WHY in the world would you "cheap out' on genetics? You might as well just grow bag seed if money is that tight.
hey, don't knock bagseed i WISH i still had all of my mexican brick beans!
even "expensive" fems at $15 are dirt cheap when you consider you can get a $100 or more strain for just that and clone it until you have an entire garden filled.
there are some cheap fems out there though. i plan on testing a couple rokerij "amnesia haze" beans that were under $8 each based on a smoke report, but after mentioning that, someone said that their gear isn't the greatest. oh well. it'll still be fun testing it.
if you want some high value fems though, spend an extra $2 on TGA gear. those are still under $10 each and i've yet to see anyone complain about anything TGA makes.
i;m totally with you on the whole not spending $400 or more on a few strains to grow thing, but there are plenty of great regulars out there (sexing is really easy to do, and you'll only get better results out of regs than fems which are more prone to hermies, defeating the entire purpose just about of growing them in the first place) that you can get for under $50 starting with $25 nirvana knockoffs. considering what you get for your investment in beans, just one gal from a $50 pack of seeds will more than pay for itself when that's what an eigth of good shit costs in many places.
i'm really hoping my TGA jack's cleaner 2s live up to his rep. if so, i'll be buying a pack of regulars next, but i ordered a bunch of different fems just to try some stuff out.