White Widow Auto - First Public Journal

KcHaZ

New Member
I have been lurking for a while and appreciate this community for it's sharing of information...

I'll be playing catch up a bit since I'm about 2+ weeks from harvest, but I have been keeping daily diligent hand-written notes and taking pictures the whole time, so I will do my best to transcribe and get you to the present...

Some Background (otherwise skip to Soil recipe to begin journal)

Briefly, I have been a long time cannabis user (30+ years) and grew mostly bag-seed in the 90's through college and into early adulthood/fatherhood. Life happened and while I still smoked cannabis and maintained a diverse garden of edibles and ornamentals thriving in a living organic soil (I do have a green thumb)...Alas, I had to give up the cannabis growing because it was too stressful to deal with my neighbors back then and as always -- potential thieves...now fast forward 25 something years with the laws changing and having my card I'm back in the game with gusto! :allgood:

When I last grew, Autos were not mainstream yet and the 50/50 sexing game was the norm. Feminized genetics were still frail and frankly taboo at the time so that was just what I had to do...

So relying on my gut-level plant senses (if ya got it ya know what I'm talking about), and my ever-growing knowledge of living soil I just had to try an auto or two (..errrr...well... actually make that 6 Autos right now but I'm just going to post this White Widow Auto for now)...I have regular photoperiod plants started as well (Tangie, Acapulco Gold, Durban, and 8-Ball Kush) but those can be for another time if all goes well here...

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to learn from you all in the process...many thanks and go easy on an old stoner will ya! :)

Indoor Lighting inside small Gorilla Grow Tent (T22?) : Top > 400Watt MH/HPS interchangeable per veg/bloom cycle. Top >300 Watt LED, Sides > 4x24 watt T5's

Outdoor Lighting : Sun! Duh!
But seriously, living in the Central Valley of CA offers mild winters, temperate Spring and Autumn and hot dry summers - Classic Mediterranean climate but it does have it's challenges....namely the sun's heat and intensity in the summer. I have a 30% white shade cloth that is permanently above most of my outdoor beds. I have found white to be best as it diffuses and reflects the light to that almost perfect light overcast lighting that plants love so much. No harsh shadows - just even, softly intense natural light.

Super-Hot-Super-Soil Mix and Match...

I try to grow everything from Avocados & Aloe to Zucchini and Zinnias, but most of my fruits and vegetables I grow organically in raised beds...so I use a very "hot" cooked super soil base mixed with some FFoF base soil for example, and then add amendments if needed (rarely if ever) to fine-tune for different plants for my different plots outside. That make any sense?

In March I made about a cubic yard batch of Cannabis Super Soil loosely based on various recipes I've researched and from my own experience growing organically in this area...

Base Soil was a mix of Root Organics 707 (x1), FFoF (x1), Happy Frog(x 1 cft), M3 MMJ Soil(x2 cft), Coco-Coir (2 large "bricks" of roots organics coir about 1.5cf each once hydrated)-- and some local topsoil (about 1.5cf). -- all in all about a yard + or - of base soil before mixing any amendments...

This super-soil is intentionally very "hot" even after a 30 day cook of average 90+ degree core temps I think of it as a super-soil concentrate that I cut with plain FFoF soil, and it has worked very well for me with edibles so I hope it works OK for cannabis...I didn't know anything back in the day and still managed to grow some pretty excellent grass

...I already have 3 future grows plotted out for a 6-8 month harvest rotation...this White Widow will be the first of about 6 harvests I have planned with Autos and Photo-Sensitive cannabis in fall...helloooo Tangie and Durban? :)

Amendments are all initially triple-mixed and remixed each week...


In no apparent order with most as standard ratio measurements however I did SWAG measurements on some items (Scientific-Wild-Ass-Guess):morenutes:

