How Do I Know Which Cannabis Strains To Grow?

These days, there’s just so many different types of weed to grow that it becomes difficult to see the forest for the ganja trees. This blog helps you determine which cannabis strain to grow if you’re looking for rich harvests with easy and fast results that suit your taste.

Deciding Which Cannabis Strain To Grow

Knowing which cannabis seeds to grow is one of the cornerstones of successful weed gardening. All seeds carry different genetics in their DNA that determine the properties of the plant contained within, including the flower buds it will produce. Today’s market offers a bewildering variety of weed strains that leave most growers struggling to pick their best match.

Even experienced cannabis growers often find it hard to decide what new or time-tested genetics to choose for their next run. At any rate, with so many flashy new names hitting the scene every season, there is never enough time to try every strain that sparks your interest. That’s a real problem, as every grow takes several months. You don’t want to wait that long, investing time, money, and TLC in a crop that turns out to be a huge disappointment.

So what should you do to figure out which cannabis seeds to grow before spending your hard-earned budget on new genetics? Well, we’re here to help you grow with maximum joy, convenience, and efficiency, so we’ve compiled a list of seed and bud qualities for you to consider. Read on and find out just what type of weed is the best match for your personal preferences when it comes to fast, easy, or high-output cannabis growing.

Speed, Yield, Or Convenience?

There are many ways to categorise the bewildering variety of strains available today. Here, we start by focussing on the ultimate aim of the grower. We can distinguish different plants by the speed at which they grow, by the harvest prospects of their flower buds, or by how easy they are to grow into mature, flowering specimens.

Which Weed Strain Is The Fastest?

As a species, Cannabis sativa L. (the official name that includes all indica, sativa, ruderalis, and hybrid variants) is a fast-growing annual plant, able to colonise large swathes of new territory in just a few generations.

Some breeders have been cultivating hybrid strains of cannabis to grow even faster. This can be achieved either by selecting genetics from the fastest plants available and then crossbreeding these with existing high-speed strains, or by introducing DNA from ruderalis variants to the breeding programme.

The Speed Of Indica Weed

Efforts to speed up new generations of hybrids tend to focus on either the flowering stage in which the buds take shape, or on the preceding vegetative stage marked by explosive growth spurts of roots, stems, and fan leaves.

Throughout both stages, strains with predominantly indica genetics tend to develop faster than their sativa-dominant relatives. This tendency can be traced to native indica habitats located on the high plains of Central Asia, where harsh winters make way for brief summers that favour shorter growth and flowering cycles. As a result, evolutionarily successful indica strains evolved into ever faster plants, usually sacrificing a proportion of size and yield capacity in the bargain.

If you’re looking for strong indica effects with superior growing speed and serious harvests, try growing Skyrocket seeds and prepare for a fast takeoff to extraterrestrial altitudes.

Superior Sativas

Sativa variants evolved in warm, humid areas closer to the equator instead. These conditions allowed for slower growth and extended flowering phases that we can still recognise in today’s many sativa-heavy strains. Sativas tend to grow into tall ‘ganja trees’ outdoors: a spectacular sight for sure, often with superior prospects in terms of harvest volume; but not very practical in indoor settings with limited space available.

Deciding which strain to grow may well lead you to the sativa side of the spectrum, and that could still result in an easy, productive, and hugely enjoyable grow if you know what you’re doing.

If you want strong cerebral sativa highs with minimal hassle – especially when growing indoors – you should try our Grapefruit Superstar. She packs lovely citrus flavour, hefty brainbuzz vibes, and a pleasantly brief flowering time of just 8-9 weeks.

Rapid Ruderalis Autoflowers

Thirdly, ruderalis genetics discovered in inhospitable Russian and Eastern European climes provide an alternative to rapid indica genes. Ruderalis genes are the foundation of all autoflowering cannabis plants.

Ruderalis strains will not wait for spring to fade into summer before flowering; instead, they ‘decide’ for themselves when to produce buds. In addition, they tend to grow even faster than their indica relatives. That makes perfect sense, as the harsh conditions of their original biotope forced them to make the most of every ray of sunlight they can catch.

As you may expect, combining indica and ruderalis genetics tends to produce the autoflower strains that are fastest to grow. Looking for multiple harvests per outdoor season, or as many indoor runs as you can manage in one year? Indica-leaning autoflowers are the best candidates for you. We would suggest trying our Choco Kush Auto or the new Exotic Purple Autoflower seeds if speed is of the essence!

Which Cannabis Strain Is The Easiest To Grow?

