MotaFina - 15 Year Old White Widow x Skunk Seeds - Indoor Soil - HID

[MotaFina]

This is my first post ever, my first journal ever, and my first grow in about 13 years. Back then, I moved out of a state where it was easy to get a medical card to a state where only terminally ill patients were allowed medicine. They've relaxed that a little and now they allow medicine for more conditions so my wife is getting a card. Here's what I'm doing:

Strains: One strain is one that my late brother bred back home. It's a cross between White Widow and Skunk. The seeds are about 15-years old, but I did manage to germinate 2 of them.

The other strain is bagseed from a dispensary in Oregon. They were selling 1/8s of a lightly seeded strain for $13 so we grabbed one and saved the seeds. I figure these are the result of one of two possibilities: either a plant went hermaphrodite and pollinated itself, or a nearby plant went hermie and pollinated this one. Either way, I'm guessing this might be a mistake growing these, but we thought we'd give it a try and just keep a close eye on them.

Environment: Indoors in a 4x4 tent in a finished basement using organic soil (mixture of FFOF and locally produced premium potting soil, with earthworm castings and perlite added). I've got a single variable speed inline fan blowing at low speed into the bottom of the tent, and a circulating fan blowing inside. The Oregon bagseed (OBS) are in 1 gal pots and the White Widow Skunk (JWWS) are in 2 gal.

Lighting: Currently under 400w MH. This will be swapped to 1000w HPS for flowering

Status: 28 days from seed. They're very stretchy. The OGS plants have little to no secondary growth.

Going forward, I'm facing these dilemmas: 1.) We're only allowed 7 plants in veg and 2 "mature", so I'll need to cull some, and 2.) The OGS seeds I have no idea if they're an autoflower strain or if feminized or hermies or what. The JWWS I believe are regular seed so I may have to deal with males. I'm pretty much a noob with only a single 20-month perpetual grow (3 harvests) under my belt. I like the ideas I'm seeing on here for SCROG and LST, so I might try one of those.

Here's pics.

 

[MotaFina]

re: MotaFina - 15 Year Old White Widow & Skunk Seeds - Indoor Soil - HID

Question: With the hood shown in the post above, is there a way to connect ducting to it? Or should I just hang the duct nearby with my fan sucking the hot air out the top?

 

[inacid]

re: MotaFina - 15 Year Old White Widow & Skunk Seeds - Indoor Soil - HID

It looks like your hood has an air out take for 6 inch ducting on the left? but maybe I am not seeing it right? my air cooled hood look like:

 

[MotaFina]

Re: MotaFina - 15 Year Old White Widow & Skunk Seeds - Indoor Soil - HID

It looks like your hood has an air out take for 6 inch ducting on the left? but maybe I am not seeing it right? my air cooled hood look like:

Thanks! That gives me an idea. The hood I have has a vented cover with 4 screws. I could probably find some sort of flange to attach a connector like the one on your hood.

 

[Skunkworkz]

That flange is a simple 4" stove piping adapter from a hardware store. That hood of yours, that's a Classic from the 90's .
Thing is, if you attach a 4" duct & use the air cooled glass, you're going to have massive negative pressure while attempting to suck air through, & your fan will probably burn out because of the increased resistance. So, your best bet with that reflector is to leave the glass out & blow cold air over the bulb & out/down. Well, the best bet, is to spend $119 on a 6" ducted, modern, air cooled hood. Xtra Sun by Hydrofarm is a very good budget reflector & its glass is hinged, w/a good solid gasket. You're current cord set & ballast will work just fine with it. Also, buy a new bulb. There's no substitute for Hortilux HPS. .
Good luck!!

 

[MotaFina]

That flange is a simple 4" stove piping adapter from a hardware store. That hood of yours, that's a Classic from the 90's

That hood has been in a box for the last 13 years.

Also, buy a new bulb. There's no substitute for Hortilux HPS.

I have a 1000w Hortilux HPS, but I was going to switch to that for flowering. Is MH better for Veg? That's a 400w Agrosun MH.

My bulbs are as old as the hoods but were only used for about a year. Do they need to be replaced?

Thanks!

 

[Skunkworkz]

That hood has been in a box for the last 13 years.



I have a 1000w Hortilux HPS, but I was going to switch to that for flowering. Is MH better for Veg? That's a 400w Agrosun MH.

My bulbs are as old as the hoods but were only used for about a year. Do they need to be replaced?

Thanks!

Studies have shown that the blue light in MH is no better for veg than an HPS. And new HPS bulbs are color corrected to include blue spectrum anyway. Bulbs should be replaced 1x/year, minimum, so yes, buy new ones. HPS puts down considerably more usable light per watt than MH, so default to HPS, is my advice.
Also, if you can, always veg under the most powerful light you can, for best results, after the first 2 weeks.

