White Widow x Big Bud (coco)

100% germination from this batch of Female Seeds White Widow x Big Bud. Germinated in peat plugs and then into the final 16L pots. Pre soaked the coco in pH balanced water but forgot to add nutrients so the grow nearly ended almost before it had begun. The plants just froze up on me around day 6 and after a slight panic, I realised what was amiss and added some nutes...

After stopping the new plants in their tracks with lack of nutrients (I pre-soaked the coco in plain water and forgot to add nutes!!), they recovered amazingly well but I lost 3/4 days. By day 12 they were back on track. You can see from the side-on shot that these are going to be quite short and bushy - as you would expect from this strain.

Plants were topped to 4th node on day 16 but on day 18 I changed my mind and decided to do a sort of mainline grow. It's not a proper mainline but I cut them down to the first node branches to get two mains coming off the stem. Started to stake them out with wire but it's hard to see because the plants are so squat. The bottom left plant is a Blue Gelato so is not really part of this diary but you can see it is much lankier than the five WWxBB girls and shows the wire pins better.

I topped the two main side branches on day 22 and am letting them grow out 4 each (2 per side) to give 8 tops in total. This is not a proper mainline but there you go, it should give me what I want. Due to the squat, bushy nature of these girls, it is hard to see the pins that I am training them with but it will get much clearer as they develop and I start pruning unwanted growth. At his stage I am using wire to keep everything flat, spreading the tops out in the horizontal plane. You can see some nutrient burn - this was my mistake - I suddenly dropped the humidity (from about 70% to 50%) and they took up too much nutrient. As soon as I restored the humidity levels, they were fine. From day 28 I am removing all the unwanted side growth and now you can see how the wire is holding the structure I want. The Blue Gelato is bottom right in the day 28 pics and you can see I damaged 2 branches so it will end up having only 6 tops.

Now it just a question of moving the wire pins out every day, keeping the side branches flat in order to spread the tops apart so they have room in flower. You can see in the day 33 pictures how, if you pin the branches down in the morning, the tops turn up during the day and by evening are growing vertically again. Pretty amazing. By day 35, I have stopped training the plants and am letting them grow upwards, ready for flipping to flower. Hopefully they will need only one more week.

My CF is 13 which is the bottom of the range recommended and I am going to go up to 15/16 on the next feed. The plants look like they could use a bit more feed - although who knows - it's a hard one to call? They do not look like they've had enough yet so we will see how it goes. So far all the tops are at the same height which is what I am trying to maintain as we approach flower and I am getting really into the mainlining approach to growing. Very satisfying so far. As they are nearing flower I am trying to get in control of the humidity because the last thing I want is bud-rot in the colas. I go for 75% early veg but then try to rein it in. Without any intervention I get 60% day and 75% night. At night my dehumidifier can take 10% off but in the day it is pretty useless. I think 65% at night will be OK as long as I don't let the temperature go below 20C. I also have more air circulation than in previous grows, almost all of which had a tiny bit of bud-rot before harvest. Also, the way they are growing from the mainline, I think I will be able to get good air flow between the colas and there will be no side branches at all to get in the way. I hate bud-rot. Day 39 veg - would have liked more vertical growth but it is accelerating so should be good to flip them at the end of this week. Also from what I have read, WWxBB is not a tall plant so they are performing as expected. Generally, I have been extremely . impressed with this strain in terms of hardiness and ability to cope with a huge amount of stress (and 2 big mistakes from me early on). The plants just keep coming back for more. Very nice. Also they have been very easy to feed with no issues. You can tell they are elite genetics - really nice to grow so far.

veg day 45 I was away from the grow for a couple of days so they are getting flipped to flower a few days later than planned. Tomorrow is stripping unwanted growth before flower. I will remove all but the top few grow-sites on each arm (8 arms per plant). They are incredibly healthy looking, bursting with life. Really nice. flower day 1 lights are on 12/12 and I have stripped off all the lower growth-sites (side branches) and removed a few fan leaves but for the most part have left leaves on. The plants will be left to stretch now and I will do a defoliation in a few weeks. Another Telos 008 light has been added because the spread of the plants has outgrown the footprint from the initial pair of lights and I have moved the plants around to make the most of the additional output. flower day 6 cut off a few more of the weaker side branches on some of the main stems and defoliated a little - the main defoliation will be at the end of week 2/start of week 3. plants are in peak health at the moment so i am looking forward to them starting to stack-up with bud sites. 👌 i'm only wanting 8 main colas per plant so, at the risk of dropping yield a bit, any side growth that doesn't contribute to this outcome is getting chopped 💪

