food. Back when we were still hunter-gatherers, travelling the lands in search of our food, we did not have any kind of permanent residence. That meant we had to rely on what we managed to forage along the way for a stable food supply. All of that changed, however, the moment we started to build our first human settlements, which allowed us to live in one place for generations.

Our first ancestors with a fixed address soon discovered the advantages of being able to grow their own fruits, vegetables, and cereals in their newly-invented back yards. You could say that these very first farmers laid the foundation for our modern societies, with cities full of people who are entirely reliant on farmers living elsewhere for the food they need every day.

These present-day farmers in turn depend entirely on the crops improved by centuries of plant breeding, which enable reliable large-scale agricultural food cultivation. Today’s hypermodern Dutch agriculture with its incredible efficiency would not have been possible without the ages of plant breeding that preceded it. The same applies to our cannabis culture.

Greenhouse breeder cannabis weed — Without plant breeding, there would be no modern agriculture.

The First Grower

The very first farmers used the landraces they found in the forests and fields to grow on their plots of land. They soon discovered that some of these plants were somehow ‘better’ than the others. They produced bigger harvests, for instance; or grew taller and tasted better, or were more resilient to disease and bad weather.

At some point, there must have been one incredibly smart prehistoric farmer who figured: “Wait a minute… What if I only kept using these good plants and just got rid of all the others – would that leave me with only great specimens on my land next season?”

This single stroke of agricultural genius was all it took to give birth to the whole concept of plant breeding.

In a sense, all present-day cannabis growers owe their hobby to this First Grower Of All Times. Plant breeding turned out to be useful for more than just corn, carrots, and apple trees. Cannabis plants have proven well-suited to cultivation using plant breeding techniques, too.

Plant Breeding Techniques

As we have mentioned above, pant breeding developed into an entire branch of scientific endeavour, comprising various theories and a range of different techniques. At the heart of these techniques lies DNA, the biochemical code of genetics that contains all traits of any plant or animal species alive today.

You probably felt this one coming: as soon as we touch upon genetics, we have entered the domain of cannabis breeders and growers. We are called Amsterdam Genetics for a reason, after all: every single one of the premium cannabis seeds you can order here came about through clever use of plant breeding techniques.

Order Our Premium Bred Genetics Here

We would love to tell you more about the technical aspects of plant breeding, but that is the subject of the next episode in this blog series. If you want to learn how you can develop the world’s best new strains using the genetics found in cannabis seeds, continue reading our next blog on DNA and plant breeding now!

Choose The Best Cannabis Strains

Every person is unique, and the same applies to all marijuana strains in the world. We all have our individual preferences and favourites when it comes to cannabis seeds. Picking weed is a matter of taste, and we all know pot is a tasty subject. So how do you choose the best cannabis strains? This blog helps growers and connoisseurs decide.

How To Pick The Best Cannabis Strains?

There’s a perfect cannabis match waiting for everyone, no matter your taste or growing goals. So how do growers choose their best matching cannabis strains when ordering seeds the smart way? Someone looking for strong medicinal effects will pick different cannabis strains than growers aiming for relaxing, happy, or creative genetics. Beginners and experienced growers decide differently, too. Below, we’ve listed some grower types and added tips to help them pick the best cannabis strains to match their personal needs and preferences.

Best Cannabis Strains For Active People

To anyone who prefers an active lifestyle and days filled with busy schedules, we recommend our most uplifting genetics. Do you love to spend time exploring, hiking, or cycling outdoors, pounding away at the gym, visiting festivals, doing some home improvement, cleaning up, or any of a million other activities? If so, our more sativa-dominant strains are probably worth a try.

Our haze ganja seeds in particular pack an activating, uplifting headbuzz that stimulates the mind and keeps the feet moving. Our top favourites here are Super Silver Haze, a refreshing Amsterdam Evergreen with up to 25% THC; and Amazing Haze, with an enervating mental boost and the taste of sweet caramel.

Creative And Artistic Growers

There’s plenty of growers out there aiming to crank up their creative capacity with their chosen weed strains. Heavily sedative strains are not the best choice here, as these are prone to keep even the greatest creative geniuses glued to the couch. Luckily, our collection has plenty of cannabis seeds packed with all you need to feed the mind with new impulses, free associations, and original ideas.

We advise all artists, designers, writers and other makers, as well as any amateur creative growers, to choose a cannabis strain such as Chocolato. This tasty strain combines full mental creativity with a carefree and slightly floaty body sensation.

Plenty Of Strains To Choose For Medicinal Cannabis Growers

People have been growing cannabis for its medicinal applications for centuries. In fact, there are too many medical options to just link this grow goal to any single personality type. Luckily, we don’t need to, because we have more than enough blogs to help any grower pick matching cannabis strains for:

Chronic pain;
Stress;
Nausea;
Sleeplessness;
Depression;
And other physical and mental problems.

Check out our strain blogs to pick your best match in medicinal cannabis strains.

Socialites Choose Happy Cannabis Strains

For many people, cannabis is a social phenomenon, meant to enjoy in the company of friends. That is why growers often choose cannabis strains that can boost the mood and atmosphere by promoting good conversation and happy vibes. Well, it’s time to start smiling, as we have more than enough strains to pick if happiness is the prime concern!