You could also opt for maximum growing convenience instead of speed. In that case, you should look for resilient, robust cannabis characteristics that should see your plant through the successive stages of its life cycle with the minimum amount of trouble. Resistance to mould, disease, and pests are your main objectives here.

When comparing indica and sativa (dominant) strains, the former kind tend to be the easiest to grow. Indica strains evolved to cope with brief flowering seasons and to resist negative influences of unpredictable weather. That means seeds with high percentages of indica genetics are usually easier to manage even for experienced indoor growers.

Sativa genetics generally require more moisture and warmth to really thrive, calling for careful monitoring of environmental factors. On the other hand, indica buds tend to be more compact than sativa flowers, making them more susceptible to mould problems due to moisture trapped inside the bud structure. Overall, though, sticking with an easy indica sweetie like Choco Cheesecake is your safest route to grow convenience.

Growers often claim that autoflowering weed is easiest to grow due to its non-photoperiod growth properties. This is true to some extent: autoflowers give indoor growers more freedom to time their runs as they see fit. They also make outdoor grows easier, as they pick their own optimal moment to transition from veg to flower mode, making them less vulnerable to late-season weather conditions.

All in all, then, you should go for indica-heavy strains if you are looking for easy non-autoflower plants. Autoflowers are an easier category overall due to their hardy origins and their abitlity to determine when to flower independently of the environment. That makes indica autoflower genetics some of the easiest to grow strains overall. Our prime candidate? Go for Milkshake Kush Autoflower seeds – if their ease of growing can’t convince you, we’re sure the exquisite taste will.

Which Cannabis Strain Yields The Biggest Harvest?

Many efficiency-oriented growers tend to look for strains that will produce the largest amounts of harvestable flower buds at the end of the run. That makes sense from a practical point of view: after all, most hobbyists invest their valuable time and money in raising plants that produce a large stash of cannabinoid-containing nugs, whether intended for recreational or medical purposes.

Understandable as this maximum harvest approach may be, however, there are a few factors to consider if stash size is your main criterion.

Firstly, remember that a big harvest is a less efficient result if it takes longer to produce. In other words: huge bud yields tend to take longer to develop, making faster strains with moderate productivity a viable alternative. Squeezing in one or two extra grows each year may leave you with a bigger stash on an annual basis.

Secondly, if the potential for huge harvests is offset by other less favourable cannabis properties, such as high stress sensitivity or vulnerability to mould issues, you may end up with a big harvest that’s wholly unfit for consumption. That’s a very inefficient way to spend four months growing cannabis!

Finally, always remember that harvest volume depends on much more than genetics alone. Your grow climate parameters such as humidity and temperature, plus soil type, watering habits, and nutrient strategy are all significant factors when it comes to bud quantity. That makes deciding which cannabis strain to grow based on harvest prospects alone a tricky affair.

Still, if you want to get the best shot to max out on bud yields, try our amazing 30% THC whopper Fatkid’s Cake: even if it’s just an indication, harvesting up to 800 grams of prime weed per square metre is certainly nothing to sneeze at!

Summing Up: Knowing Which Cannabis Strain To Grow

As you can see, deciding which cannabis strain to grow depends on your own preferences. Choosing speed or yield over convenience and reliability is just one way to decide which genetics best suit your purposes.

Keep in mind, however, that finding your all-time favourite weed depends on other factors, too. We all have our preferences when it comes to flavour and scent, for instance. Then there’s the specific effect we may be after: some strains come with uplifting, energizing ‘headbuzz’ highs while others trigger a more stoned ‘bodybuzz’  instead.

These cannabis characteristics depend on terpene and cannabinoid profiles, which represent an entire subdiscipline of cannabis science by themselves. Moreover, various cannabis compounds can interact to subtly alter each other’s effects. Such ‘entourage effects’ make every strain unique in its mental and physical effects, both from a recreational and a medical consumer perspective. This is the subject for a separate dedicated blog, however: check it out if you want to dig a little deeper.

Another complicating factor is the speed at which new strains keep entering the market. There’s simply too many of them to try and grow everything you find attractive. You can work your way around this problem, at least in part, by choosing only premium quality seed suppliers.

The Amsterdam Genetics seeds range offers quality over quantity. You won’t find hundreds of near-identical strains here: only the very best genetics are allowed into our catalogue of unique, hand-picked cannabis seeds.

If you still find it hard to decide which cannabis strain to grow, here’s our best, tried and tested Amsterdam champion White Choco seeds that offer a balanced mix of fast, easy, and high-yield genetics for you to try:

Whatever you decide, we wish you happy growing – may you find the genetics that best suit your personal needs!