White Widow ( First Grow )

Greetings from Canada! Welcome to my first grow. I thought i ordered autos but received feminized photos lol (100% germination paper towel method! ), must've been stoned when i ordered 😂😂. Oh well, here we go. Lights are 2x 1500w hollandstar COBs off amazon, true draw around 220w a piece. Feeding straight RO water as it comes out of the filters at around PH 6.5 ( tested with PH drops/meter ). 5 Gallon fabric pots mixed 50-50 FFOF/ProMix HP. Only Watering them around the seedlings and taking precaution to let the medium dry out a fair bit in-between waterings. Will be switching lights to 20/4 at the end of day 7. I suspect the tent will drop to about 19 Celsius during those 4 hours of darkness as my basement stays at around 20 Celsius. Will attempt LBHs' tutorial on scrogging after the first set of 5 finger leaves develop.

End of week 2 and overall I am happy with the growth. Wish i would've started them in smaller containers but i thought they were autos for the first 5 days of their lives, always next time. I definitely over-watered a few of them as the bottoms of the containers where still heavy but the top 3 inches were bone dry and i didn't want the roots to completely dry out and die on me. I've since been solely relying on the lift the pot method after i noticed slow growth after over watering, i'm no longer scared to let the pots dry out to near complete dryness as they seem to like that more. Had twisting leaves and odd mutation on one plant with the 2nd set of fan leaves ( 5 finger ) but this was just on the tip of the leaf and after fixing the watering all new growth appears to be healthy. No nutrients yet, i'm waiting for the cotyledons to start yellowing/ wilting and will start at 1/4 strength nutrients. Node spacing is tight so i plan on waiting until they grow vertically enough to clear the top of the pot to begin scrogging so i don't have such a hard time watering them later down the line. Also 2 of the photos were taken by a different camera and appear darker, all the plants are darker green like those photos with light green new growth in the center. See you next week.

Another good week overall, other than over-watering the largest one. Thought she was ready for a full soak but damn does that peat hold a lot of water, it took around 6 litres to even see a dribble of runoff and it took all week to dry out with an extra fan pointed on the pot 😔, hope shes alright. There's a lot of mis-information on the net. In more than one forum i read to water to 10% runoff and that you cannot give too much water at once and that over-watering was the frequency of watering which is total bs. Peat holds way too much water for that so i'm going to be measuring out how much i give from now on. I believe for their current size that 2.5-3.5 litres ( 3+ for the larger plants ) every 3 or so days should be enough to saturate most of the medium and adjusting week by week as they get larger and drink faster as id like to get those roots working into the rest of the container. No nutrients yet, i've been encountering a bit of nitrogen toxicity from the FFOF but nothing i will lose sleep over as they are all still growing at a decent pace. In other news i decided today was the day to top them, I did this just above the 5th node on all of them. Will let those new stems grow out a bit before LSTing them horizontally. Under the fan leaves on the larger 2 things appear to be getting congested with growth of new branches from pre-existing nodes however i plan to let everything grow naturally until i begin training them. See you next week.

Another decent week, 1 of the smaller WW was showing signs of cal-mag deficiency that i noticed at about day 26 and the larger 2 had new growth coming in a little too light green for my liking so i have begun feeding nutes to all 4. The larger 2 got 1/2 strength and the smaller 2 i started with 1/4 strength. I also invested in some Realgrowers recharge which is quite expensive in canada ( 100$ CAD on amazon shipped to the door ) as i cant be bothered to source all the materials and brew them together to make the compost tea myself. I fed all 4 there first shot of nutrients and tea on day 27 and they seemed to respond very well to it, Praying heavily to the COB lights about an hour or so afterwards and new growth has greened up. Things really seem to be picking up now with the new tops and secondary branches below. I LST'd them today to allow more light to the new growth/ better airflow. I'd say another week or so and they should be ready for the SCROG net. See you next week.