Our Lemon Ice seeds are known to pack a cheerful, relaxed effect, due in part to the freshly sweet fruit flavour of aromatic pick-me-up limonene. Still, the considerable sativa content of this merry lady remains the chief happy trigger. The resulting high activates the mind and keeps people talking for hours, sharing the cheer out among the crowd.

Try our Candyfloss seeds to watch how one strains sweeps all negative vibes out the window in one fell swoop! This sugar-sweet sativa melts away stress and unease like snow in summer, swapping them for a clear and friendly high that is downright euphoric.

Strains To Choose For Stressed-Out Cannabis Growers

Stress doesn’t have to be a medical issue. In fact, plenty of people choose a cannabis strain to chase out a healthy dose of job stress after a hard day’s work and start afresh the next day. No matter what, cannabis growers looking to ditch some stress, lose a bit of tension, and relax to the max have enough strains to choose from in our catalogue.

Defusing physical body stress often works best if you pick cannabis strains like Blue Magic, a real beauty queen with a deeply relaxing bodybuzz inside. She works her way down to the deep muscle fibres, making her a great match for athletes – because you can bet your muscles get stressed out by a punishing gym workout!

Gourmet Picks

We know, we know: there’s no accounting for taste. And yet, anyone trying to pick cannabis seeds based on taste and scent preferences is bound to feel like a kid in a candy store checking out our strains. These selections are all about the terpenes a strain contains. These aromatic compounds add more to cannabis strains than flavour alone, though: people also choose them for the subtle effects they can add to a high.

Anyone with a sweet tooth hits the sweet spot with delights like Candyfloss or Fatkid’s Cake. You’ll taste fruit and citrus tones in strains like Strawberry Glue or Lemon Haze. Anyone with a linking for spicy hotness ought to explore our high-caryophyllene seeds, such as our AK-OG Kush, for instance.

Of course, you could also go next level as you choose a cannabis taste experience, because we have some strains with complex bouquets that even connoisseur will find memorable. Our Choco Cheesecake is a fine example, with diesel fumes meeting chocolate and even cheese aromas. How about a touch of pepper, some fuel, and bit of a sour pickle? We dare you to try and unravel the taste profile of our Spicebomb seeds!

For your convenience, we state the unique aromas you can expect in all our different strains, allowing you to pick your perfect cannabis match as a matter of taste.

The Best Cannabis Strains With Fruit Flavours

If you prefer to pick cannabis seeds based on flavour, you’ve come to the right place. We have a comprehensive selection of seeds representing the best cannabis strains with fruit flavours, for instance. These range from citrus scented genetics like Lemon Haze and Tangerine G13 to Banana Slush or Strawberry Glue, and exotic delights such as Pineapple Kush.

This fresh and fruity selection has something wonderful in store for everyone. Of course, you will taste, smell, and feel the force of their various terpene profiles, embodied in the best cannabis strains reflecting all the glory of the plant kingdom.

The Best Cannabis Strains With Chocolate Genetics

Let’s be honest: who doesn’t love a nice piece of chocolate every now and then? This universal love for cacao is mirrored by our world-famous choco strains, including White Choco, Chocolato, and Royal Choco.

The interplay of of trademark cannabis aromas and the scent and flavour of fresh cacao keeps bringing growers back to our expanding range of choco genetics. We have them in all shapes and sizes too, from haze to kush and even in the form of autflower cannabis seeds to make growing a piece of chocolate cake!

Our Top Autoflower Seeds

And speaking of pieces of cake, we suggest you take a quick look at our collection of high quality autoflowering strains too. Unparalleled ease of growing meets rock-solid genetics rank our autoflowers among the best cannabis strains out there, with ruderalis power to make any grower want to give them all a try!

Best Cannabis Strains For Beginners

We’ve made sure that growers with little or no experience can pick suitable cannabis strains in our online store, too. True rookies will find ultimate growing ease in our autoflower seeds collection. These cannabis strains were specifically designed to choose their own perfect time to flower, leaving the greenest of growers with a lot less to worry about.

Our seeds catalogue also states the level of growing difficulty for all seeds. That helps anyone pick the cannabis strains that match their level of experience and expertise. On top of that, we have our expanding collection of Grow Blogs full of advice, tricks, and tips for advanced and novice growers. We have something for all shapes and sizes, no matter what you love to grow.

The Best Cannabis Strains In Full Colour

Of course, you can also choose your favourite cannabis seeds based on the spectacular colours some strains display as they flower. Here too, Amsterdam Genetics offers plenty of choice: just check out our most stunning purple strains for instance, and enjoy plants that show their true colours long before harvest time arrives.

We have genetics leaning towards blue, buds that trun purple and even strains that touch on the pink end of the spectrum like our Candyfloss seeds. It just goes to show that any grower will find the best cannabis strains here – even if green is not your favourite colour!

The Best Cannabis Strains Amsterdam Genetics Has In Store

So now you’ve seen for yourself: no matter what your personality, taste, preference, and level of experience, you can always choose seeds that meet your needs in our online cannabis catalogue. Take your time to look around and read our blogs and strain info at your leisure. Once you’ve managed to choose your perfect cannabis strain, ordering online is your best guarantee to grow that green match made in heaven!

