White Widow Auto - Double the Trouble

I couldn't wait to give these genetics a second try and see how much I can improve, so while I was finishing up my harvest from last grow I started these seeds. I had 9 seeds, 8 germinated, 7 produced seedlings. So in total that's 11 of 13 seeds that became plants. I thought I was going to have 8 plants, so I called this journal "Double the Trouble" but now it doesn't really make sense, anyways... With this grow I'm going to try to correct as many of the mistakes I made with my first grow as I can and just see what happens. I decided to start these seeds in cups of Happy Frog and transfer them when they're around two weeks old to Ocean Forest. It could have been my cheap pH meter, but Ocean Forest seems too hot for seedlings. I had way too many problems with over watering when I planted directly into 5-gallon pots. When I transfer, I'm going to transfer to 3-gallon pots so I can water more often to prevent the salt build up that happened last time. I'm planning to avoid using any type of training and just position the tall plants further away from the center of the tent, but if I get a tall pheno that might all go out the window. I'm also not going to use any nutrients until ~30 days after transferring into their final pots and just see if I can avoid nute burn. Last time I only used Recharge for microbes which helps with nitrogen, but this time around I'm going to add Mammoth P during flowering. Taste is as important as potency to me so I want to see how "organic" I can go with microbes while still using General Hydroponics 3-part. I'm calling 11-20 day 1 even though it's day 3 or 4 for plant 2. It was the first day they all had open leaves. Doing it that way worked for me last time so I'm doing it again. Also I just have to throw out there, if you haven't heard of "The Dude Grows Show" look it up on youtube. The knowledge they drop on that show has helped me tremendously in every aspect of growing, and they're really entertaining.

Things are looking just OK at this point. I let things get a little over watered not realizing the cups would suck up any run off in the tray. I'm not too worried at this point because I know the roots are growing strong and healthy after seeing them with my own eyes. As long as the roots are doing what they need to do the plants will eventually bounce back. In the cups I had the plants in Happy Frog soil and in their 3-gallon pots they're now in Ocean Forest. The humidity in the tent is high enough now that I have to run an exhaust fan but I set it up to only dump the air in the tent every couple of hours and right after the light goes off. The air in my basement is cold enough this time of year that with the exhaust fan running 24/7 it keeps the tent way too cold. When the light is at full power it won't be an issue but right now I'm keeping the plants at about 350-400 PPFD and that doesn't use enough power to keep things as warm as I'd like at this point. It's almost to the point where things are going to start to get fun again :)

Things are looking better this week. I noticed a couple of yellow tips and I decided to check the calibration on my pH meter and it was off again. I watered a couple of times with water that was too acidic so the next couple of times I water I'm not going to do any pH adjustment and hopefully it will balance back out. I figure it's too early for the yellowing to be coming from a lack of nutrients so I'm going to continue to hold off on nutes for at least another week, as long as there isn't any other yellowing. Going forward I think I'll just calibrate my pH meter before every watering, even though it's a total PITA. I'd rather not have to wonder. Plant 1 is the only plant that I'm not really happy with. I'm just going to assume it's a genetic problem that is keeping it so small but I'll continue to let it grow because it's not taking up a lot of real estate or anything. So far plant 6 is the tallest but it doesn't have me worried about deciding against doing any training, but that could change. Plants 2 and 4 are just about the same height. After they're all done stretching I'll probably have to rearrange which plants are in the center just for even light coverage, but if I can I'll leave them in this arrangement. On a side note, I'm going to update my first grow journal in a few days because everything has been curing for just about 30 days so I can finally dig in and give an accurate review. My life got extremely busy and hectic when I harvested and now I've got the time to do a proper review, so look for that soon. I'll change the cover image when I update it.

