Monster Cropped White Widow - SCROG - Hydro - 2015

[Weaselcracker]

Looking good SciGuy. I've had nothing but problems with my White Widow attempts so far. Seemed to want to be overfed even on a weak schedule. Last round she refused to behave herself like the other girls and kicked and fussed till the bitter end last week. Her sister is half way through flowering and is doing ok-ish on half strength nutes. I actually went and axed all the other WWs in veg and cloning because I got tired of the apparent fussiness. I can reveg the remaining flowering one if she ever $&@ing cooperates.
Do you think that they are light feeders? I know there must be many WW versions- though I see that distinctive stubby leaf look to most of them. Mine is from Seedsman.

 

[Bamalabrat]

Weaselcracker, I am also growing a WW. There are a ton of different WW's. Mine is from Crop Kings. It is indica dominant. I have not seen it behave badly with nutes. But that has just been my experience so far. I know that does not help but, it's all I got.

 

[Bamalabrat]

Sciguy,
They look like they are really starting to fill in the screen for you. How high do you have the screen above the pots? How many days does it take to grow enough to reach the next square? Thanks for the update.

 

[sciguy]

Weaselcracker, most white widow strains vary from breeder to breeder. Some are close to the original strain of white widow created in the 90's while some have had its genetics altered slightly to improve yield. Just as there are auto flower white widow plants now. They took a white widow strain, and bred it with a ruderalis weed plant, to get the shortened nature and unchangeable bioclock dictating when it flowers instead of a light schedule. Things like that have been done to white widow over the last couple decades and due to that is the reason why the strain differs from breeder to breeder and why 1 grower can have no problems growing it out and others from other breeders can have issues, its what that particular strain you got was bred with, some have more of a sativa content than indica, which can throw off not only feeding, but also the grow time of the plant, any plant that is showing sativa dominance, will most definitely need to be flowered around 10 weeks instead of the 8 the breeders tell you, even if starting flowering weeks after buds have already shown. I think that about covers it.

The best advice I can give for growing white widow, is keep the ph in check, and that most apparent feeding issues with white widow plants, whether it looks like they are overfed or underfed, I would first and foremost add more calmag to plant, I grow only in hydro so this is what I do, for soil I couldn't tell you. For example, my white widows look like they are constantly underfed, and that's at 1600-1700ppm. When they start looking like that and the ppms in my bucket say 1600-1700ppm, its a calmag issue, the plant used up all the calcium and magnesium it had and the other nutrients cant be taken up by the roots without the calcium and magnesium to ride up the plant on. Adding more calmag into the bucket of course increases ppm, but in a couple hours you will see the ppms dropping since the plant has been soaking up all the available nutes along with the newly added calmag. White widow is a CALMAG junkie and always looking for a fix, give it to her and shell love you for it, deny her and shell give you nothing but problems. That's what Ive learned from growing them from a few different breeders. True North Seed Bank has one of the closest of the white widow strains available from what I have bought from and grown, Ive grown the strain from True North Seed Bank, Herbies, and Attitude, and Bonza. True Norths has been the best so far. And they happen to be a sponsor on this site, Ive also never had a problem with my seeds orders from them or herbies or bonza.

For the plant you have in flower that's doing okish, try adding if your using hydro, botanicare sweet if you can get it, for flower sweet works better for the plant since it no longer relies on CALMAG during mid and late flower. It needs the carbs and sugars for it to do the same as the calmag, and act as a small steroid for your buds, since sugars are what make the bud swell during the bud swell stage of the plant. Adding this to your plant should make it bounce back with some vigor, I do know that soil growers use molasses or honey for the same effect, by mixing it in with the soil, I just don't know the amounts.




Hope that helps anyone with questions about the different breeders selling the same strain and why there are differences between them, hopefully I covered why those differences are there, and a couple ways to combat the problems associated with growing this plant. I am no way a pro, but I am a scientist, and experiments and tests are kinda my thing, I didn't want to grow 5 or 6 different strains when I first started growing, I wanted to grow 1 strain, learn all its flaws, the best way to grow and harvest it, the best ways to increase yield and so on and so on. ive been growing this plant, only this plant, from multiple breeders, many different ways for many years and the info I share about them are all based on my grow experiences and logs from all my grows and what they react to. I figured I would learn the ins and outs of a particular strain before moving on to other strains. White widow in hydro is a very forgivng strain, it can withstand high heat without CO2, ive had it in temps around 91-92F and it grew with no heat stress, add some CO2 and see what happens Co2 also enables you to have your plants in higher temps.