Check Out All Seeds

So did you find the best cannabis strains for your personal style and taste? Then let’s get that grow on by ordering them easily and safely online. If you place your order before 12pm CET, we’ll ship them out on the very same day, to match the finest service with the best cannabis strains for any grower and connoisseur out there!

5 Cannabis Grow Tent Benefits

It goes without saying that anyone growing cannabis seeds aims for maximum harvest results. If you’re growing cannabis indoors, a cannabis grow tent gives you optimal control over a broad range of grow factors. At first glance, using a grow tent may seem complicated. However, once you find the grow tent that suits your needs and situation and you set it up in your home, watering your plants is just about all you’ll need to do to ease your way towards a premium harvest. It really is that simple! To help you on your way, this blog sums up the five biggest advantages of using a cannabis grow tent.

Why Use A Cannabis Grow Tent?

A cannabis grow tent allows you to create the perfect environment for your precious plants. Grow tents let you use a small confined space for your plants to grow n. They feature reflective interior surfaces and premade entry points for ventilation and electricity.

Grow tents grant your plants a safe space with stable conditions. They are the perfect way to control the most important factors that determine the success of your grow, including airflow, temperature, humidity, and lighting. Cannabis grow tents are readily available to order online, coming in a range of sizes and their corresponding price categories. Cannabis grow tents are your ticket to establishing the perfect growing conditions:

Lighting efficiency: cannabis grow tents have reflective lining on the inside, which help the light reach all sides of your plats. The confined space and flexibility of grow tents makes this much easier to achieve than any regular grow room would.
Waterproof: Most tents come with waterproof floors that prevent spilling issues and allow for easy cleaning to boot.
Lightproof: Light cannot spill into or out of a cannabis grow tent. That’s a big advantage for your plants, since they require periods of complete darkness. In addition, you will appreciate the fact that tents keep the light emitted by your bright grow lamps inside as well.
Air humidity: small, confined spaces lie grow tents make it easier to maintain stable air humidity compared to larger grow rooms or indeed outdoor cannabis gardens.
Temperature: What applies to air humidity also goes for temperature. A cannabis grow tent gives you more options to control heat and cold. Temperatures outside your tent will still affect indoor conditions to some extent, however; factors contributing to cold or heat in the surrounding environment will still have to be taken into account.
Equipment: Grow tents facilitate easy installing of relevant equipment, such as fans and lighting arrays.
Ventilation: cannabis grow tents facilitate easy optimisation of airflow using fans. Fresh air can enter and exit unobstructed. This makes temperature control even easier.

Five Advantages Of A Cannabis Grow Tent

We help growers make a well-founded choice by summing up the five top advantages of a cannabis grow tent.

1: Control

Buying a cannabis grow tent is an easy way to improve your control over the factors listed above: Light, air humidity, temperature, and water. What’s more, grow tents don’t have to be that expensive either: anything between 100 and 200 euros will get you a long way to an average tent. Keep in mind that even if you don’t buy a cannabis grow tent, you’ll still need to purchase lights, fans, and other equipment f you plan to grow inside – and your energy expenses are bound to go up in a larger space as well.

2: Convenience

A cannabis grow tent is designed to make life easier for you. They are about easy to set up as a tent you would use on a camping trip. Moreover, they will fit in just about any room you have available, from the attic to the broom cupboard. These setups are usually much easier to achieve than converting an entire room for growing purposes, plus you can break camp in no-time whenever you’re not growing, or if you need to use the space for other purposes.

3: Phase Specific Growing

You can increase your advantages even further by using two grow tents simultaneously. This allows you to dedicate one tent to the vegetative stage and the other for the flowering stage. This facilitates year-round harvesting by managing two grows at the same time.

4: Hygiene

On top of the above, cannabis grow tents make for relatively hygienic growing environments. If your tent features mesh screens along the air inlets, you can keep unwanted insects out. Of course, mes will not stop bacteria, viruses, and fungi from entering, but tents drastically increase your chances of keeping your weed free from predators.

5: Discretion

Last but not least, there is a cannabis grow tent’s discreet character to consider. Don’t underestimate the benefit of having a confined, sealed-off environment for your plants to keep prying eyes and inquisitive family members (or pets!) from messing with your precious flora.

All things considered, a cannabis grow tent offers some great practical advantages to make the most out of your cannabis seeds at a fairly acceptable price. You won’t be the first cannabis home grower to wonder why they didn’t invest in a grow tent earlier!

lighting cannabis grow tent — Tents allow for easy adjustments to the lighting spectrum.

What Is The Best Cannabis Grow Tent Size?

Take a few minutes to check out some online shops selling cannabis grow tents, and you’ll notice that there are dozens of models and sizes to choose from. You run a serious chance of getting lost along the way towards your perfect tent. So which size best suits your needs? Below, you’ll find the most convenient dimensions for your average home grower.

Small Sizes

Any cannabis grow tent measuring between 60×60 and 80x80cm qualifies as a small size tent. These will be large enough to accommodate most regular grow lights. They’re well-suited for beginners since they offer enough room for a nice harvest while not requiring you to make complex decisions on how to use all the space offered by larger tents. They help keep your grows manageable. Small tents make it easy to reach all parts of your plants, and one or two grow lamps will suffice. LED or fluorescent lighting is usually best for these small cannabis grow tent sizes.