I wasn't sure whether or not to mark this week as a week of flowering or veg because half the plants flowered for most of the week and the others were in veg still. Anyways, I noticed last night that plant 6 was developing a calcium deficiency and I was planning on watering it today and adding some cal/mag. I opened the tent and what was a couple of tiny patches turned into a full blown calcium deficiency over night. I watered in some cal/mag today and I hope the damage will stop spreading. Plant 7 is also showing what looks like the first sign of a calcium deficiency so even though I watered it yesterday, I'm going to give it and all of the odd numbered plants a small feeding with just straight up cal/mag tonight and I'll keep the pH around 6.7 to 6.9 to make sure the roots suck it up. On top of that plant 7 is showing a nitrogen excess which doesn't make any sense to me. Plant 1 is showing a magnesium deficiency so I'm sure they all need some cal/mag at this stage. I'm going to use less Micro when I use cal/mag going forward because last time around everything looked like it was showing nitrogen excess at some point and the cal/mag I use is 2-0-0. I also turned the light up to full power last night and the heat now requires that the exhaust fan runs as long as the light is on. I raised the light pretty high so they've got some room to stretch and they're still getting around 500 PPFD or higher at the canopy level right now. Heights are pretty even except for plants 1 and 3. Plant 1 looks like it's just the runt of the litter but I'm interested to see what it produces. Plant 3 is the shortest and it looks like it might produce some super dense buds like one of the plants did last grow. Overall I'm thinking that things look better at this stage that than did my first time around so I'm optimistic and excited to see what happens.

I tried to upload this week a bunch of times and it kept saving everything wrong. I forgot some of the stuff I was going to say but now that it's been another week (I'm posting this from the last day of week 6) I realize some things now I didn't when I tried to post. Plant 2 has light damage and plants 6 and 7 are getting worse. I was trying to go light on nutrients this grow because I thought it would make everything taste better. I waited 9 days longer to do my first nutrient feeding on this grow and I only used half the nutrients as last time and I'm regretting it. I'm never going to wait to give nutrients again. More details next week.

Not a lot of pictures this week. I can't figure out how to save plant 6 and I'm afraid plant 7 is next. I flushed them both down to about 400ppm run off and then gave them ample bloom nutrients on top of a regular feeding (-micro for 7) and everything is getting worse. My next step is to get a new pH pen. Even when I calibrate it before every use now it's still telling me to use a lot less pH down than it used to with the same nutrients. In my first grow I used 30 to 40 drops of pH down per gallon of water to get to ~6.5 pH and now I'm using 10-15 drops per gallon of water to get the same results. It doesn't seem like (carbon filtered) tap water should change that much. I'm also going to try using a bloom booster as a last ditch effort to save 6 and 7. They really might not make it another week. Edit: I was using Armor Si last grow which is supposedly highly alkaline which could explain the disparity. From the signs I'm seeing now, it seems like I might kill 2, 6, and 7 before they ever make it to harvest with my feeding/watering/environment. They're also the tallest plants. In my first grow the really tall plant also died from unknown reasons around day 65 or 70. These plants are definitely going to die before that if they do. I wish I had more experience growing other strains to know whether this is a result of weak genetics or something that I'm doing. I'm leaning towards the latter but it's frustrating as hell when you do everything you're "supposed to do" according to everything you read and things just keep getting worse. I turned the light down so there's 600 PPFD at the canopy and plant 2 seems to be doing a little bit better with that. It's less light than I'd like to be giving them but I feel like plant 2 could easily produce a quarter pound on its own if it makes it to harvest. I put plant 3 up on a small milk crate so it's not totally neglected seeing that it's only about 10 inches tall. This grow has me really frustrated at this point and I'm hoping things turn around. I'm truly expecting a smaller harvest from 7 plants than what I got last time from 3 plants. On the bright side, plant 4 is growing like a champ and looks like it could produce 5+ ounces on its own which would make the entire grow worth it. I also wanted to mention that all plants that are producing trichomes at this point smell like you expect White Widow to smell like, except for a single plant that has a very mild version of the cheese pheno from last grow. It's almost more diesel than cheese. More pictures next week. Update: I wanted to add that I did some reading about humic acid and mycorrhizae and now I'm wondering if the issues I'm seeing on 6 and maybe 7 are potentially being caused by an excess of iron. The microbe product I use, Recharge, has humic acid and mycorrhizae which greatly increase the uptake of calcium, magnesium, and iron. Excess iron blocks phosphorous. The problem I'm seeing on 6 and 7 seems to be a phosphorous issue. I used Recharge for every watering for the first ~4 weeks. I'm going to try to really increase the pH of plant 6 to as close to 7.0 as I can to slow the uptake of iron and see what happens from there.