As for my scrog, well I didn't like the way it was growing through the scrog, I felt like the branches still could have been stretched and grown more under the scrog so we pulled the branches back through the screen and ran them up under the screen, then we pulled individual bud sites on each branch through the screen making sure to keep the branch under it completely. This makes sure that the only thing on the top side of the screen is bud sites and not branches that will grow and cover up other bud sites, this makes it more uniform. The holes are too small to weave the branches through them every few inches, this way I don't have to worry about tearing the leaves up and it spreads everything out more and more evenly. Since doing that it doubled almost doubled the amount of screen that it was currently filling up. maybe only 1 more week of veg then I will flip to flower.

Since I thinned a couple of plants out from the bottom and cut off growth branches, the plants do not have as many branches or bud sites as the other 2 plants, which makes their footprint a lot smaller, I'm hoping to use that additional space to fill it with buds from the other 2 healthier plants.

I put the screen in around 8 inches above the growing medium, this time its 9 inches, and if i was going to scrog like I did before switching styles this time, i would let it grow about 3in through the screen and then bend it through another hole, making sure to have enough distance to have the top bud pop through the farthest hole. then let that bud site or branch grow another 3in and do it again. in hydro under good conditions I get anywhere from 1in to 1.75in growth per day. so about every 2 days you weave it through. This system this time keeps all the branches completely under the screen and you only pull bud sites up and put them through the holes, not the branch itself.

I really hope that I have answered everyones questions and if there any more I would be more than happy to give my advice. Hopefully I have also covered some things that people have thought about and haven't really reasearched yet, hopefully i can be a source of info as well. I wish everyone luck in their grows and I will post updated pics later after light comes on, I am currently going to attempt to make a pain cream with the magical butter machine. Using emu oil and buds and a few other ingredients. I will also post a report on how it turned out. I'm hoping it will be an alternative for people with pardon the pun, joint, pain. an oil they can just rub in and get relief from their pain. Emu oil is the ultimate in skin penetration and absorption. I'm hoping using the emu oil as a means to reach down into the skin and joints and tissues will bring the medical effects of the medical marijuana into the muscles skin and joints. Anyway I will let everyone know how it turns out,

I have another grow as well, but its commercial and at a different location and hard to take pics of daily, in my resume of plants grown and worked with, are Dr. Grinspoon, Big Bang, Ultimate purple, Chocolope, Jack Herer, Critical Kush, and Agent Orange along with the White Widow of course. I have grown white widow by far the longest, but I do have a couple years experience growing all the others. Ive learned a few things about them as well as I have grown them.

Thanks for reading these long posts I put up, most are to say what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, and also to answer questions that are asked, along with giving info that I have picked up and learned over the years that may take a while of googling to find out. Again thank you for your patience and time and stay tuned my grow is about to get to the good part, flower in about a week or so then well really see these babies take off!

 

[Stage]

 

[sciguy]

Thx for joining the party!

 

[sciguy]

I'm looking to get into breeding if anyone has info please let me know, it will be my first attempt, I have a few regular seeds of a strain that I really like and would like to continue having its genetics in stock. I have no idea how to breed plants other than basic info found off google and this site, but any personal advice from someone that does this regularly would be greatly appreciated

 

[glimmergrass]

Subbed and ready to learn

 

[sciguy]

Me too!

 

[Weaselcracker]

Wow thanks for the detailed answer. I came to the right guy! Based on the fact that the smoke from the trashed looking WW I just finished and harvested seems surprisingly decent in the uncured sample, I'm going to try to give this currently flowering one a chance to prove herself. May reveg her if she shows any promise at all. Though i'm not a big fan of fussy girls. Thanks again for all the great info

 

[Stage]

I'm looking to get into breeding if anyone has info please let me know, it will be my first attempt, I have a few regular seeds of a strain that I really like and would like to continue having its genetics in stock. I have no idea how to breed plants other than basic info found off google and this site, but any personal advice from someone that does this regularly would be greatly appreciated

Sciguy my dude, you should peek into MassMedMan journal.
MassMedMan's Seeding Project - THC Bomb & Holy Grail Kush
He has one currently where he walks thru seed breeding process with the colloidal silver or something like that.
Im sure he can point you in the right direction.

 

[sciguy]

Thx for the info I will definitely be checking that out. Hope all is well with everyones grows.