Average Sizes

If you’re aiming for more substantial harvests, 90 x 90 to 120 x 120cm tents are a good choice. A cannabis grow tent of these dimensions will accommodate the use of more grow lights. They also allow you to harvest about twice the quantity that would fit in small size tents, while still being compact enough for a set up that you can easily manage on your own.

Height Of A Cannabis Grow Tent

Of course, you’ll need some vertical space to grow cannabis plants, too. While 150cm will do for most smaller plants, you’ll find that 180cm heights leave you more room to work with. If you pick a lower tent ceiling, your plants are likely to hit the lights as they grow. That in turn is likely to cause heat stress; and at any rate, you don’t want your plants’ fragile growth tips and flower buds cramped up against the ceiling!

The kind of cannabis seeds you order can make a difference in terms of the required height of your prospective cannabis grow tent. Generally speaking, sativa strains and most haze seeds tend to grow taller than indica weed and kush varieties. If you have limited vertical space available, ordering cannabis seeds from the latter categories is usually your best choice. However, you could also try to apply specific grow techniques to contain the height of your plats. You can read more about these techniques in our selection of Grow Blogs.

Minimum heights upwards of 150cm allow for the use of 400 watt lighting. Tents with higher ceilings can handle just about any strain, no matter how tall they grow.

Germinating And Pregrowing Cannabis Seeds In Grow Tents

A cannabis grow tent can provide a great sheltered environment for germinating any cannabis seeds you order. Make sure you get your lighting right, though, because seedling can find it difficult to cope with the full blast of 400W grow lights, which can cause stretching that you will want to avoid.

For outdoor growers, the advantage of pregrowing in a cannabis grow tent before taking your young plants outside is giving your seeds a head start before exposing them to the elements. This helps you give your precious seedlings a safe and protected early childhood. Perhaps even more importantly, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to start your outdoor season early by allowing your cannabis seeds to ‘pop’ while outdoor conditions are a bit too chilly for a favourable grow environment.

Drying Buds In A Cannabis Grow Tent

In addition to the above, many growers use their tents to let their buds dry in a controlled environment after harvesting their flowers. If you keep a close eye on temperature and air humidity, a cannabis grow tent can set the perfect conditions for drying weed, providing everything you need for climate and odour control.

With a bit of creativity, you can secure a wire frame and turn your cannabis grow tent into a cannabis drying tent right after the harvest is in!

How To Pick A Cannabis Grow Tent?

If the tips and advantages described above have convinced you to order your own cannabis grow tent, we advise you to take the time to find the best tent for your personal situation. Picking a high-end, super advanced tent may seem tempting, since you’ll want to give your seeds the best grow environment they can get. However, buying a cheaper tent may work just as well, giving you everything you need to get that grow going. Especially if this is your first time working with a cannabis grow tent, going for more affordable options is usually the smart choice, allowing you to gain some experience before proceeding to spend a fortune on top shelf material.

A cannabis grow tent offers a safe environment for your plants, with the perfect conditions for prolific growth and prime harvests. Now that you know the main benefits of using one, you’re ready to start searching for the one that best fits your needs and situation. No matter what you decide, though, it all starts with ordering premium quality cannabis seeds – and you’ve come to the right place for that!

Pick The Best Seeds For Your Tent

Top 5 Chocolate Cannabis Strains

Cannabis comes in many shapes and sizes, and its spectrum of flavours and aromas is even more diverse than its appearance. This blog is a tribute to a line of strains that brought fame to Amsterdam Genetics: chocolate flavoured cannabis genetics! Love cannabis, adore chocolate? Well. sit back and feel your stomach growl as we present our Top 5 of Chocolate Cannabis Strains….

A Natural Taste For Chocolate Cannabis

Everybody loves chocolate – that’s a well-established fact, and if you don’t believe us, just ask your mom or boy- or girlfriend. Chocolate is one of the world’s most popular natural products, and it can affect your mood in positive ways. That makes it a great match for cannabis, a direct natural competitor both in terms of popularity and psychoactive potential. Little wonder then, that our expert geneticists have earned international fame by crossbreeding exquisite cannabis strains with chocolate flavour.

These chocolate cannabis seeds and the delicious genetics they contain have in fact become so popular that we can’t stop inventing new choco-inspired strains. That’s why it’s well past time we took you on a tour of our top 5 best chocolate cannabis strains. No matter whether you’re into sativa or indica, fast-paced autoflowers or hefty haze highs – Amsterdam Genetics has all your favourites coated in first-class cacao for a taste sensation and dazzling effects that will keep you coming back for more.

So without further ado, here’s out Top 5 Chocolate Cannabis Strains – enjoy!

Nr 1 Chocolate Cannabis Strain: White Choco

White Choco can rightly be called our primordial chocolate cannabis strain that started it all. This legendary 50/50 sativa-indica hybrid is still the pinnacle of balance, both in terms of refined flavour and nuanced high.

Tasting of sweet chocolate with a tantalizing spicy finish, this true Amsterdam classic takes cannabis crossbreeds to a whole new level. Spreading her chocolate delights equally across mind and body, she just melts out of her wrapping and on into your senses, carrying mild euphoric joys and creative impulses while soothing the limbs.

