First Grow, White Widow

Fine tuning the heater temp, but all seems stable now. Sorry about the pics with the grow light, I will figure out how to filter it. Compared to other White Widow diaries, my girls seems to be performing normally.

Well the second week of Veg, and all is proceeding nicely. I have been watching videos on youtube from Weed in a Pot and find they are very informative. I am very happy with the growth so far and will be adding nutes this coming weekend.

This week is continuing to go well. I haven't added any nutes yet, but will start for this coming week. Since things are going well, I thought let it continue why mess a good thing. The potting soil I used is Miracle Grow, so it has some of it own I am sure. I am also going to start some topping this week, and perhaps a little LST. I will also go out and get a trellis net to aid with the LST. I also adjusted some of the settings on my camera, but it does not seem to have made any difference.

This week I made a couple of changes. 1st, I moved the time lapse camera to the other side of the tent and set it to take a pic every 10 mins instead of 5. Then on Monday, I started with the nutes and since now I had to mix them up, I decided to test an auto watering system using a fountain pump and a plant watering kit with hoses and tips that I got at a dollar store no less. Still a growing curve to get the right amounts, as you will see in the time lapse I had a little spill over in one pot. I will play with them more this week to fine tune the amount, then set it on timer and just keep filling the bucket and testing the ph. So far the girls are getting bigger and I ordered a net from Amazon to try the ScrOG method as they get bigger still to keep the height down and spread them out some more and eventually get a better yield at harvest time. I am also going to do a little topping this coming week. I also added an air bubble stone to the bucket to keep the nutes mixed up.

Another good week with more growth, but not as big as I would like, so I moved the lights up higher halfway through the week. I also moved the fan onto a corner post and got bigger pots that I will transplant into this week. After topping last week, you can see new main stems starting. I also found out they need to be fed more than every other day as on friday morning a couple were a bit droopy. After feeding, later in the day, they had perked back up. I would like to give a shout out to Weed in a Pot for all the help I have gotten watching their videos and to let you know since their youtube channel is offline, they can be reached at http://www.weedinapot.com to see all their informative videos "so you, can know this too".

Watching the time lapse shows me how my plants are doing throughout the day. Unfortunately, I am only setup to download the data once a week after the grow has already happened. I noticed on the one from week 5 that there would be times it would show growth, and then later in the day start to droop. I figured this might have to do with my watering schedule, I did not want to over water, so I only did it every 2 days. Then I bumped it up to 1.5 days, but now I am watering every morning and that seems to have helped a bit after watching this weeks video. Next week should show better results I hope. So far each time I check them they seem to be doing well. I would like them a little taller, but I can't complain on how they are doing. I upped the nutes a bit this week as well. Do you think I should water more than once a day? When is the best time to water, just before they start daytime or just before they hit nighttime? Or somewhere in between?

This week I moved them into bigger pots, which is why I think now they were not growing as big as I hoped. They seem to be doing well, and I have added the net now and will let the canopy build up. Since I moved to bigger pots, I did not need to water for a bit, but I think it will be back to normal this week. Check out the video I did today of the room.

My girls are continuing to do well, and spread out. I had a little mishap with the watering pump as it stayed on all afternoon, and drained the nutes bucket, but the girls did not seem to mind and have continued to flourish. I missed a couple of days photos due to changes in my work schedule, but will try to keep on track for the coming week. I have decided today to switch it over to bloom as the canopy is full enough for this first run. I have turned on the bloom switch on my grow lamp and set my timers to a 12-12 schedule starting today. Next week's timelapse should be interesting.

I switched the "spice girls" into bloom this week changing both the schedule to 12 - 12 and turning on the bloom switch on my Mars Reflector 192. As you can see in a couple of the close ups, stigmas are starting to show. They are also starting to grow taller and fill out, and I have had to raise the light up.

Another good week without any worries so far, crossing my finger. Although watching the time lapse, I see them sag during certain times, and then sprout other times. I am trying to watch when I feed them and to only do it when the leaves start to droop. For instance, as I am writing this, I see on my live cam they seem to be doing well, I have been checking the PH most times when I water them, but sometimes I just trigger the pump remotely without testing as it was good the last time I checked it. I can see them starting to develop buds, and hopefully they start to thicken up this week. According to my chart, I will be dropping the Medi One to 1.5 ml/l this week, and continue with 5 ml/l for the massive bloom. I also had to raise up my light a bit, and hopefully they don't get much taller as I only have a couple of inches left on the cord.