flower day 8 start of week 2 of flower - just letting them do their thing - no deficiencies so far - very healthy. flower day 9 removed more unwanted side branches to focus resources on what will become the 8 main colas per plant. flower day 11 pistils showing clearly now. flower day 12 they seem to have started to really go for it in the last 24hrs - very strong signs of flowering. flower day 14 end of second week of flower and they are looking banging. can't get over how full of life-force these plants are - quite amazing! 👌💪

flower day 15 they are looking great going into week 3 of flower - the big defoliation is coming in a day or so... flower day 17 DEFOLIATION! Almost every fan leaf has been removed - I have defoliated in previous grows but never as ruthlessly as this. Makes me a bit nervous to be honest! 😮 flower day 18 massive amount of energy going into flowering sites - the plants have taken the defoliation in their stride and I think it has somehow triggered an even more vigorous flowering. Another really nice side-effect is the humidity has dropped about 5%. 👌 flower day 21 end of week 3 - no problems at all so far & excellent flowering action on all 5 plants - they are stacking-up nicely! ✊

flower day 22 loving watching them go - very vigorous plants! 💪 from this week i am adding Shogun PK Warrior flower boost to the mix. flower day 24 they continue to stack-up buds apace and there is no more actual growth in the plants now, all the energy is going into flowering. 👌 flower day 26 really enjoying growing these amazing plants - they're so full of life. really beautiful. ✊ flower day 28 by now they are pretty much locked-in, in terms of branch structure but there is always room for improvement so today I used wire spacers to push apart any too close branches. check out the "after branch spreading" picture to see - the spacing between branches is now increased. i am anticipating some very heavy colas so i don't want them too close together - we need really good airflow in the tent as they fatten up because my RH is still in the high 50s even though the dehumidifier is basically on 24/7.

day 29 flower the branch spreader bars have opened out the plants nicely to give the colas more room to grow. i made them out of 2.5mm galvanised wire with a kind of "S" shape (see photo) bent into either end. they fit between two opposite branches and push them apart. the amount of spacing can be varied by moving them higher or lower - works a treat 👌 flower day 33 ambient temperatures have dropped a lot recently - my space heater has been activating more and more to keep the tent temperature at least 20C during lights-off. the heater is located in the room in which the tent sits but it has a temperature probe inside the tent. the plants are bulking-up nicely. this is the first grow I have ever done without any nutrient deficiency issues (so far & touch wood!🙏).

flower day 36 looking forward to the next 3 weeks leading to harvest - should really bulk up in that time. all the training and pruning seems to have been worth it and each plant has 8 nice colas and almost no weak/low-potential bud sites. really happy with this grow 💪 flower day 38 one of the plants is not looking as great as the rest. she started getting brown pistils earlier than the others and is a bit smaller. i can't tell if it is an environmental or a genetic issue and she is doing OK but is not quite right somehow. there is another plant that looks a bit stronger than the rest too so probably just natural variation. flower day 40 👍

flower day 44 no problems as yet - hopefully this will be the penultimate week of flower. the tent has a very heavy smell now and i can only open it for brief periods! flower day 46 👌 flower day 48 a few cloudy trichomes but there is at least a week to go (the stated flower period for this strain is 56 days).

flower day 50 start of week 8 and possibly final week of flower although I can see them going on a bit longer as there are no amber trichomes yet. flower day 52 will definitely run at least to the end of the week - they are still improving each day 💪 my nutrient pH is currently on the high side of things @ 6.4 but no problems detected. in fact, i have not had any nutrient issue symptoms the entire grow (a first for me👌) but I give most of the credit to the genetics of this strain - very easy to grow, very vigorous and pretty uniform in terms of phenotypes - i have one slightly smaller plant that went brown earlier but other than that, they are very similar. flower day 54 one or two amber trichomes but they are definitely going to go over 8 weeks (Sunday). flower day 56 one of the plants has about 5%-10% amber trichomes so i am starting to flush her - the other four are still getting feed going into week nine.

flower day 57 so we are into extra-time with these 👍 One out of five is being flushed now but the other four are not ready yet. So far my strategy of keeping night-time temps above 18/19C and having the dehumidifier on above 50% has kept the dreaded bud-rot away. 🙏 flower day 59 all are now being flushed - you can just tell they are done and have given everything they've got. 🙏 been an absolute pleasure to grow 👌 should take about four days on plain water so i will expect to be chopping down exactly at the end of week 9 of flower.

Easy to grow - because of mainling I had no waste bud and each plant took less than 60 minutes to fully trim (dry).