Chocolate has a reputation of being a natural mood lifter – well, White Choco proves the point beyond reasonable doubt, as her scent alone is enough to paint smiles on the faces of Amsterdam connoisseurs and international grow buffs alike!

If you haven’t grown a batch of original White Choco flowers yourself, you now have no excuse left. Order these legendary chocolate figurehead cannabis seeds straight away and try to keep from drooling as you anticipate that fat harvest of compact, dark green buds coated in gleaming trichomes that shine brighter than the original white chocolate to which they owe their name!

White Choco Autoflower

To satisfy any grower’s chocolate cravings, our breeders soon came up with a White Choco Autoflower variant. Merging White Choco genetics with a dash of ruderalis hardiness made for a fast-paced, hard-hitting, slightly more indica-oriented version of our celebrated chocolate cannabis champion.

This is a real treat for growers with more taste than experience under their belt. Autoflower properties make growing this user-friendly White Choco cousin a breeze, while still retaining that classic look, scent, and effect of the original strain that still lies at its heart. If you are looking for a genuine chocolate cannabis experience with minimal hassle, or you just want to squeeze in some extra chunks of choco awesomeness at the end of the outdoor season, here’s your girl.

Nr 2 Chocolate Cannabis Strain: Choco Cheesecake

Choco Cheesecake is every bit as delicious as her name suggests. Our breeders managed to cross our number one chocolate cannabis strain White Choco with the unique cheese and diesel perfumes of Cheetos genetics. The result is a genuine cluster bomb of flavour: pungent, sweet, and almost dizzying in its aromatic depth.

Choco Cheesecake is slightly indica-dominant at 60%, but her effects are still nuanced like those of her White Choco parent strain. Some stress-prone people indulge in binging out on boxes of chocolates; well, with Choco Cheesecake you can easily burn the same amount of chocolate comfort without having to burn the calories.

She makes stress and tension melt like a chocolate bar left out in the sun. At the same time, 40% sativa genetics, 20% THC and a tasty interplay of terpenes lift the mood and ease physical pain – try getting that from your local chocolatier; they’ll probably think you’re high…

Nr 3 Chocolate Cannabis Strain: Chocolato

Chocolato is what happens when great taste meets great taste and they decide to have kids together. As if White Choco weren’t enough of a culinary delight already, we paired this flagship strain with Gelato, a wildly popular Cali delicacy with its own fine reputation for incredible flavour.

What came out of this tasteful encounter is far too complex to describe in words, but if we had to try, we would end up with an overpowering sweetness laced with deep tones of dark cacao and touches of succulent summer fruit.

In terms of taste, chocolate cannabis strains don’t get much better than this. Don’t overlook the intense high produced by freshly harvested Chocolato buds, however. This is a 24% THC indica-leaning hybrid that hits hard and fast. Uplifting energizing creative vibes go hand in hand with stress-busting, happy mental states compounded by a scent and flavour that seem to keep changing as the buzz continues to unfold.

From a grower’s perspective, Chocolato is the perfect strain to manage hard-to-manage Gelato genetics in a friendly, fast-flowering, chocolate-coated variant that will leave you yearning for more even before the harvest is in…

Nr 4 Chocolate Cannabis Strain: AK Choco Kush

Yes indeed, celebrities love chocolate too – and that’s doubly true for cannabis celebs! Again, this is an intricate crossbreeding project based on our Nr 1 White Choco genetics paired with epic AK OG Kush goodness. We then went on to add the AK-47 strain for a bit of extra AK firepower and boom: out came AK Choco Kush, an 80% indica cannabis chocolate adventure with a body buzz as beautiful as the flowers that provide it!

Chocolate is still the leading aroma in the complex bouquet of this Hindu Kush-rooted cannabis strain. There’s some sweet and spicy nuances to her impression on the palate, though, making AK Choco Kush that much more intriguing for any experimentally-minded grower and connoisseur.

If you want to find out just how far a chill, mellow, relaxed mood can go, then this chocolate laced cannabis beauty is a fine way to raise the bar. While the stress dissipates, you may notice how this flower reaches beyond the nerves and muscles, caressing the brain with delicate mood-lifting qualities.

AK Choco Kush has plenty of growth potential too. After a stormy vegetative phase, she cranks out compact flowers so full of trichomes that you may want to wear sunglasses to determine when to harvest this chocolate cannabis beauty queen.

Nr 5 Chocolate Cannabis Strain: White Choco Haze

We close off this top 5 of chocolate cannabis greatness by returning to the strain that started it all. In hindsight, it was only a matter of time before the legion of White Choco fans demanded a more hazy version of this mouth-watering marijuana monolith.

Our eye fell on Mexican Haze as a prospective bride. This addition proved a stroke of true genius, both for her eye-watering flavour boost and her capacity to turn White Choco into a 80% sativa high roller. If you have a preference for clear, uplifting headbuzz highs, this is your ticket.