1. Espoma Plant Tone (love this stuff) -
2. Espoma Flower Tone -
3. 30 lbs Master Organics Worm Castings
4. 1 lb Homemade Vermicompost - The good stuff!
5. 1 lb Papa's Perfect Poop
6. Kelp Meal
7. Greensand (left-over from last batch but kind of worthless imo)
8. Gypsum (my beds, which average about 24 inches high , sit on the most god-awful clay you've ever seen...before putting beds down I had to Pick/dig/chop/hack/Slash and bleed about 2 feet down, mix it the best I could with bark mulch, straw, gypsum and a home-brewed fungal dominant AACT...so my hope is if any roots get down that deep they will hopefully have a nice layer of fungi ready to help break through that shit. The small amount of gypsum will help with any clay that ends up getting into upper layers of super-soil mix in beds...in smart pots won't matter much as it is so diluted and PH neutral.)
9a Bone-meal
9b Blood Meal
10. Peruvian Seabird Guano
11. Bat Guano
12. Roots Organics Dry Mix - Uprising Grow
13. Roots Organics Dry Mix - Uprising Foundation
14. Roots Organics Dry Mix - Uprising Bloom
15. 2-3 cups Dolomite Lime
16. 1-2 cups Azomite
17. 1/2 lb Organic Plant Magic powder (My easy button for compost teas when I'm Lazy or in this case added directly to soil)
18. 1 cup Azos inoculant
19. 1 cup Mycos inoculant (Won't do much good until roots get there, but makes me feel warm inside knowing it's there)
20. 2 tbsp Epsom Salt
21. 1/4 cup Humic/Fulvic Acid
22. 1/4 cup Roots Organics Oregonism XL
23a 4 cups Neem Meal -- Two Words - Fungus Gnats - F^Ck!ng hate the bastards...so whatever nematodes I eventually add don't get the larvae, the Neem will and the adults hate the stuff, and I'm almost with them -- just smells like total death for the first couple weeks of cook if I'm remixing -yuck!
23b 1lb High-Quality Bokashi - I add Bokashi for the final 2 weeks of the cook. Probably overkill, but it seriously super-charges the microbial life for that last couple weeks and any anaerobic life that was bad will be mostly replaced with the good anaerobic ones (living soil needs both anaerobic and aerobic to thrive - just gotta find the right ones for balance imo) Rock dust and BioChar or other large organic surface area items will help keep some populations intact after any further soil agitation before planting or adding to beds later as needed.
24. 1/2 to 1 Cft Master Organics BioChar (Presoaked with a diluted-dash of my very own 10:1 piss & H2O, a splash of molasses and a top-off of kelp extract - ya know... for those long days when my girl's microbe's need a little pick-me-up nute reserve :)
25. Last but not least I throw in about 5-10 lbs of Charlie's Compost. Something about the fine red clay(and it's properties that differ from the clay around here) that I love in small doses in my soil mixes.
26. Ok this is actually the last step - I lightly water the mix with a homemade balanced bacteria/fungal ACT before covering with a tarp. And yeah, I do look under a microscope to see if I get that nice 50/50 split. I was a microbiologist in my other life I swear :) Anyway, The microbes in the "wetting agent ACT" are homegrown from cultures I have from soil samples nearby. My wife just loves the mason jars above the fridge marked with location/soil type and if I can identify, the microbe-culture(s) I'm attempting to grow with baby rice and dirt :)

OK -- that's the soil about 3 months ago, cooked for about 40 days @ 90+ degrees and then I mixed it with FFoF soil about 60/40 -ss/ffof...solid layer of super soil in last 3-6 inches of smart pots if they are going mobile...otherwise my beds are already prepped with a similar 50/50 mixture from my winter prep batch...

Autos like a sh!t-ton of light - so for the whole month of April and into 1st week of May I lugged her outside during day and inside into a small Gorilla Grow tent under a 400 watt MH (during veg, then 400 HPS once she started to flower in week 3), a 300 watt LED, and 4 small 24 watt T5's on the sides during the night...(overkill I know but will be great for winter grows in this tent in my garage)...once I got up and around in morning I switched off the lights and moved her out into the outdoor grow area...PIA but worth it as you'll see.

So 24/7 light first 2 weeks, then 20/4 week 3, then 18/6 week 4 and 16/8 last week of moving between inside and outside...by 2nd week in May sunlight is getting over 14 hours here, so from then on she remained outside and is still there for another couple weeks until harvest...

I'll be updating the pics over the next couple days showing LST etc to get caught up if that's OK...?...hope that's ok.

Thanks for your views and hope to get you all caught up soon...as I mentioned I think I'm about 2 weeks from harvest currently....first pic here is from April 1st the day she went into her 5 gallon smart pot...I have other autos and a few other personal journals that are going on but I only have time to post on this White Widow classic for now...more pics soon.

1st picture was Day 1 going outside - April 1st!


And the pain of bringing her inside at night for supplimental lighting -- The things we do for love!
 
Re: ~ White Widow Auto ~A First Public Journal

April growth and training below...LSTed very early but paid off I think...
Week 1 finishing up here >

Week 2 finishing up here >

Week 3 and 4 finishing up here with LST apparent >




Weeks 5-6 here >

Week 7ish finishing up here >

Outdoor Grow Area - made with all scrap wood :)



Week 8 finishing 8 here >


Current week 9/10 Pics to be posted next with a brief feed schedule I've been following...
 