I'm probably going to forget more than half of the things I wanted to write down, but here goes. Confirmed the problem I've been seeing is a pH problem with the soil. It's too acidic and I have no idea why. I tried to flush the soil with alkaline water but after about 250 drops of pH up and 15 or so gallons of highly alkaline water through plant 6's pot, the run off stayed low and never changed. So I found out about pulverized dolomite lime, top dressed a tablespoon of that per gallon of soil and now I just get to wait. It's supposed to take two weeks to correct the soil pH and there's really nothing else I can do at this point. Now I understand why people say newbies shouldn't grow autoflowers. If this was a photoperiod in the veg cycle I could have corrected all of this before going into flower, but now I've got to take what I get. Major lesson learned. I thought soil pH was dependent on the pH of the water going in. Now I realize the pH of the water going in has absolutely zero effect on the soil. Going forward I'm going to top dress some powdered lime on every pot and redress it about once every 4 weeks. It shouldn't take the soil over 7.0 even if I do too much. If I start to see a phosphorous deficiency without a cal/mag problem then I'll know I did too much and I'll just wait and let the soil become more acidic since that's what Ocean Forest seems to do for me. I'm also going to stop wasting time pHing water or nutrient solution because the soil will bring it down on its own. I'm really looking forward to being done with this grow and getting going on a new one with a clean slate knowing what I know now. I really feel like I'm wasting my time with the current plants because of the acidic soil so hopefully something changes. Every day, every plant just seems to get worse. I added the lime on 1/5 (day 47) so fingers crossed I see some signs of improvement by 1/19, but it may be too late by then.

As everything has continued to get worse I've kept looking for an answer as to why and I think I may have finally figured it out. First of all, not every plant has the same deficiencies. Plants 2 and 5 have a sulfur deficiency but no signs of cal/mag issues. Mobile deficiencies. Plants 1 and 6 are showing clear signs of calcium deficiencies. Immobile deficiencies. 1 has also had a magnesium issue from the start, which is mobile. Plants 4 and 7 are turning yellow and crispy from the top down. Immobile deficiencies. Plant 3 is suddenly deficient in phosphorous and it seems to be happening from the top down which is backwards because P is mobile and top down problems are immobile. I didn't realize the Cal/Mag Plus I use has iron in it as well as other necessary micro nutrients/metals. Well when you use humic acid and mycorrhizae it allows the plants to more easily absorb elements like iron. Couple that with soil that got too acidic (5.8ish is the lowest run off I saw) and now you have plants that are absorbing iron and other metals like crazy which is going to block out phosphorous and calcium, and the problems are going to appear immobile. The immobile metals are blocking out the mobile elements which could explain a top down P deficiency. The problems with the soil probably started when I fed nutrients too early because I saw leaf tips changing color, which was actually light burn. I kept chasing the deficiencies until I realized it was light burn. I've flushed the worst looking plants three times now and flushing only makes things worse every time I do it. Plant 4 is the only plant that hasn't been flushed and it has probably about 500% more bud on it than the rest of the tent combined which leads me to believe it's not as much a problem of too many salts in the soil as it is just the wrong food in too acidic of soil. A week after adding lime to the soil, the run off from every plant except 1 is between 6.4 and 6.6, with plant 1 still showing 5.8 When I saw the calcium deficiency starting on plant 6 I took that as a sign that all of the plants were headed down that route so I drastically increased the amount of cal/mag plus I was feeding all of them. The plants with more obvious calcium issues got double the amount of cal/mag, which also means double the amount of metals. Next grow I'm only going to use dolomite lime and epsom salts for cal/mag needs and if I see a metal deficiency I'll bust out the liquid crap. Anyways, I've more or less given up on this grow. The amount of stress and frustration that I've put on myself isn't worth it anymore. At one point I literally said out loud “I'm done growing.” I changed my mind after a couple of days. I'm growing photo periods next and I'm trying to figure out how to start vegging them so that as soon as the grow tent is ready I can get the next plants in there. I'm not sure if I'm going to let these plants make it to harvest or not. What I truly want to do is just cut everything down and start over. My first grow felt like if I wanted to I could extend it until everything is healthy but with this grow I'm well aware there is a window and it's closing quickly. If these plants don't start producing buds like today then I'm basically growing air fresheners. What's so frustrating is when you've done everything that you're “supposed to do” and it takes hours of work every time you water and still everything just gets worse and worse. Well, at least there's no herms...yet.