When it comes to flavour, White Choco Haze manages to mix chocolate tones and the sweet taste of melon into a single smashing cannabis strain. Far-fetched? Perhaps. Haute cuisine? Quite possibly so. No matter how you look at it, though, White Choco Haze unites the best of two worlds into a high-yield, creativity boosting, undeniably potent sativa chocolate sensation you’ll just have to try before you can grasp its true contribution to the cannabis universe!

Chocolate Cannabis Galore At Amsterdam Genetics

So, did our Top 5 chocolate cannabis strains get your blood pumping and your taste buds tingling yet? If so, we suggest you hop over to our online store and select your own champion choco strain to give her a spin. Before you know it, you’ll be licking your fingers as you rake in that chocolate-covered flower harvest coated in a frosty layer of delicious dripping resin!

Bon appétit, fellow cannabis chocolatiers!

The Best Cannabis Grow Lights

Cannabis needs light, just like all other plants do. If you’re an outdoor grower, you have ample sunlight to cover that need. Indoors, however, you will need to provide your plants with sufficient lighting to foster strong growth and bountiful harvests. But how do you pick the best cannabis grow lights and what do you need to know to find them? This blog sheds light on these crucial matters, so read on and get enlightened.

How Do You Pick The Best Cannabis Grow Lights?

No matter whether you’re an absolute beginner or a seasoned grower, using the right kind of lighting is absolutely vital for your grow results. Lighting quality is a substantial factor determining successful development and yields of your plants. If you’re looking to buy cannabis grow lights, however, you’ll soon find out that there are lots of options to consider, with heaps of technical info to take in.

So how do you find your way in the confusing world of cannabis grow lights? Allow us to help you on your way with some useful grower tips.

First off, you’ll need to consider the various factors that influence your choice of the best cannabis grow lights. These include the costs of purchasing and using lamps, the surface of the room where you intend to grow, ventilation, and the various stages in the life cycle of your plants.

Costs Of Grow Lights

When you set out to find the perfect cannabis grow lights, you’ll soon notice how easy it is to spend a fortune on your equipment. It may be a good idea to determine your budget before you begin, so you’ll know what your spending limits are. Sure enough, there are lamps that will set you back less than 100 euros, but these are probably low-quality bulbs that are unlikely to produce the light spectrum you need. Still, there is no need to go for the most expensive equipment out there, either.

Consider how often you intend to harvest, and whether your grow goals make big investments worthwhile. In addition to the costs of purchasing lighting, you may want to take into account how much power your preferred lights will use.

In fact, energy consumption of your cannabis grow lights can weigh heavily on the overall costs of growing weed. HID bulbs such as xenon lights are relatively cheap to, but their energy use can still make them expensive on the long term. LED lights, by contrast, are more expensive to buy, but they are much more energy-efficient and usually last longer, making them more sustainable and more affordable in the long run.

How Many Cannabis Grow Lights Do You Need?

Before you set out to buy your cannabis grow lights, be sure to check how much space you have available in your designated grow room. The difference between a spare closet and a large basement grow room will affect your choices for appropriate cannabis grow lights.

If you grow on a small surface, you’re unlikely to need more than one or two lights. Larger spaces obviously require multiple lights with greater capacity. Pick equipment that matches your available floor surface. If you use lamps that get too hot or produce too much light, you run the risk of frying your plants.

Generally speaking, we can add that growing for larger yields calls for greater wattage of your cannabis grow lights. You could opt for multiple low-wattage lights, but chances are you’ll benefit more from fewer lamps with higher output.

You’ll often see grow rooms with walls covered in silvery foil. This is a smart way of increasing your lighting efficiency. The foil reflects the light, enabling it to hit the leaves from different angles. No matter which cannabis grow lights you choose, tricks like these are always worth considering.

Ventilation

Ventilation and air circulation are also factors to take into account when picking cannabis grow lights. What is the usual temperature, and how do drafts and air currents contribute to its climate? Does the room serve other purposes (i.e., is it also a bedroom)? That can be a factor if you use lights that generate lots of heat. Going for LED lights may be a smart move here, since they don’t emit much heat. If the room has a natural chill, heat-emitting lights may be a better choice instead.

Grow Phase

The phases of the cannabis life cycle also determine which lights work best. Young plants in the vegetative phase need lighting with different wavelengths than flowering plants. It makes sense to consider these differences when choosing your cannabis grow lights.

The first stage of growth is the germination stage, right after your seeds pop. At this vulnerable stage, blue light is most effective just as it is throughout the remainder of the grow phase. Be careful with your fragile seedlings though: intense lighting or lamps that are too close to the plants can cause stretching problems.

Throughout the vegetative phase, cannabis plants mainly need light ranging in the blue end of the spectrum. This lighting spectrum is expressed in nanometres, representing the wavelengths of different frequencies. Throughout the growth phase, you’ll mostly need blueish light with wavelengths ranging between 400 and 500nm. This type of lighting encourages activity of leaf surface stomata, boosting the pace of photosynthesis and speeding up healthy growth.

grow lamps weed — Light in the blue end of the spectrum.

This does not imply, however, that you can just use any random bulb and slap a blue filter over it. Be sure to check whether your intended cannabis grow lights can handle this part of the spectrum, and the ease with which you can switch from one part of the spectrum to the next.

By the end of the vegetative phase, you can gradually switch from blueish light to frequencies that approach the red end of the spectrum. This simulates the transition from spring to midsummer, when the days are starting to grow shorter in outdoor conditions.

