400w White Widow lst/hybrid scrog

I'm a medical patient in the great state of Colorado. I'm just getting ready to wrap up one of my other grows here in a few weeks:



A quick rundown for those who are curious. Ive got 4 critical sensi stars and 2 ghs trainwrecks currently at 7 weeks and 2 days flower under 2 htg 600 watt digital lights. I used co2 for 2 weeks of veg and the first 4 weeks of flower. I built an RDWC system which uses RO water with lucas formula (addback method) along with AN big bud weeks 2-4 and cal mag weeks 1-2 and 5-7. All the vitals are controlled by a sentinel chhc-1. The chunkier nug is trainwreck, 2 pics are of css and the other is a group shot.

A bit of background on the grow that is to be the main focus...

In december of last year I got a white widow clone from a local dispensary. I lst'd it (cloned it also, realizing how great this damn thing smells) and then vegged for 4 weeks. I flowered it for only 7 weeks (all leaves were extremely yellow, trichs indicated it was ready anyway) under a single 600 in a 3 gal dwc. I yielded right around 4 ounces of rock hard, sugary, lemony dank nugs.



So out of the clones I took from that widow plant, I only kept 1 as a mother (I gave all the others away to other patients). It vegged from roughly the end of january til just a few days ago, so its got a solid 3 months It was lst'd from the beginning, which resulted in what I call the "low stress topping method". Idk if this works for all strains or if it was just luck but I wondered what would happen if I bent the main stalk all the way over, kind of like an arch, at the 5th node. Here's what happened:


I decided that the plant had gotten way too big for my space and so I decided to train it into some tomato cages in the shape of an arena (with the goal in mind of placing a bulb in the middle vertically). It worked great! And here we are today with it, 2 days into flower.

Nutrients: RO water. Lucas 8-16 formula. AN Big Bud.
Hydro or Soil: Hydro; 5 Gal DWC
Light: (1) 400 watt Lumatek digital ballast, vertical; various cfls.
Climate: Stays a perfect 76 during the day with a drop to 66 at night. With co2 I run a temperature of 85 during the day and 75 at night. Humidity is always between 35 and 45 %. Ive got a 8000 btu portable a/c in the room with some of the air blowing on the plant constantly and a box fan hung from the ceiling blowing on the plant as well. I also have a 6000 btu window a/c in the adjoining veg room which my fans are pulling cold air from.
Ventilation: 6" active air; 6" hydrofarm inline booster; 8" chicago electric inline (rated at 1500 cfm).
Electric: Custom powerboard, able to power 10 1k watt lights on 240 and quite a bit of stuff on 120. 50 amp breaker.

I look forward to updating this everyday and even more so if people show some interest. Any questions or comments are welcome and appreciated so post away.

Ok, so your growing in water, correct? And your somehow training the plant to spiral around? I did research the LST method and guess you do that to keep the plant low? If these seem dumb questions, it's because I'm a dirt gardener who just last year saw a local nursery use white plastic pipes with holes in them to grow lettuce..........interesting. If your growing medical, how did you learn which plants were more medicinal than others?

Here is my two cents as to learning which strain works best for your medicinal needs - I have severe nausea and a strain called Durban Poison really helps with that. My husband has chronic pain and Sour Diesel is the strain that works best for him. Of course other strains work but some just better than others. You are your own healer so I say experiment around and see which strain works best for your needs

MzHerbalistFarmer - thanks. I'll finish flowering my NorthernLitesXSkunk, and Cerres Skunks and test them out. I have Lupus so I get the headaches, nausea (no fun), chronic pain and everything else all at once. My husband is healthy as a horse and thank God he's open minded enough to let me grow this stuff. I will need to order seeds again, I just don't want to grow something that makes me sit on the couch and stare at the TV......without movement I tend to g-r-o-w, so I need to be able to move about and get things done. Does the Sour Diesel affect your husband this way?

debbie1950 said:

MzHerbalistFarmer - thanks. I'll finish flowering my NorthernLitesXSkunk, and Cerres Skunks and test them out. I have Lupus so I get the headaches, nausea (no fun), chronic pain and everything else all at once. My husband is healthy as a horse and thank God he's open minded enough to let me grow this stuff. I will need to order seeds again, I just don't want to grow something that makes me sit on the couch and stare at the TV......without movement I tend to g-r-o-w, so I need to be able to move about and get things done. Does the Sour Diesel affect your husband this way?