It's been two weeks since I applied the lime to the soil and things seem to have improved overall, just not as dramatically as I had hoped. The leaves are looking pretty yellow but the bud production has increased fairly substantially. The grow light makes things look a lot more yellow than they are under normal lighting so I'm regaining a little cautious optimism and I plan to see this grow through to end. I was worried about all of the Cal/Mag Plus I had dumped through the soil so I got a flushing agent and flushed every plant. Run off pH is now 6.3 for every plant but 1 and 5. Run off TDS was around 400 to 650 for every plant before flushing, even plant 4 which had never been flushed. Fed them all at about 500 ppm, and run off after first feeding was about half of what it was going in so I'll give another full feeding next watering and hope it keeps them happy. I watched a video and learned a bit more about lighting and I'm going to try to keep the brightest part of the canopy at 650-700 PPFD. Because the light is on for 18 hours with autoflowers, you get the same DLI at lower light levels as you would running 1000 PPFD for 12 hours. Most lighting advice you'll find for cannabis is assuming a 12/12 cycle in flower. I also started adding a tiny bit of epsom salts to every feeding. I learned that sulfur is responsible for terpene and flavonoid production so I figured adding a teeny tiny amount of epsom salts to every feeding couldn't hurt. Plus, plants 2 and 5 are showing what looks like a sulfur deficiency so they got a little more but they'll be getting the same amount as the rest from now on. I'm going to let this grow go until I see some amber trichomes this time. Last time I didn't want a single one but this time I want more bulk. I'm assuming that means it will go about a week longer than it did last time and I'm planning to flush about 5 to 7 days before harvest so I've still got a couple of weeks that I can feed them and give them proper light. Harvest isn't going to be ideal but it's not going to be a complete waste of my time and energy like it felt a week ago. I seriously can't believe plant 6 is still alive and producing buds no less. I also wanted to mention that plant 4 is doing the best as far as bud production but the leaves are so dense I'm really worried about mold. So, I put my harvest dehumidifier in the tent and at this point it's been able to keep the humidity around 55% when the light goes out which should be low enough that mold won't grow. It would be a shame if the “best plant” had to be thrown away.

Things are looking up this week. Run off numbers are all matching up with what's going in for the first time all grow. Since every plant is now “properly fed” I turned the light up to full power to see what they can do in their last couple of weeks of life. I was worried they couldn't handle the heat of the light at full power but they seem to be doing ok. My predicted chop date at this point is going to be Feb 15, but I'll let the trichomes dictate when exactly that happens. Right now it doesn't look like they're all going to come down at the same time. I was planning on using my grow tent as my harvest tent this time because of the size of plants 2 and 6, but I'm having doubts I can provide the environment I want to with the volume of the grow tent. With their “sativa traits” those plants are probably going to get chopped a week later anyways, so by that time I should be able to fit them in the harvest tent without worries of mold. I'm having doubts about what's going to happen as far as when the plants are going to be fully mature. Right now everything is a week behind in growth compared to my last grow. Does that mean their trichome production is a week behind too and I need to extend this grow by two weeks compared to my last grow, or are these plants going to be mature on a set date because that's just what their genes dictate? As long as I can get a 5-day flush in I'll be satisfied. I may end up staggering the harvest just depending on when things are ready. I really want to focus on drying slowly this time and see if that improves the taste once it's finished. After doing some reading I'm convinced my flush did what it was supposed to last time and the bad flavor came from drying too quickly. I thought I needed to keep things below 60% RH at all times because one plant developed some mold. What I should have done is kept the RH below 60% for one day and then brought it back to around 60%. With what happened last grow, everything was jarred up for the cure within about 4-5 days, too quick. Everything from last harvest smells amazing but tastes very green. Speaking of flavor, the smells coming from the tent now are a lot less fruity than last grow. Overall I'd say there's more of a GSC terpene profile this time, but there's a lot of nuances between each plant. Plant 7 is without a doubt fruity and tropical, and plant 5 leans that way too but you can pick up some more of the “cookies” terpenes. Not a single plant this grow smells anything like cheese, like one plant did last grow. The plants that are less fruity have “half” of the cheese profile but not the half that actually makes it smell like cheese, is the best way I can describe it. It's like a really earthy and almost cedar-like version of GSC. Before I forget, I also wanted to mention that I think you can possibly smell a sulfur deficiency. Since giving plant 2 epsom salts, its smell has completely changed. It used to smell like overly ripe grapefruit and skunk and that's exactly what the plant that died last grow smelled like. Now it just smells similar to the rest of the plants. I also wanted to mention that at one point I was seriously close to chopping down plant 6 and now its producing extremely sticky buds that actually have me excited. My experience with this plant has been a great lesson for me and taught me that even if things look dire, don't give up and know that the plants will respond when you give them the proper attention and treatment. It won't be a waste of energy, but you'll have to get your hands dirty. I'm still optimistic about where things are going to end up but I'm watching like a hawk for mold.