Heres a couple pics I snapped before turning the lights off this morning,

I will update with more pics after the lights come back on

 

[Frostbourne]

hey sciguy, nice to see someone present a journal so scholarly. im currently running DWC, but am still pretty new, so i am happy to learn from you

 

[sciguy]

Well I was trying to do this update and post from my pc but it won't open the website for 420magazine.com for some reason, but I can get on it from my cell service. Weird.

Anyway here are some pics I just took. We ended up taking the scrog out and just doing some serious lst work on the girls. One of them is turning into a real monster. We decided to take the scrog out since it was such a pain to change everything out. We also cleaned all the buckets and gave fresh nutes. And this week will be transition week to flower. I added a new CO2 pad made sure the pH was 6.0 in all buckets.

 

[GrizzWald]

Producing Feminized Seeds Using Colloidal Silver

DIY How to Make Your Own Colloidal Silver for Feminized Seed Production

Subbed....looking great...

 

[Stage]

What HE^^ said

 

[sciguy]

Thank you all for the help with breeding, those articles answered the questions I had, after this Harvest I will start a new journal on my attempt on breeding. both naturally, with a natural male and natural female to produce regular seeds, and unnaturally, I will do this 2 different ways, I will use colloidal silver on 2 feminized plants of different strains to breed and cross the genetics making a new strain. I will also use colloidal silver on a regular female plant as well as a control, see what works best. What takes longer to take, which one has a better reproduction rate, and to see if I can create feminized seeds. I look forward to the day I never have to buy seeds again, where I will always have them in stock, both regular and feminized. I would like to keep regular seeds to hold on to the genetics, all the seeds that I currently have will be bred back to try and get its pure genetics before keeping those regular seeds, by doing this I hope I can keep a steady supply of perfect strains either for growing or for spreading throughout the medical community. Seeds are a hard thing to come by, you have to order them online, and pray they don't get nabbed by customs as they enter the country, even when they do arrive, sometimes they don't come in breeder packs, just in little baggies with a label to let you know what seed is what. How do you truly know what seeds you are getting? For me I would rather have my own supply and not have to worry about the postal system misplacing my items.

Again thank you all for the articles that will help me achieve this small dream of mine.

Last night I posted some pics after taking the plants out from under the scrog. It was late at night and I was tired so I didn't post very much about it. Well last night when they were under the scrog I was looking at the plants and trying to figure out how I was going to be able to water and change the nutes on the buckets. I noticed the bucket in the back was extremely hard to get to to change everything. I did put the plant buckets on plant stands to try and raise them higher so I can access the drain plug and drain all the nutrient water out of the buckets and use the top fill hole to add new water and nutes, this was a great idea in theory but practical wise, it was not the best choice. I also had to cut the screen which left sharp points along the sides which when you reach in to do anything to the plants you stab yourself. I already put enough blood and sweat into these plants, I wasn't about to continue sacrificing more. Also found out the wife is prego, so there goes my helper in the grow room, since she wont be able to bend down much anymore. Plus I figured since shes doing some growing of her own over the next 9 months, its not fair to ask her for help.

So I pulled the plants back through the screen cut the zipties holding the screen to the tent, and removed it. The plants were pretty spread out due to the screen being on top of them, this made it easier to tie them down. I took my drill and small screws and placed drilled the screws into the top lid leaving enough room to tie string around the screw. I then took mason line and pulled down each branch to expose the center of the plant and tied it down to the screw using the mason line. You have to be sure to maneuver the line to where it is just holding onto a branch and not pulling on a bud site. Also being careful not to tie it on too tight to make sure it doesn't cut into the plant. Now each plant is nice and opened up. I changed the nutrients and the water in all the buckets, I used 2 gallons of RO water in each bucket along with 10ml of CALMAG, 20ml of FLORAMICRO and FLORAGRO, and 10ml of FLORABLOOM. in 2 buckets I also added 5ml of rapid start since the roots were very small and lacking size compared to the other 2 buckets. Ph up was added to bring the PH to 6.0 in all buckets, the amounts of nutes I used are in conjunction with transition week feeding formula by general hydroponics. I will be changing the nutes in each bucket again next sunday with full flower nutes, and switch the light schedule to flower next sunday as well.

Thanks for all the help and advice from the people on this site, I will be posting more updates later after the lights turn on again.