This week things seem to be progressing normally. Although not knowing what to expect, I can't say for sure, but no mishaps so far. I think they have stopped stretching, and are starting to get bigger buds, but that may be wishful thinking. Watching the time lapse I am noticing that during certain parts of the day, the leaves are drooping still. At first I manually turned on the pump for their nutrients when I saw the leaves starting to sag, which was generally when I got up in the morning, but then watching the video, I decided to start doing it earlier. After watching last weeks video, I decided to set the pump to go on even earlier, and now I think I might do earlier still, or even perhaps set it to run twice a day. Time will tell... literally.. 😃 As you can see, I dropped the amount of Medi One this week, and upped the Bloom formulation with no big change in the results that I can see, but they do look healthy with green leaves and no unusual tips.

Another good week without any issues. You might notice that my wednesday closeup is showing crystals forming on the leaves. I am trying to stay hands off as much as possible and only checking on them each morning when I take my photos. I have also given them an extra feeding a couple of times to make sure they aren't drying out. I still see in the video the leaves drooping shortly before the lights are coming on, so I think I will add another 1 min cycle in the afternoon. On Saturday I did some defoliation on the lower part of the plant cutting out any leaves that were not getting enough like and ones that had already turned brown. I hope to see how this affected things in next week's video. You may notice that part way through this weeks video, the camera shifted left. I was hoping to capture a single bud growing, but the lense on my camera is not correct for this purpose. I also set the frame rate to once every min from every 5 and all that did is make the clip longer, so I have switched it back to every 5. I could also go to every 10, let me know if you think that would be smoother. Thanks for checking out my page and let me know if there is anything I can be doing better.

Not much to show this week on the timelapse as we had a cold snap and power went out momentarily, and as such, the camera stopped recording, without me realizing this. So I have also added a little video of the rooms progress. Even with the small bit of footage, I can see that my feeding schedule twice a day seems to keep the leaves from drooping at any time in the video, so I will be keeping this going as is, checking the PH every couple of days and topping up the nutes bucket as needed. I am noticing some leaves dying, but they seem to be mostly ones that are not getting enough light and I am removing them as I go. The upper leaves and buds are looking strong so far, and just a touch of smell in the room. The colas are also starting to thicken and my fingers are getting sticky and stinky when working around them. Looking at the plants from a normal distance, they don't look very crystally, but the close up shots really are making them shine. After taking the pics, I like to zoom in on them and see all the crystals.

Nothing exciting happened this week. Even the time lapse is boring as it does not show any growth, its almost as if they have gotten into a time warp. The leaves don't seem to be drooping, or really doing anything. This was the last week of nutes as of yesterday I drained and cleaned the water bucket and they are getting straight water now. I see some of the leaves are getting some spots, so I looked that up and it might be they were getting to much nutrients. Well see in the coming how they fair with no nutrients at all. Even though it has continued to be colder here than normal, the room is keeping a good steady temp and humidity. I was hoping the buds would start to get fatter, but that is not happening so far and the smell is still not very prevalent in the room. They are very sticky when touched with a lovely smell on the fingers afterwards. I figure 2 weeks now until harvest with another week or 2 of curing. I purchased a humidifier which will arrive this week just in time to keep the room at the right humidity when they are curing.

This was the first week with no nutes, just straight out of the tap water. I also upped the watering schedule to 3 times per day for 1 min each. I am thinking after watching this weeks timelapse that I will run the pump for 2 means on the parts of the schedule that the lights are on and see if that helps any. I also noticed that 1 of my plants, the one with the bigger buds and more crystals seems to be having its leaves turning yellow which I have tried to show in the last picture above. I believe it is because I have stopped feeding any nutrients and so now it is sucking what it can from the leaves. The other plants, especially my featured one do not seem to be doing this as of yet. I was hoping my closeup star of this diary, which happens to also be the tallest stem of the girls would also show the most growth, but as such, not much can seen to be happening. 1 more week to go before I cut and hang them to harvest and I will let you know how things turned out weight wise.

This is the last week of flowering. On my next post I will show you the pics after harvest and the wet and dried weights. Nothing really to see on the time lapse, so I didn't process one. I think for my next grow, I will water them more as I think I was giving them the barest minimum to survive and not thrive. Although they look good in the photos, in reality I think they could have been larger. Please let me know if think I could have done something different to get bigger buds.

For my first grow, I am happy with the results. It dried nicely and smokes very well. Even after I had dried it for a week by hanging from the stems, when it came time to trim off the buds, it was still very sticky. The smell is not too strong, and burns and vapes really nicely without any harshness at all. For the next grow, I will buy some seeds this week, and since Crop King can be purchase over the counter where I live, I will be getting some more of those. Any thoughts on which ones I should try this time? Looking for bigger yeilds this time, and I think as suggested, I will have the lights closer during flowering. Also, before I start my next run, I am going too measure how much water pumps in a min to calculate how much I am feeding each day. All in all, I have enough to last me until the next harvest and maybe to share a little with my peeps.