JASG’s Indoor White Widow Photo Soil Grow Spring/Summer 2021

[Just A Simple Guy]

Lung Room – Upstairs bedroom with a 5000 BTU window A/C and a rather large compressor dehumidifier.

Grow Room – 68"x48” closet with sliding double doors. Because of the roof the ceiling is 68” high at the entrance and slopes down to 48” at the back and the back wall has two plank shelfs the width of the closet.

Grow Cabinet – Made from 1/4” 4’x8’ birch plywood cut across the 4’ width into 36” & 24” sections. They hang from the ceiling and the bottoms are roughly a foot from the floor. They are covered with Mylar as is the side wall and the outer-most sliding door.

Equipment – 220W flat panel LED, 4” inline fan vented through the back wall and into an unfinished area under the roof, tower fan, 6” fan, peltier dehumidifier, ultrasonic humidifier, humidity controller to turn them on and off, 6” fan outside the closet and angled down to blow air underneath the door into the closet.

Strain – White Widow Fem Photo

Germination – Jiffy Peat Pellets

Seedling - “Cow Pot’ a tad smaller than Solo Cup

Early Veg – 1 Gallon fabric pot

Veg – 5 gallon fabric pot

Flower - 5 gallon fabric pot

Soil – Fox Farm Ocean Forest

Myco during transplanting

Water – Under sink filter (not RO) but it does take the PPM down from near 400 to roughly 150, dehumidifier water, distilled water adjusted to PPM per feeding chart and 6.5 Ph (PPM & Ph stick/tester, Ph Up & Down)

Nutrients – Cultivation Nation 3 Part (Micro, Grow & Bloom), CalMag, Sweet (Raw)

Co2 – DIY fermentation bucket.

Germination & Seedling – Six peat pellets & cow pots; Early Veg – Four 1 gallon pots; Veg – Two 5 gallon pots. Germinate on 4/26, popped on 5/1, flip on 6/27.

Training – Mainline with LST

Defoliate, Prune, Lollipop – 2 light defoliations (lower & inner big fan leaves only) & 1 light pruning (small shoots obviously too buried / blocked) last week of Veg. Will revisit middle of week after flip.

Current Temp & RH – Lights 76f-81f & 52-58% RH; Dark 72f-74f & 42-48% RH.

Pictures to come...

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

A few pictures of the custom grow area I fabricated. My initial plan was to run two 6" fans on the shelves directed at the grills, but while the plants were still in early veg and the breeze was passing just above them I discovered two things:

1 - The grills directed the flow in such a way there were dead spots.
2 - Upon further reading I discovered having a constant breeze from one direction is harsh on the leaves. I could have pulsed them with a timer, 15 on and 15 off, but even that seemed too harsh and it still left gaps.

I took the grills off and used a tower fan instead and it gets complete and full coverage, it has 5 speeds and the lowest setting is gentle. It just jiggles the leaves and lighter stems as it sweeps the area.

 

[BirdieNumNum]

Looks like you are having fun so far...

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Looks like you are having fun so far...

Half the fun was the research, planing, design and setup. Some more pics of the setup.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Plants in Jiffy Pellets and 1 gallon pots.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

And the one I kept in the grow room and the other I moved into the half bathroom under a 96W 4 tube T5 I used for seedling & early veg. Granted the bathroom isn't optimal but it was an on-the-fly decision because there just isn't room in the grow space for both. I put off renovating that half bath when I was painting the upstairs and I suppose I'll get to it after harvest.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Here she is at the end of the first week of 12/12. She stretched about four inches and the top of the canopy is 17" and she's spread a little to 27"x23". Vegged 56 days - 5/1 - 6/26. She's now sucking up 1.5 gallons in a 5 gallon pot in four days and will be ready for watering tomorrow.

I did some light defoliation and pruning the week before flipping and some additional light pruning this week but nothing too serious. Mostly lower fan leaves and shoots buried well under the canopy.