Flowering Stage

Cannabis plants behave differently in the flowering phase than they do in the growth phase, which affects their respective needs when it comes to lighting. Out in the wild, the angle of sunbeams changes as the days shorten. Your plants will still need some amount of blue light at this point, but less than before, and they now start to long for more red and orange light in the spectrum they receive.

In grow rooms, that means gradually adjusting the lighting as you switch from growth to flowering, going from predominantly blue (400 – 500nm wavelengths) to red. This ranges around 600 – 700nm wavelengths. This switch stimulates development of trichomes filled with cannabinoids to improve the potency of your buds, while also promoting the growth of the flowers themselves. Good news for your harvest prospects, that is!

Different Types Of Cannabis Grow Lights

There’s all sorts of cannabis grow lights out there, but we will only discuss the three most common types here. Most of the other lighting options are variations of the types we mention, although new kinds are launched occasionally, too. The summary provided below will make it much easier for you to pick your best option, however.

LED Lighting

If you decide to choose LED cannabis grow lights, you know you are making a sustainable choice. Even though these cannabis grow lights are more expensive to purchase, they come with some serious benefits to compensate. Light yield is just as good as that of HID (High Intensity Discharge) lighting, but they use considerably less power to achieve it.

In addition, LED cannabis grow lights hardly emit any heat. This reduces the amount of water you will need for your pants due to lower evaporation, and you will need to use fans less often as there is less heat to expel.

All things considered, LED lighting ranks high among the best choices for cannabis grow lights, especially since they save power while your plants grow. That makes LED lights the sustainable option: good news for the environment as well as for your wallet now that energy prices keep soaring skywards.

HPS Cannabis Grow Lights

Many growers agree that technically speaking, HPS (High Pressure Sodium) and MH (Metal Halide) bulbs are the best cannabis grow lights. This type of lighting comes with pleasantly low purchasing costs. They are generally available in a 150 to 1150 watts power range; however, when growing for personal needs, 400 watts will usually suffice.

HPS bulbs do emit lots of heat, however, which you will have to take into account. Make sure to maintain a minimum distance between your lamps and your plants that measures 10% of your wattage in centimetres. If, for instance, you have a 400 watt bulb, you should keep it at least 40cm away from your canopy.

One advantage of HPS cannabis grow lights is their suitability for both the vegetative and flowering stages due to the broad spectrum of the light they emit. MH lamps, by contrast, shout only be used in he veg stage. A big drawback of HPS lighting is its high energy use. In addition, they require ballasts to function properly. You will need some technical skill to install these.

Fluorescent Cannabis Grow Lights

Fluorescent cannabis grow lights make up the last category discussed here. These include T-Neon, energy-saving bulbs, and TL tubes. They are commonly used for young plants, but if you make sure they have the right lighting spectrum, you could also use them in the flowering phase.

The benefits of these lights is their low heat signature combined with low costs and modest power use. The light they admit does not reach very far, however. That means you will have to keep them close to your canopy, risking heat stress and other problems. Not your ideal cannabis grow lights, then.

If you choose fluorescent lights, pay close attention to their colour coding. It should be stated on the package, and the final two digits denote the colour temperature. You will need colour temperatures between 4,500 and 6,500 Kelvin for the grow phase, and 2,100 to 2,700 Kelvin for flowering.

Putting Those Cannabis Grow Lights To Work

Hopefully, the information provided above helps you pick the best cannabis grow lights for your own situation. After all, lighting is essential for growth and flowering, as well as for your harvest yields. Take the time to find the right equipment, making sure that you pick the best match for your own unique grow setup.

Of course, good lighting alone will not get you where you want to be. Even the best cannabis grow lights aren’t much use if they don’t shine on premium quality cannabis genetics. Fortunately, you have come to the right place to order and grow the finest strains with the best yields and most potent effects!

Order Premium Seeds For Your Premium Lights!!

Be sure to check our other Grow Blogs for more useful information, to make the most out of every seed you grow!

CBD Oil, Depression & Antidepressants

When you are struggling with depression, you will want to go to great lengths just to get rid of it. Surely, regular antidepressants can help, but these come with nasty side-effects that may keep you from using them. CBD Oil can be a useful natural alternative, however, as this cannabinoid can have a positive effect on your overall mood. This blog helps you consider the option of using CBD Oil to relieve depression symptoms instead of antidepressants.

Feeling Down VS Depression

If you are feeling low, down, moody, or sad right now, there is little cause for concern. These are challenging times, fraught with not-too-distant warfare, widespread financial problems, rampant climate emergency, and a pandemic that could flare up at any moment. And that’s without even considering any personal issues you may be dealing with. At times like these, simply staying optimistic can seem a daunting task.

Feelings of sadness and depression are two different things, however. Low moods fade over time. Depression is marked my more severe symptoms that persist over time. Actual depression cannot be diagnosed before the symptoms persist for at least two weeks. These symptoms can last for weeks or even months. Importantly, normal feelings of sadness pass automatically, whereas depression usually doesn’t.