Decided to pull the trigger on another light ( mars TSL-2000 ) and installed the scrog net. One plant is growing noticeably slower than the others but isn't showing any signs of deficiency and i know it wasn't over/under watered. Oh well, so to compensate i moved the larger ones a bit closer to it before installing the net as i suspect this will help fill it more evenly with the more rapid growing plants. After adding the new light i'm running into temp issues even with the drivers mounted outside the tent, but i know that most of the heat is coming off the cheap COBs from amazon. Things were getting up to 28 Celsius unless i have the 190 CFM fan cranked to max settings which would cool things down to 25/26 during the day. But this is causing lots of neg tent pressure and i'm having to refill the humidifier twice a day which is very inconvenient. When i flip them to flower in the next week or so i will have the lights running at night to try to keep temps down and not have to tend to the humidifier as much. The largest plant is confusing me a bit as its leaves are lighter green indicating low N but its tips are still clawing a bit like its getting too much N? So when i've been feeding the larger 2 i alternated the strength of nutes from 1/2 to 1/4 back to 1/2 ( still 1/4 strength for the smaller 2 ) and Recharge compost tea once a week. The larger plants take 3.5 litres of water about every 3 days and the smaller ones i've been only giving about 2.75 litres. I might upgrade the extractor fan if i cant keep temps down during the first week of flower, i'd like to buy the AC cloudline T6 as it auto manages temps for you but alas amazon.ca is out of stock. I will be checking every other day to see if that changes and order it once it becomes available. I also noticed after tucking leaves today that 2 plants had developed pistols. See you next week.

Another good week of growth. Scrog net is almost full and i will be flipping to flower in the next few days. I defoliated the lower parts of the plants today and will give them some time to recover before the flip. I added a second tsl 2000 light as things are going well and i will continue this hobby for the foreseeable future so why not invest in it for some good returns. These lights are very powerful and i figured out that the lighter green plant wasn't from low N but was being bleached a bit by the light. Even with the hangers maxed out vertically i was still seeing light stress so i dimmed them down to 250w each and moved them to about 28 inches above the canopy and they seem to be doing a lot better. The hangers that came with the lights are too long for my liking as i plan to let the plants stretch almost entirely vertically. After looking at other peoples diaries growing the same strain and not seeing a whole lot of stretch during flower I believe i will have the space as its a 7' tent and with the new chains i'm hanging the lights with i'll gain another 6-8 inches of height if needed. With hanging the drivers outside of the tent, keeping temps down is easy and i don't think i'll have any issues with that even if i ran the lights during the day ( I'll still run them mostly at night with a window for me to check them after work ). Still feeding half strength nutrients and that seems to be more than enough to keep things green and growing so i'll just be keeping an eye on things and adjusting where necessary. They seem to prefer a PH range of 6.2-6.5. I suspect there will be a learning curve to get the lighting intensity right during flower but i'm ready to learn 🙏 See you next week.

Another good week of growth. Decided to let them veg the entire 7th week, all pictures were taken on exactly the end of week 7 to the day and were flipped to flower the following morning. Canopy was full and even enough for my liking so decided it was time. After some research i ordered some silica for the first 2 week of flower and will use it from the get go next grow. I also upped the nutrients on the larger 2 to 3/4 strength as some new tops were coming in a bit lighter green and i'm watering every 3rd feed to about 15-20% run-off. Have a cloudline T6 on the way from amazon to help me manage temps a bit better, it should be here in under 2 weeks and i'm looking forward to having that part of my grow more hands-off. I've lowered the lights down to 21'' above the canopy/maxed out the wattage for both lights and will keep an eye out for bleaching. Excited to see how the girls will do in flower. See you next week.

girls are doing well, first week of flower stretch is done and the right side of the tent stretched more than the left side but that's ok because i can adjust lighting height separately and they seem to be catching up anyways. The watering schedule for all the plants are different, i put this down to their roots being at different stages of development. This is specifically notable when i water to run-off as a few take longer to dry out after a thorough soaking. I'd say the right side has stretched around 5-6 inches while the left only around 4 but appear to be catching up. Can see many more pistils beginning to form especially at the tops. Will continue feeding veg nutrients until the end of week 2 flower and then switch to bloom nutes, as well as a good defoliation including lollipopping whatever is below the screen. See you next week.

Been very busy with work lately. I had to go out of town and the plants suffered a bit for that as all were under-watered pretty badly for a day or 2. However they bounced back quite fast and have grown a good amount since the flip. Fed veg nutrients all of week 2 and then switched to bloom nutes. Defoliated all plants on day 15 being careful not to take too many but they are very bushy so i will continue to defoliate lightly until end of week 3.

Switched to bloom nutrients this week and the girls are starting to pack on some size/starting to see trichomes on the leaves. Defoliated them lightly again the day after these pictures were taken. Will begin to use a bloom booster at the start of week 5.