The 5 Best High-CBD Cannabis Strains to Grow This Year

Over the years, cannabis has become a jack-of-all-trades. You can blaze these buds for either medical relief or recreational use, and there’s a range of ways in which you can take it. And there are two main cannabinoids to choose from: THC and CBD.  

The psychotropic nature of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) attracts those who prefer an intense high. At times, however, you want to consume cannabis but not get too stoned. That’s where high-CBD weed strains come in handy. Cannabidiol, popularly known as CBD, is a non-psychotropic compound harvested in small quantities in flower buds. 

Read also: Best Weed Strains

CBD offers a wide range of real and exciting benefits. Arguably best of all, it generates a lucid effect that does not bring down your productivity levels or cognitive function. You don’t experience the intense high associated with THC weed strains. Instead, you get a milder high that still allows you to tick off your everyday tasks.

Whether you prefer to consume CBD flowers alone or blend them with THC buds, you can start growing your own high-CBD strains featuring different flavors and effects at home. As such, we’ve rounded up the top five cannabis strains rich in CBD to grow this year.

Benefits of Growing Your Own CBD-rich Strains

Before looking at which CBD-high strains to grow, here are some of the benefits that come with adding CBD plants in your garden or grow room.

Cost Savings on CBD Buds

Regardless of where you buy CBD flowers from, whether from a local dispensary or online, these buds don’t come cheap. Rather than staring at that half-packed baggie and wondering about its actual value, simply grow your own. A single plant can produce a sizeable yield. Growing multiple CBD varieties at a time can give you hundreds of grams of CBD-rich buds for the price of a couple of feminized marijuana seeds.

Total Quality Control

You already know the challenges that come with buying weed from a dealer or a dispensary. Some growers don’t dry and cure their plants well, making the cannabis harsh to smoke. Growing your own cannabidiol buds means that you don’t have to contend with molds in your final product. You can also deploy the best organic gardening practices to increase CBD quantity and quality, more so when selecting fertilizers and pesticides.

Never Run Out of Stash

It truly sucks when you run out of CBD buds, especially when CBD consumption is deeply engrained in your daily routine. If you’re a lover of CBD wake and bake, missing out on your morning puff as part of your breakfast could mess up your mood and energy levels. By growing your own plants, you are guaranteed a constant supply; plus, you cut out the middleman from your cannabidiol supply chain. You can light up your buds whenever you feel like it.

Amass Valuable Growing Experience

Focusing on growing CBD strains will make you a distinguished grower. You will learn about the different stages of growth, from seed germination, seedling, and flowering to harvesting. The acts of feeding, pruning, watering, and nurturing your weed plants will enhance your overall growing skills and give you another fulfilling hobby.

Read also: Best Vintage Weed Strains

Best CBD-rich Strains in 2023

Without further ado, here are the best CBD seeds to add to your grow room. 

Cannabis Strain Name	Terpene	Aroma	Effects	CBD Level (%)	THC Level (%)	Plant Species
CBD Girl Scout Cookies	Caryophyllene	Sweet, Earthy, Spicy	Relaxing, Pain relief	12-14	5-7	Hybrid
Harlequin	Myrcene	Earthy, Mango, Sweet	Alert, Relaxing	8-16	4-7	Sativa dominant
ACDC	Myrcene	Earthy, Pine, Woody	Relaxing, Happy, Focused	16-24	<1	Hybrid
Charlotte’s Web	Myrcene	Earthy, Pine, Citrus	Relaxing, Focused	15-20	<1	Sativa dominant
CBD Blueberry	Myrcene	Blueberry, Sweet	Calming, Relaxing	16-20	<1	Indica dominant

CBD Girl Scout Cookies

Many home-grower enthusiasts are fond of the Girl Scout Cookies (GSC) strain. Whether you’re a commercial cultivator or a new home grower, GSC is amazingly easy to cultivate. It is an indica-dominant weed strain produced by crossing Durban Poison with OG Kush. 

It is a widely popular strain owing to its euphoric effects coupled with waves of complete body relaxation. It boasts a 1:1 CBD/THC ratio. As such, it produces pretty balanced effects. Just one hit of this strain will kickstart feelings of happiness, hunger, and relaxation. 

GSC is best recommended for veteran cannabis users. If you’re a novice user, start slow with this strain because your body may not be used to the resulting psychoactive effects.

GSC comes with a pungent, desert-like smell. In terms of taste, it is full of mint, lemon, and sweet cherry flavors. Growers note that the strain flowers into purple and green buds with glowing orange hairs. On average, it takes 9-10 weeks for Girl Scout Cookies to reach the flowering stage. 

Harlequin

Harlequin is a smooth introduction to the cannabis world. It features a nice blend of CBD and THC, though the exact ratio is based on the cut. It is a sativa-dominant hybrid strain produced by crossing Nepali Indica, Swiss Sativa, Colombian Gold, and Thai Sativa. 

This marijuana strain has a pleasant aroma of wood and soil. Some users suggest they get notes of mango as well. It offers a strong herbal flavour coupled with pine-like nuances that leave a faint sweetness on your tongue. 

Read also: Uses for Indica Cannabis Strains

Harlequin grows tall, with strong branches offering support to the inbound harvest. Its massive number of flowers appears in forest green colouring. You will easily notice rusty orange hairs and amber trichomes standing out. 