Signs Of Depression

Some of the important signs that you may be depressed include feelings of anxiety and sadness. Activities you used to enjoy no longer manage to cheer you up. In a very real sense, life seems to hold no joy at all. People suffering from depression can lose their appetite and ability to sleep. They often face general lack of energy. Other symptoms include trouble concentrating, lack of self-confidence, and suicidal thoughts.

Minor depression usually allows people to retain some level of control over their lives. Symptoms tend to be relatively mild. Major depression is a different matter altogether, however. Major depression is a serious condition that requires clinical diagnosis, professional help, and usually medication, too. For both minor and major depression, however, CBD Oil could have its own unique benefits.

Cannabis Or CBD Oil For Depression?

Many people actually try cannabis to keep symptoms of depression under control. This is clearly not advisable in many cases, since weed can intensify negative emotions and make matters worse. Finding professional help is always advisable in case of severe depression. Nonetheless, we have listed our most popular strains to counter low oods and depressed feelings for you in this dedicated blog.

What Can CBD Oil Or Antidepressants Do Against Depression?

If you are experiencing sad feelings or other depression symptoms, you may be wondering whether you should try CBD Oil alongside or instead of regular antidepressants. No matter what you decide to do, it can be helpful to know either option works and what their usual effects are. CBD Oil has a natural potential to help reduce depression symptoms by working with our body’s endocannabinoid system (ECS). This is a widespread network of protein receptors charged with maintaining the overall physiological balance of the body.

The endocannabinoid system regulates a wide range of processes to keep you in optimal shape while your environment continuously changes. The ECS influences your internal organs, your immune system, and central nervous system. In order to function, the ECS uses cannabinoids. These natural cannabinoid compounds come in two classes: endocannabinoids produced by the body itself, and phytocannabinoids derived from cannabis plants, including CBD (cannabidiol). The similarity between CBD and compounds produced by our own body explains why CBD can have a positive effect on depression symptoms.

CBD Oil, Depression, And Antidepressants

You may wonder just how different the effects of CBD Oil on depression are compared to regular antidepressants. Synthetic prescription antidepressants work by influencing production and availability of specific neurotransmitters, such as noradrenaline and serotonin, for instance. These neurotransmitters relay messages throughout the body and brain, allowing them to affect your mood. If used successfully, this is how regular antidepressants can make you feel better.

Such prescription drugs can take quite some time before they start to produce effects, however. Moreover, they tend to produce thoroughly unpleasant side-effects such as dizziness, palpitations, weight gain, and more. Perhaps more importantly, synthetic antidepressants can cause dependency on extended use. This means it can be very hard to quit using them, which is deeply concerning.

This is precisely why CBD Oil is so promising for depression symptoms. It does not cause dependency or addiction, it’s fully natural, and it works with your body to fight depression.

Studying The Effects Of CBD Oil On Depression

As mentioned earlier, serotonin is on of the main neurotransmitters involved in depression. If you have sufficient serotonin levels, you feel at ease and satisfied. This is why some antidepressants specifically target serotonin pathways and mechanisms in the brain.

The big plus of CBD is its ability to indirectly influence serotonin receptors. Regular antidepressants tend to target these receptors directly, which is exactly why they can cause dependency. Animal studies (2014) demonstrated that CBD is a promising candidate for depression treatment. A review conducted in 2018 showed that CBD Oil can help relieve anxiety, PTSS, stress, and depression without risks of addiction or dependency.

Another neurotransmitter associated with depression is anandamide. This substance, also called the ‘bliss hormone’, is produced in the brain. Balanced anandamide levels make us feel happy and at ease. Taking CBD slows down metabolism of anandamide, allowing it to keep circulating in the bloodstream. This is yet another means by which CBD Oil can help reduce depression symptoms through improving our sense of satisfaction.

Can You take CBD Oil And Antidepressants At The Same Time?

If you are wondering whether you can safely take CBD Oil while also using antidepressants for depression symptoms, you should know that CBD can affect the way some of these prescription drugs work. CBD can cause certain antidepressants to remain in the bloodstream longer. This specifically concerns MAOs (mono amino oxidase inhibitors) and TCAs (tricyclic antidepressants). This in turn can aggravate side-effects. That is why you should always consult your doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist before trying CBD Oil to treat your depression symptoms.

CBD Oil And Depression: Judge For Yourself

CBD Oil has several properties that make it an interesting candidate for depression treatment. If this has aroused your curiosity, we suggest you try it for yourself (after consulting your doctor if you are already on medication). CBD Oil is available as a full spectrum oil-based supplement, but you could also try our convenient CBD Tablets, CBD Candy, or one of our other high-quality SupMedi CBD products.

Find Your Ideal CBD Supplement

CBD Oil is not the only cannabis related alternative for depression treatment, however. Cannabis (and hemp) plants produce a wide range of useful, high-potency compounds that can help fight depression, too. THC, for instance, appears to have its own potential for depression relief. Here too, the general advice is to always be cautious when using cannabis alongside certain kinds of medication. And as we mentioned earlier, you should know that cannabis can intensify your mood, including depressed or sad moods.

Never forget that depression is a serious condition that you shouldn’t have to tackle on your own. Find professional support from your doctor or psychologist to help you get back on your feet. No matter what, though, we sincerely hope that CBD Oil can help you gain the upper hand over your depression.