Plant 7 got it's final flush tonight. After looking at its trichomes I decided there's enough milky ones there that it's going to be ready to chop in 5-7 days. I'll flush plant 1 for sure tomorrow and then I have to decide if I'm going to feed plant 4 once more or just flush it. After flushing 7 I'm realizing that I fed everything too lightly so it's going to be a tough choice since plant 4 seems like it's going to be the heaviest yielder. I also need the harvest dehumidifier for the harvest tent and the only reason it's in the grow tent is for plant 4. Cutting it down at the same time as 1 and 7 might be the best way to prevent mold. I'm definitely going to wet trim at least plant 4, but probably the whole harvest. I'm going to try drying everything differently this time. I'm definitely going to stagger the harvest because plants 2 and 6 have at least 50% clear trichomes still so I want to give them the time they need.

Sorry if this week looks weird when I save it. I struggled to get the website to allow me to add another week of flowering, but it had no problem with me adding a week of veg. It wouldn't allow me to change anything so I'm not going to write a whole lot in case it doesn't save, which it has done to me multiple times this journal. I'm keeping an eye on trichomes and plant 2 is the only plant that hasn't been officially flushed at this point, but its run off TDS was showing 300 ppm so if it stays that low after watering next time I'm not going to go through an official flush with it and just see how it turns out. I'm thinking about cutting down everything but 2 and 6 on day 90ish, but trichomes will dictate dates.

So, as you can see, nothing has been chopped down yet. I've decided that on day 94 I'll bring down plants 1, 4, 7, and potentially 6. Plants 2, 3, and 5 are still showing a fair amount of clear trichomes and hardly any amber so I'm going to see how they look at the end of week 14. The only thing going in the pots for the last week was water with a pH of 6.5 I wanted to mention the buds on plants 2 and 6 are practically rock hard, so I'm getting somewhat hopeful that this harvest should have a similar weight to last harvest which is going to make everything a lot less stressful if I start to see problems next grow. This grow has been so stressful because I'm really counting on it to fill up my stash in case my first (real) foray into photo periods doesn't go the way I hope it does. I've got my genetics all set to go for next grow and it's intimidating that I'm going to have to learn to clone to sex plants and all of that jazz so knowing I can screw up and not deplete my stash kind of gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling :P That is assuming that things go like they're supposed to in the drying period. Fingers crossed. Edit: My night time air temp is 63 for this week but no matter what I do the journal keeps saying it's 50. It's never gotten down below 61 the entire grow.

I spent half of the day on day 93 harvesting and trimming and then the same the next day. All plants have been cut down, trimmed, and hung. I wasn't happy with humidity levels in the harvest tent after the first day of harvest so I decided to put them all in there to keep humidity up high enough that things don't dry out too quickly. I trimmed about 90% of what I want to trim and I'll get the rest after things dry. There's some larf from plant 2 that didn't make it in the tent that's on a separate drying rack. After looking at the harvest all hung up I feel a little crazy for worrying about whether or not I was going to yield enough. I tried to do a better job of taking pictures as I went through this harvest but I didn't remember to get pictures of every plant. Both times I've harvested my wife has been out of town so my sticky hands are the only ones around to take pictures, which makes things difficult. When everything is dry I'll get the final weights and some more pictures.

I think things dried more slowly this time around and I'm looking forward to everything being cured for a month before I really dig in. I've tried a little bit from a couple of the plants and the really green and leafy taste is absent but it's still so fresh tasting that the fresh taste might be overpowering the green taste. I found out the exhaust fan in the harvest tent was running too often because the outside of the buds got dry but the stems were still soft. I think that's what happened last time so if things did dry too quickly again I know that if they cure for about two months the green taste goes away because that's what happened with last harvest. Next time I harvest I'm going to set it up so the exhaust fan doesn't run but I'm not going to close the harvest tent. There was a lot more trimming to do after I hung things up and I ended up with a huge bag of trim and larf that I'll make into edibles. Now that things have dried a bit more I'm not happy with the trim job that I did but I only use a vaporizer so it shouldn't affect the taste too much. Plant weights were: 1: 42.6 grams 2: 106.1 grams 3: 44.1 grams 4: 95.7 grams 5: 80.1 grams 6: 86.5 grams 7: 85.1 grams Total: 540.2 grams or almost exactly 19 ounces plus a few ounces of trim and larf