Due to CBD content weighing in at 6 to 15%, using this strain shouldn’t cause you to feel an intense psychotropic high. Ideally, Harlequin uplifts your mood and makes you feel happy, energized, and relaxed, yet able to remain productive throughout the day. Thus, it is an excellent daytime joint if you wish to feel lighter and focused while doing other chores.

The strain may also get your creative juices flowing, especially if you work in the creative art industry. It can also serve as an effective sociable strain, such as when you’re just about to deliver an important speech in front of a crowd and you need something to calm your nerves down.

Harlequin is ranked moderate in terms of growing difficulty. To get the most CBD-rich buds, make sure you harvest this strain early. Delays may compromise its quality.

ACDC

You’ve probably heard of the Cannatonic cannabis strain. If not, this was one of the ground-breaking CBD-prominent strains that were produced expressly to help individuals grappling with severe medical conditions. ACDC is a phenotype of Cannatonic. This sativa-dominant weed strain contains 1% THC and about 20% CBD content. 

If you want to get too stoned, look elsewhere. ACDC produces little to no intoxication effects. Your reaction speed will not decrease, you won’t feel any stinging sensation across your body, you won’t start laughing wildly, and you definitely won’t end up with a large appetite. 

Instead, its low percentage of THC content makes it one of the least psychotropic and best medicinal strains for patients. When you consume ACDC, you will experience a strong feeling of relaxation, euphoria, and ecstasy sweeping across your body and mind. Note that these sensations are not psychotropic in any way. So, this strain will not hinder your ability to remain productive throughout the day. You remain clear-headed and relaxed.

The ACDC strain has a pleasant aroma, with strong nuances of earthy sweetness along with faint notes of juicy citrus. The taste resembles the aroma, with a bit of spice and an overall sweet aftertaste.

The ACDC cannabis plant features yellowish green colours and combined streaks of orange throughout. You will also notice flashy orange pistils curled and twisted amongst its sugar leaves.

The difficulty of growing ACDC weed is relatively moderate. The plant requires plenty of support, beginning with a platform it can hang onto before it develops strong branches. Typically, ACDC strains grow better indoors because a controlled setting prevents the potential invasion of pests and diseases. 

Charlotte’s Web

This weed strain fundamentally altered the perception of the world towards the marijuana plant. Wondering the reason behind its unique name? Well, Charlotte’s Web cannabis was named after a child who fully recovered from intractable epilepsy after using this weed plant. 

Produced by the five Stanley Brothers in Colorado, this weed strain is regarded as a hemp variation. This stems from its powerful 20% CBD content and quite negligible 1% THC content. As such, the strain does not result in any psychoactive effects. For this reason, the strain has grown in popularity as a natural remedy for both kids and adults. 

Charlotte’s Web has a rather pleasant and faint aroma, along with an earthy and pine-like scent. Its flavour is equally as pleasant, sending strong sweet and woody notes to your taste buds, along with tinges of citrus, subtle lemon, and sage. In terms of outward appearance, it has dense, sage-green flower buds. You will also notice patchy sprinkles of tiny orange pistils across the sugar leaves. This weed strain has virtually no snow-like crystals on its leaves because of its rather low THC capacity. 

Note that growing Charlotte’s Web is moderately difficult. It needs some bit of experience and new cultivation methods to reap a bumper yield of CBD-filled buds. That said, you can grow it either indoors or outdoors, with the flowering period estimated to be about 9-10 weeks. When buying feminized seeds of Charlotte’s Web, bear in mind that it isn’t too common of a strain. You’re likely to locate it in those high-end recreational or medical cannabis dispensaries.

CBD Blueberry

Who is not a fan of blueberries? Well, if you’re into blueberry cannabis but you don’t want the powerful THC effects, go for CBD Blueberry strain. It is produced by crossing Purple Thai, Thai, and Afghani strains. Its indica lineage blended with a CBD content that goes up to 16% makes it one of the most effective medical cannabis strains that provide equally balanced therapeutic effects. 

The taste of the blueberry CBD strain is as the name implies. Besides blueberry-like terpenes, some users also mention the pleasant aroma of other fruits, like apricots and apples. They don a lavender purple hue and look bushy. They often expand laterally, so leave ample space between each weed plant. 

When you smoke, vape, or eat this strain, you will experience a long-lasting relief followed by feelings of happiness and ecstasy halfway in. In other words, you enter a world full of peaceful thoughts.

Its 1:1 THC to CBD ratio ensures you get body-numbing effects without experiencing intense psychoactive effects brought by THC intake. This is because CBD counteracts the psychoactive effects.

The cultivation of Blueberry CBD is well suited to the intermediate grower with a bit of experience. You can grow it indoors or outdoors. But they are well suited to the indoor setting because of their few leaves and short stature, standing at just 3.5 feet. You won’t have to do a lot of trimming and pruning thanks to their reduced number of broad-fan leaves. You can enjoy a bountiful harvest of up to 500 grams of Blueberry CBD bud per square meter. 

Cannabis is not just for recreational use but has a host of other medical benefits. CBD-rich marijuana seeds are what you need if you want to experience the medicinal effects of cannabis from your own background. What’s more, high CBD strains counteract the psychotropic effects of THC during intake, so you won’t have to worry about getting too stoned. 

If you’re on the market for the best CBD seeds to grow, always focus on the CBD/ THC ratio on the CBD seed catalogue. In essence, the CBD/THC ratio tells you whether the feminized seeds are high in THC or CBD. Ideally, go for those with a higher CBD content to achieve maximum benefits in the therapeutic world of cannabidiol.