 

[MotaFina]

This is how all the plants look up close. It's about 10 inches tall and is very stretched out. What can I do to stop the stretch? Top them?

 

[Skunkworkz]

This is how all the plants look up close. It's about 10 inches tall and is very stretched out. What can I do to stop the stretch? Top them?

Remove the 1st two sets of leaves, repot, & bury that sucker about 4" deeper. Then get it under better, more direct light, maybe a fluorescent @ 2-3"

 

[MotaFina]

Remove the 1st two sets of leaves, repot, & bury that sucker about 4" deeper. Then get it under better, more direct light, maybe a fluorescent @ 2-3"

I topped them, but my only light option is to go to the 1000w HPS. Since you recommended that earlier, I'll go ahead and get that one in there, but probably up about 2 feet? Thanks!

 

[Skunkworkz]

I'd stick with the 400w @ 2.5' for now...

 

[MotaFina]

I just read that MH lights go bad even faster than HPS - and should be replaced every 6 months! I just swapped out my old Agrosun bulb for a new bulb. The new bulb appears quite a bit brighter to my eye.

 

[MotaFina]

I also did some LST over the weekend. The plants are so tall already that I had a problem with the two tallest ones - I broke the main stem! Not a full on break, but it just went over - creased at one spot and went over. I've taped them up and they seem to be doing OK for now.

I'm still not seeing much secondary growth, so hopefully the brighter new bulb will help get that going.

I'm watering with full strength Earth Juice nutes now.

 

[MotaFina]

Day 41 from seed....gonna upload some pics.

Here's the group shot - 9 plants in all at this point. It looks like a lot of plant in there now, but to stay legal, I need to drop it down to two plants. So I really need them to bulk up. I'm also hoping they start to show sex soon, so I can eliminate the males before I transplant up to bigger pots:

The tops on one of the Oregon bagseed plants - I did a messy job topping it:

Here's the top on one of the White Widow/Skunks:

The plants stretched like crazy in early veg and they never had much secondary growth. They were ~15 inches tall by the time I had 5 nodes. When I tried to LST, the main stem on two of the plants creased. Here's one I fixed with painters tape:

Here's another really tall one that I'd like to get to bend down a little more. Should I try supercropping the stem somewhere down low?

I've been feeding with every watering, testing the weight of the pots to determine if they're dry enough to need water. At this point I'm using full strength Earth Juice nutes and alternating the Grow product with fish emulsion. I think I might give them straight water next feeding.

Big leaf:

I also installed a second fan pulling air out of the top of the hood, venting to the outside through a window.

 

[MotaFina]

Day 45 from seed and I'm starting to see some preflowers on some of the plants. Man, they are tiny! It's really hard to tell if they're male or female. I've been trying to get a decent photo, but no luck so far. I THINK three of them are showing male, and one could possibly be female. The others are still too soon. I'm hoping that since males tend to show earlier than females, that the others are females....maybe just wishful thinking.

I also had a complete break on one of the plants with the broken main stem. I tried to tape it up again, but it was wilting the next morning. So I clipped the top and put it in water at first, then dipped it into rooting gel and put it in a 50/50 soil/perlite mix. It seems to be doing OK. More of an experiment than anything, since I need to drop down to 2 plants anyways.

Will post pics later....hopefully I'll get a good one of the preflowers.

 

[MotaFina]

Here's a picture of the preflowers on my biggest, healthiest plant.

Male?

 

[MotaFina]

Another shot of the same plant:

 

[Bas1m]

I am currently growing 3 unknown sativa strain , and they look exactly like the ones in the pic .
i did a little research , induce flowering for 2-3 weeks , if they develop balls like shape its a male . Yours is probably a female if Im not mistaken ( if those are pistales in the picture )

 

[MotaFina]

I am currently growing 3 unknown sativa strain , and they look exactly like the ones in the pic .
i did a little research , induce flowering for 2-3 weeks , if they develop balls like shape its a male . Yours is probably a female if Im not mistaken ( if those are pistales in the picture )

I don't see any pistils like in your picture on my plant. This plant is still in veg too. The stipules on my plant kinda look like pistils because they're drying out. I circled the preflower in the picture below - looks like a ball on a stem:

 

[MotaFina]

Day 52 - The two biggest, healthiest plants showed male preflowers, so they were removed. Seven plants left:

The plants aren't doing nearly as well as I'd hoped. They're just not bulking up much at all. And being in the 8th week from seed now, I expected to see more preflowers. I still can't tell what sex any of them are.

Here's the remaining white widow/skunk:

And here's the biggest of the bagseed plants - this one does show female pistils at the top, but I could have sworn it was male a couple of weeks ago: