White Widow

Here's some seeds that have been lying around since last summer and I decided they could wait no longer. This baby germinated pretty quickly, jumped right out there with my Jack Herer and she's just going. Today (May 14) I repotted her into a 2 gallon container from her seedling cup, and she will remain here vegging indoors until I repot her into a larger fabric container and move her outdoors for the summer. Probably sometime around the summer solstice in late June.

This baby seems to like her new container. Gave her some veg nutrients today for the first time. I'm using the food that came from Green House Seed Company because it appears they gave me lots with the Wonder Pie shipment. The instructions direct use of a weight (between 2.1 and 2.6 grams) per gallon of water... and since it comes in a 125 gram package... that's enough to make more than 50 gallons of food. Since we alternate food and water, that's a lotta food. But I'm gonna have to convert this weight to volume - like a teaspoon or something, next time I make up a gallon anyway.

This baby is just a a day or so behind my Jack Herer and they're both growing at about the same rate so I topped her yesterday also just to keep pace with Jack. Since I'm using the Green House Feed Company grow powder, I need to weigh out the stuff on my scale. Instructions say 2.3 grams/gallon of powder at this stage, and measuring that out it's less than half a teaspoon... more like 3/8 of a teaspoon. I'll probably end up using my scale a lot here rather than just trying to eyeball it since I don't think I'll ever be making up more than a gallon at one time. Small plants just don't drink that much, especially when they're inside in my tent. Now... when they get transplanted into a fabric container and moved outdoors - that picture changes substantially and they drink a lot more. High heat the last few days - now we're cooling back down to normal.

She's looking nice and growing like a fiend after topping. Not quite the monster that my Jack Herer seems to be turning into but a close second. It's been really hot fo another spell this week with about 4 days in the 90's. Maybe she likes heat. Couple more weeks before she gets outside for good. June 9 >> Gave all my summer girls an underside trim this evening. This will probably be the 2nd of my girls to get kicked outa the tent and repotted and moved outside. She seems to like the Green House Feeding Company food.

Time to finally move outdoors. Transplanted into her final 10 gallon fabric container. Gave her another haircut downstairs, a good feed, and away we go. I'll probably top her topside again this week or next - after she recovers from the transplant and todays cuts. June 13 >> So after topping my Jack Herer I decided I might as well just top the Widow to keep pace on the same relative schedule. It's a little early but I may have to do more internal pruning on this baby than Jack. Just a guess from the initial way they seem to be growing.

This girl is moving right along. We're done topping her upstairs... things seem to have come out pretty clean. I'll give her a couple more days maybe before some more downstairs trimming. Plans are to start removing the water stalks that will grow up inside the middle of the plant if not removed. Starting one node at a time from the bottom.

Moving right along, this girl is keeping up with Jack Herer every step of the way. Hasn't quite got the plumbing structure she's got, but not far off. She's also starting to show a little pre-flower but not like Jack. June 26 >> Noticed some damage on mid-day inspection to one of the lowest branches. Not sure if a bird landed on this branch (I have a fair number of bird feeders nearby) or if my cocker spaniel lost her ball in there temporarily (lower probability) but I think this damage is repairable in any event. Just tie her back up and she should fix herself within a couple weeks. I suppose I could call this low stress training but I prefer damage repair.

Things are mostly stable with some great sunlight (very little morning fog) and temps in the low 80's worst case. Very pleasant for everything human and cannabis. The torn lower branch seems to be doing just fine after my minor structural repair. I probably found the tear within a couple hours of it happening. I don't really have any glue-like repair ointment like stuff I could apply here so I'll probably just leave my structural tie in place as a preventative measure for possibly the duration... but everything on that branch seems to be growing fine. Full steam ahead. 💪

I think this girl thinks she's a re-incarnated sativa or something. I loaded grow stats into a spreadsheet I have for everything I've grown here and she is week for week an exact growth match to her buddy Jack Herer on my patio. A real sativa that drinks like one too. An example of that thirst is I went out to play golf this morning and did not give any water to Jack or Widow (only my small pie in the smaller container). After walking my dogs in late afternoon (about when I took diary pics today)... I noticed that Jack actually showed a tinge of wilting... and I picked her up and sure enuf she was light as a feather... so I decided to water her whistle before all the diary pics... but White Widow was fine - no wilting - she was bone dry but no visual sign of distress. This is one of those nice features of growing your plants outdoors. You get to spend much more time hanging with them. It becomes easy to spot even mild distress like the start of wilting. One difference between these girls... Jack is going to be labeled flowering officially today... White Widow lags in that department. She'll flower when she's ready. ✊

I'm gonna give this baby one more week of being called a veg but the flowers probably aren't far away. I removed the structural support that I provided to the lowest branch and she seems fine structurally. She's keeping pace with Jack in the vertical growth department. Weather is being nice.

Actually had a scary incident with this girl on Monday. I was out on a 26 mile bike ride and when I came home I found a gust of wind had knocked her off her wheelies and she was kinda tilted over at 45 degrees. Funky - and long enough that the flower tops had turned themselves to the sun in that orientation... AND the somewhat repaired torn joint at the bottom of the girl had re-torn. <sigh - don't it always happen that when you take that chance and remove the support early - you regret it - but I'm sure she'll be fine>. Had to pull out the big guns in the structural support department for corrective measures though. These blue poles are considerably more sturdy than the bamboo poles I have a bunch of which are smaller. These are actually hollow aluminum coated with plastic of some kind. Looks like rebar but very lightweight. Fact is she's getting so big she's probably gonna need those poles anyway down the road. Weather has moderated with traditional morning fog returning. I can tell the girls are drinking a bit less. Still moving along vertically with another 4" growth.