 

[sciguy]

Here are some updated pics,

Here is the biggest monster of them all, and her root ball, hard to think she was a 1.5in cutting,

Here are the rest,

PH was in range as well as the ppms, all plants are feeding and drinking the right amounts of water, GreenPad CO2 generator is still working, I use a sponge that I wet with water, and wrap it up in the pad, allowing it to maintain humidity for a few days, and then just spray daily as needed on the outside of the pad, and the sponge a few sprays to keep it moist. This has provided an excellent source of additional CO2, the only drawback is, having to use so many for the grow tent, these would be perfect for a small grow closet or small stealth grow. I know they do make the bigger ones, but for the price, you could use a different form of CO2 generator, like the buckets, or even the bag CO2 that's organic. Those are cheaper options compared to how long they last compared to to the pads, Just my opinion and reference to anyone curious about the pads. I will be changing to a new form for my next grow. Hope all is well in everyone garden, and always remember to keep it green!

 

[sciguy]

Hope all is well with everyones grow.

Here are a few pics I just snapped before turning off the lights for the next 6 hours

Its crazy watching them grow sometimes it blows my mind, heres a group shot from about a week ago, and then todays group shot, a lot of growth.

 

[sciguy]

Sunday Oct 4th will be the first day that the lights will be on the flower schedule. I am not counting that day as week 1 of flower, I will be waiting for buds to develop before I officially call it the beginning of week 1 of flower. I will still be giving it CALMAG until they reach week 2 of flower then switch to SWEET.

The grow room has a strong minty weed kind of a smell, mixed with skunk, and it intensifies daily. I have to leave a open jar of ONA gel outside the grow room door after I close it to catch the smell coming out from the crack under the door and keep it from going into the rest of my house.

I am considering adding a new piece of equipment to my grows, it will be about a month until I order it and the whole setup. The last couple months me and the wife have really been trying to figure out what all growers want, how to grow a crap load of weed without a hell of a lot of work, and do it indoors. I came across a rotating hydroponics garden, I wont say the name of the unit, but it holds 360 plants in a RDWC system. I was not going to use all plant spots, even the manufacturer says to only use 75% if growing from seed to harvest to allow room for growth. Only 200, and use THC BOMB AUTO seeds.

Below is some info copied from the site, just the text about the machine.




These compact rotating gardens will grow an unprecedented number of plants in a very small space. an ebb & flow system on steroids.

The cylinder makes a complete rotation around the light once every hour, and the plants get watered for about 10 minutes each as many times per day as required. Uses inexpensive Rockwool blocks.

The beauty of this system is that the plants are constantly experiencing the stress of their own weight with the uniformity of close, cool intense light, growing short and compact for better nutrient uptake.

360 uses two lights. Dimensions: 68" D x 62" W x 64" H. Ballasts and bulbs NOT included with the rotating gardens. They work best with any HID bulb range from 400 or 1000 watt.





That's the info on the machine, I am planning on using the 1000w options. Along with this I am planning on getting a completely automatic hydroponic monitoring and feeding system. Theres many multiple parts to it, but basically it includes a wireless sensor for everything like the ph, the ppm, the CO2, even light sensors that measure PAR and tell you where the intensities are so you can adjust your lights for your plants, unless you have electric light movers then no worry. I will describe what it does, Its like the auto growing assistant.

- it connects to every aspect of your grow system and transmits all of it to an app reachable by any wireless device from wifi

- all systems are checked and monitored 24/7

- comes with a 3 part automatic feeding system, also ordering 2 other feeding systems that tie in together for calmag and other additives

- I can control what time the lights come on and off via my phone, or other device

- I can set the system for example, to maintain the ph at 6.0, the CO2 ppm to be at 1000 constantly, and the temp to stay at 90F, the water pump to be on full blast, and to maintain the ppm at a certain number like 1200, or I can tell the system to refill the ppm to 1200 once it reaches a certain ppm like 500. This way you never have to touch your system other than to refill your CO2 tank, or to refill your feeding tanks, and clean your reservoir out. Which is easy to get to and access for the machine. I like it since it will enable me to not have to bend down as much anymore, but the downside is that you have to grow small plants, that's why I was wanting to grow the Autoflower strains and read good reviews about THC Bomb Auto. It grows perfect height for that machine and has a potent THC content.

This machine should in theory produce 12lbs of dry material per run. This is not for a personal grow, this is for my commercial grow, I was wanting a smaller setup that doesn't take up so much square footage. The machine is just over 5k, and the monitoring system is about 4k, but it has no monthly monitoring fees. also comes with 3 gallons of my choice of plant foods and additives.

Any ideas on it or if anyone is currently using one please let me know, I actually plan on ordering everything next week unless someone has had bad experience with these types of grow systems. I would be forever grateful for any input.