Re: ~ White Widow Auto ~A First Public Journal

Current pics here -- Took these yesterday and today...yum



Once a week I water with an AACT mixed with FFoF organic liquid bloom, buddah bloom, HPK+ and some Kelp extract with molasses - 1/4 to 1/2 strength..now I'm going to let her dry out these last couple weeks to finish off bloom
 
Re: ~ White Widow Auto ~A First Public Journal

Here is from today...she is about 2 weeks or less I would say?


Will need your help to harvest at peak potency...looking for around 10% amber trichs if possible?
 
Re: ~ White Widow Auto ~A First Public Journal

Taken a couple hours ago...you can see I cleared out a bit underneath as well as stopped LST at the pot's edge...She's thickening up daily now! That's it for now...
 
Re: ~ White Widow Auto ~A First Public Journal

Taken a couple hours ago...you can see I cleared out a bit underneath as well as stopped LST at the pot's edge...She's thickening up daily now! That's it for now...
I will pull up a chair if you don't mind, i have 4 ww auto on day 51 today, your ww is looking great.✌
 
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Auto white widow here as well starting to flower
 
Wouldn't you know it...After saying how dry and hot our spring/summers are here I wake up to freakin' surprise rain showers...enough to drench my WW buds...never had to deal with mold here, but if there ever were conditions ripe for it (moist, warm, wet right now) it's now....any tips other than moving her with regards to dealing with a surprise shower on your nearly ready buds would be appreciated!
 
They were freebies from Seedsman...
Cool, that what mine are, here is one of mine, she is the furthest along in flowering and she is fattening up nicely, looks like she will have some fat colas at least im hoping, i would suggest topping and lst with these girls, if you don't want to top at the least lst and keep everything even. i left one untopped and hardly no training and she is smaller than her sisters. They responded great to topping and never slowed down a bit, they exploded. This is just a suggestion, im still new to all of this indoor growing, best of luck.✌
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Looking nice i might do ww next am doing feminized seeds from herbies atm but am gonna join the ride and see how yours do how bigs your tent and how many you fit, i got a 1.2m x 2.4m tent and not sure how many autos i could squeeze in but still give enough room to breath
 
Cool, that what mine are, here is one of mine, she is the furthest along in flowering and she is fattening up nicely, looks like she will have some fat colas at least im hoping, i would suggest topping and lst with these girls, if you don't want to top at the least lst and keep everything even. i left one untopped and hardly no training and she is smaller than her sisters. They responded great to topping and never slowed down a bit, they exploded. This is just a suggestion, im still new to all of this indoor growing, best of luck.✌

Yeah, A couple other Autos I have I'm playing with FIM and Topping during their short burst of Veg time...I did not top this WW, but I LSTed the crap outta her from early on (see early pics) and it's paying off...and I noticed taking a bit of the underbrush off last week sent that diverted energy right back into main bud sights where I wanted them. Kind of like a toned-down lolli-pop trim... I'm growing mine outdoors and won't have a full-time indoor harvest until after Fall harvest outdoors...yours are looking great and thanks for checking.
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Here are a couple pics to give perspective on her small, but stout stature...
 
Looking nice i might do ww next am doing feminized seeds from herbies atm but am gonna join the ride and see how yours do how bigs your tent and how many you fit, i got a 1.2m x 2.4m tent and not sure how many autos i could squeeze in but still give enough room to breath
My tent is 4ft by 4ft and i started with eight autos but it was just to crowded after they got bigger so i took two out and that leaves me with six, its alot easier to work with. I think if i would have put 5 in there and done alot of lst i could have just about filled it up with them, were it was so crowded in my tent it restricted me a little bit with my lst after they got a little bigger. That would also depend on your pot size, i will be doing all my autos in 5-gal, i put my wws in 3 and 4 gallon this time and i wish i would have put them in 5 like the thc bomb, they are still going to produce good but i like the extra room for the roots.✌
 
Am using 15l 3.3gal autopots but will probably switch on next grow to accomadate nice living for big autos yours seem a nice size so far for a 3 gal pot
 
Am using 15l 3.3gal autopots but will probably switch on next grow to accomadate nice living for big autos yours seem a nice size so far for a 3 gal pot

It's a 5 gallon smart pot not 3 gal...I have another Auto in a 3 gallon "just to see" if it's enought for roots...5 might be overkill tbh, but I wanted to make sure she had enough room in the end which seems to be paying off some.
 
Am using 15l 3.3gal autopots but will probably switch on next grow to accomadate nice living for big autos yours seem a nice size so far for a 3 gal pot
Yea you will do good with the three gallon, i probably wouldn't put no more than six i n there even with 3gal, these autos can get huge.✌
 
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