Definitely slowing down in the vertical growth department. Things have cooled down a bit with the return of traditional summer fog which lasts until maybe 10am and then burns off. All the pics today are in the fog. Should be quite pleasant this week. I thought this girl looked a little wilty compared to her friends on the patio so I gave he a little more fluid this week. She doesn't drink as fast as some of the other girls, but she gets to it. August 1 >> I was pruning some of the other girls on the patio and I kinda got carried away... time for this girl to concentrate on what's going on up top.

I'm not sure why but this girl seems to have developed a semi-permanent wilt look in a lotta fan leaves. It's really been going on a couple weeks now and at first I backed off on water - then I thought I made a mistake there and giving her more didn't seem to fix anything - even when spaced out watering. I like it when my girls leaves fan out horizontally on the same plane as the ground - or otherwise tilted toward the sun as she may. Anything else I see as a sign of some distress. That said - I don't think this girl is bumming That hard - maybe a little... but I have something of a superstition about the color purple and I LOVE to see it in my cannabis plants and I'll be damned if there isn't some significant PURPLE showing up in the pistils of this girl. Got 5 flowering girls on the patio and I get to inspect them very closely in all this daylight and she's the only one with any purple going - so - go girl go! 😎

Things are about to get pretty hot around here. It was 100 today and I took pictures this morning before I went off to bake myself on a golf course (didn't go well) - and when I inspected the girls after dinner I noticed a fair number of yellowing fan leaves on this girl so I yanked the majority of them off. Gonna have to keep all the girls well hydrated this week because we'll probably be averaging above 90. Still some visible purple in the pistils of these flowers.

Coming out of a historic heat wave here in northern California. We had about 6 days in a row of 90-100F weather. Thankfully the temps came back to normal last night and we could cool our non-air-conditioned homes down. Unfortunately there's all this smoke in the air leftover from fires that were set off by historically unusual thunderstorms last weekend - the kinda unusual we see every 10-15 years. It's been rough on the girls. Initially I had a near wilt experience with a Wonder Pie - after which I was basically doubling fluid rations on all the girls - giving them a normal dose in the morning - and then just throwing a gallon on them in the afternoon to prevent stress as I can. White Widow in particular developed an immense number of yellow leaves during this period - the majority of which I removed as fast as I could. No need to feed those dead things. Gonna need to pay close attention to trichomes now. This heat wave seems to have advanced the age of everything on the patio a bit.

There's a lot of leaves turning yellow coming outa this recent heat wave. Can't actually take them off fast enough. The flowers are starting to fatten up a bit. Heading for the home stretch.

I have a feeling this girl is not long for this earth. We're about to get whacked with another serious heat wave - temps probably over 90 for 3 days in a row... and I'm worried about how this girl will handle it. Just took a peek at the trichomes and there's nary a hint of amber - lots of cloudy - very little left clear, but I'm pulling so many yellowing leaves off this girl every day. It's a sign she's on her way out. Might just flush her Saturday as a prep and get her ready for the heat.

Well I decided I had to pull the plug on this girl with all the weird weather we've been having. I've been pulling yellowing fan leaves off her for a couple weeks now and with our 2nd heat wave and all the smoke & ash thrown in for bad measure... it's been truly weird. Yesterday was a day for the record books around here - it was so dark I could tell my pets were spooked. Even they knew it wasn't supposed to be this dark in daytime. Probably how animals react to things like a solar eclipse. If they haven't got somebody nearby to reassure them of some sense of normal - the alarm bells start going off. I hadn't really gotten the impression this girl was all that fragrant during the flowering process UNTIL I was washing all that ash off her this morning - then I was like - WOW this stiff is pretty intense in the nose. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that the sun ain't coming out for a couple more days the ways the smoke be flowing around here. We'll see. Two more plants on the patio but they aren't far behind. September 13 >> Debudded the Widow late this afternoon to make space in my shed to harvest Jack Herer in the morning. She was still a little moist as I harvested her 3 days ago - but it hasn't been that hot. The smoke is still hiding the sun and the atmosphere is labeled "unhealthy". Hung her up in my front bedroom to finish the drying process. I should note the passing of reggae giant (many say inventor) Toots Hibbert, of Toots and the Maytals last Friday. I went looking for some pics of the last show I saw him at and coincidentally it turned out to be one year ago today, September 13, 2019 at the Independant in San Francisco. I was lucky to have seem him a few times. So I uploaded about 30 seconds worth of Pressure Drop from that show. RIP Buddy. 😪 ====================================================== September 21 >> Finished hand trimming the Widow yesterday while mostly listening to the last round of the US Open. In September... while they're playing Stanley Cup playoffs too. Very weird time.... both these things normally happen in June every year. The buds weighed in at basically 8 ounces (227 grams). The trim came in at 325 grams - and in this case I use the Trimbag - although I don't think she was really dry enough to get proper function outa the bag. I still spent over 6 hours hand trimming the remainder AFTER the Trimbag in this case. It wasn't really a problem because I had like 10 hours of US Open coverage for 4 days to burn thru. In the process of turning all that trim into hash at the moment... because I'm all configured to go at the moment after making Wonder Pie hash last week. I'll stick it in the garage to dry for a few days and add the weights later. One thing I've noticed that's probably pandemic-related is 90% isopropyl alcohol has become very hard to find (haven't had to look for like 6 months because I had a couple bottles that lasted). I've used it to clean my glass bong/dab rigs for years. 70% is there - but even that now it's like you have to ask for it. Times change. ====================================================== September 26 >> Weighed out the hash collected from the trim... 12.94 grams 120+160 micron = 1.47 g 73 micron = 5.50 g 25 micron= 5.97 g