How Many Weed Seeds do You Need to Grow a Plant?
To grow weed successfully, you need high-quality marijuana seeds. But how many seeds do you need to start your garden? Additionally, consider how many marijuana plants you want to grow.
This decision ultimately determines the number of seeds you require. When planning your grow, calculate the number of marijuana seeds based on your goals. If you're considering buying cannabis seeds, it's essential to start with a clear idea of the scale of your growing project.
Use the table: number of marijuana seeds needed to grow.
How many seeds do you need to grow weed?
Basically, you need one cannabis seed per weed plant. After all, from one seed a single plant grows. However, it is possible that not every seed germinates. After all, you are dealing with a natural product. It is therefore advisable to have an extra seed on hand.
Factors that determine the number of seeds per plant
So, what if you plan to grow five plants and one or more seeds don't germinate? Then you won't achieve the intended yield, and you have to purchase seeds again. It’s therefore wise to use several seeds per plant.
In order to calculate exactly how many cannabis seeds you need, you have to take two determining factors into account:
Type of seed (regular or feminized)
In this blog, we assume that you buy cannabis seeds for growing cannabis. For this, you can choose between regular seeds or feminized cannabis seeds. Both types differ from each other and have an influence on the final result. The differences are explained below.
Regular seeds
With a regular seed, the genus of the plant has not yet been determined. When choosing regular seeds, the chance that the seed will develop into a female plant is about 60%. The chance that the seed develops into a male plant is therefore 40%. And because male plants do not produce buds (read: marijuana), you need several marijuana seeds to increase the chance that you will eventually grow a female plant.
Feminized seeds
With feminized cannabis seeds, you don't have the risk of a flowering male plant. Because female seeds produce 99.9% of a female weed plant. This is why most growers choose feminized seeds or autoflowering seeds
Autoflowering seeds are basically feminized seeds, but have the advantage that they flower automatically. However, feminized seeds are more expensive than regular seeds. Depending on your budget and growing skills, you will choose the type of weed seed.
You can check out our full range of fem seeds available in the store.
Germination rate
In addition to the type of cannabis seed, nature always has an influence on the germination process. After all, the cannabis seed is a natural product and this means that not every seed is viable and germinates.
From experience, we know that 93% of the cannabis seeds grow into a plant. This is of course a very high success rate, but not 100%. So you will have to use extra seeds in order to have the certainty of eventually becoming a weed plant.
We therefore advise you to take into account an average germination percentage of 90% when calculating the number of seeds you need for your cultivation. This gives just that little extra certainty.
Reading tip: Our blog about 'Germinating marijuana seeds’ explains how to optimize the success rate to 100%.
How many seeds does it take to grow weed?
Based on the above information, it's quite easy to calculate how many seeds you need to grow weed. For your convenience, we have placed the results in the table below.
Plants you want to grow | Regular seeds needed | Feminized seeds needed |
1 | 3 | 2 |
2 | 5 | 3 |
3 | 7 | 4 |
4 | 9 | 5 |
5 | 11 | 6 |
How many marijuana plants can I have?
How many marijuana plants you can grow differs per country. Also, the goal is decisive. Do you grow marijuana for your own use? Or do you have the intention to sell weed? Is it for medical use?
There is a tolerance policy in the Netherlands, but this doesn’t apply to all counties. We therefore recommend checking our blog: is it legal to buy cannabis seeds?