Temperature and RH are fairly constant running 79f-82f & 50% lights on and 75f-77f & 40% lights off. Leaf surface temps run about 75f.

She's in Fox Farm Ocean Forest and one thing I notice is it seems to be a "hot" soil. At least I think that's the case as the very tips of the leaves tend to be a little pale of bleached although less so now than earlier in veg. I checked runoff the last two waterings and it came in at 1380 and 1240 so I'm holding off on fertilizing (Cultivation Nation Three Part - Grow, Micro & Bloom). Does that sound right and is runoff PPM even meaningful in a soil grow? I've read articles and watched videos giving conflicting information on this.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Beginning of second week of flower and pistils are becoming much more prominent. She's up to 19" which is between 6 & 7 inches of stretch over 10 days. I kept the light in Veg mode the first week and switched to All Bright second week which kicked up red intensity and also turned on UVA & IR diodes.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Middle of second week of flowering and I decided I needed to do some defoliating and pruning as it was a really dense bush (see photo two posts above from several days ago), mainly to open up the middle and let light get to all the bud sights. I probably could have done more but I didn't want to lop too much off all at once.

It responded well to the light trim I gave it last week and was denser than ever. I've read it can be hit again in the third week and I'm interested in opinions on one more round if necessary.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Start of third week of flower and she's pushing 21" tall and bushed out to roughly 30"x23". She has 8 main tops and another 8 shoots off the main tops that are near the canopy.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

And here's the runt I had to move to a hastily set up half bathroom because the other one was hogging all the space. It's under a 96W 4 tube T5 fixture I used for seedling and early veg. It's also a late bloomer and didn't start to show pistils until a good two weeks after the other.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Week 3 day 3 of flower and one last defoliation (moderate). Good light and air penetration and from this point will only pluck off the odd leaf (or 2, 3, 5) that directly block bud sites.

 

[steelcurtain22]

Hey Jasg, hope ya don’t mind I’m gonna follow along as I now know your using same light. Everything is looking great with your grow she looks amazing!

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Hey Jasg, hope ya don’t mind I’m gonna follow along as I now know your using same light. Everything is looking great with your grow she looks amazing!

Thanks! This is my first serious grow where I did my homework, bought good genetics and decent equipment.

The first three weeks I just ran a T5 fixture and then cut over to the LED and ran that in Veg mode through the first week of flower before cutting over to All Bright. I have the LED as high as it can go and I've been upping the power progressively, starting at 50% and now up to 75%. My plan is to incrementally ramp it up to 100% for the last two weeks when I'll cut it over to Flower mode and also cut it back to 11 hours and then 10 hours to finish it. I'm also considering 36 hours of dark just prior to harvest along with pushing RH down to 30% but that depends if I can catch the trichomes before too many turn amber but I don't have any feel for that progression so it might have to wait for my second grow. We shall see.

I'd be interested to hear opinions on a prolonged dark period prior to harvest.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Last day of week 3 flower. So far, so good and the bud sites look to be stacking up nicely. It's getting exciting!

 

[steelcurtain22]

Looking great man!

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Middle of week 4 flower and she's looking good and starting to get frosty.

 

[steelcurtain22]

Ahhh the start of frosty, looking nice and healthy man!

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Ahhh the start of frosty, looking nice and healthy man!

I'm pleasantly surprised considering I only have a handful of grows under my belt, the most recent from the mid-90s and they were all VERY rudimentary, without much attention to detail and low quality and yield. LOL!

Aside from germination and sticking them in soil everything is different this grow to varying degrees. I paid much more attention to equipment and environment and it's the first time I topped (mainline), trained, defoliated and pruned. I was really nervous about that!

The one problem I did have early on was over-watering when I went from cups to 1 gallon pots but I fixed that before it got out of hand thanks to Emilya's guide on watering.

 

[Just A Simple Guy]

Last day of week 4 flower.