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Sour Diesel delivers a good sativa high (what you're looking for, Sativa) - long lasting. My husband and I are heavy users and I would say it is pretty potent. No couch lock and perfect for a day smoke! You will not be burnt out at the end of the day and she delivers a creative, philosophical, super heady and enjoyable high. You just need to make sure of your genetics with Sour Diesel - make sure it's Sour Diesel with the genetics ChemDawg x Massachusetts Super Skunk.... there are a lot of Sour Diesels out there and this is by far the best in my opinion and it works wonders for myself and my husband. I have a list of all of our strains we grow with all of their medicinal purposes I can send you if you're interested, it might help give you a better idea on what strain to look for....

By the way Demigod4G63 I'm subscribed... can't wait to see the outcome!

Nice grow, though you sure do seem to have an awful lot of equipment for the number of plants your growing. You get good results, but are they really worth all the extra expense when your only growing a couple of plants at a time?

Ok, so your growing in water, correct?

Yes, its a hydro DWC bucket.

And your somehow training the plant to spiral around?

The plant was pretty much bent underneath the tomato cages, and then secured with velcro floral tape. All the side branches
were then neatly woven into it to allow max light penetration.

I did research the LST method and guess you do that to keep the plant low?

The goal with vertical is to have the fan leaves on the outside, bud sites on the inside. Keeping the plant short and training it is to pretty much maximize light efficiency.

If these seem dumb questions, it's because I'm a dirt gardener who just last year saw a local nursery use white plastic pipes with holes in them to grow lettuce..........interesting.

No questions are dumb questions, fire away...Maybe it was an NFT setup?

If your growing medical, how did you learn which plants were more medicinal than others?

I learn which plants are more "medicinal" than others by listening to what other patients have to say about the strains they have tried, researching strains and trying them myself. I have severe muscle spasms but I also must remain active during my day so I tend to like hybrid strains. White widow is a personal fave of mine. It provides me almost instant relief of my ailment while still allowing me to not function like a zombie.

MzHerbalistFarmer said:

By the way Demigod4G63 I'm subscribed... can't wait to see the outcome!

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Thanks! And to add another great sativa to the list, try thai skunk if you have the patience for a longer flowering period. The high is super long lasting and really inspires the mind while also putting it at ease.

EdGreyfox said:

Nice grow, though you sure do seem to have an awful lot of equipment for the number of plants your growing. You get good results, but are they really worth all the extra expense when your only growing a couple of plants at a time?

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I wanted to provide the best that I could afford for my plants while still being cost effective. Next go around I will most likely be using a 12 site ebb and gro, or was even thinking a 24 plant (my friends are signing their caregivers rights to me since im actually legit and truly help them, not give them $10 off a bag and claim im "compassionate") sea of green on some e & f trays. As far as results go, everything has been worth every penny. I just chopped the two trainwrecks in my first post and got over 600g wet which should be 5-6 ounces after a full dry and cure. Not bad for a 9 week total from start (from the time the clone had enough roots to be put in the dwc) to finish. I would say the best investment was in the sentinel controller which easily allows you to dial in your climate and even allows for data logging to a pc to monitor your environment every part of the day.

Demigod4G63 said:

Thanks! And to add another great sativa to the list, try thai skunk if you have the patience for a longer flowering period. The high is super long lasting and really inspires the mind while also putting it at ease.

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Nice, I'll look into it. Thanks!!

All the plants are doing well. As you can see the widow is stretching nicely around the light.

Looking beautiful!!

So I had an issue come up. I was putting the plant in its 5 gal bucket when I discovered that it had a ton of brown slime on its roots. Since the plant is so healthy and res temps etc check out I though it couldn't be root rot. I came to the conclusion that it is brown algae. So, I flushed it completely and used straight RO water with 5 ml of 29% H2O2 for 24 hours. Then today I picked up some stuff I was reading about called Physan 20.

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Physan 20 is a broad range disinfectant, fungicide, virucide, and algaecide which effectively controls a wide variety of pathogens on hard surfaces and plants. Its applications include greenhouses; hard surfaces; lawn and turfgrass; seedlings and cut flowers; decorative fountains, pools and birdbaths; and plants.[/FONT]

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I completely flushed the h2o2 water and used 3 ml of the Physan 20 with 5 fresh gallons of RO. So we'll see how it works. Immediately after to putting it in my res I noticed a bunch of white foam collecting on top of the water so it must be doing something, right? Ill let everyone know tomorrow what happens.

Hope everything turns out okay!

Well. It appears the physan 20 got rid of all the slime on my roots. But in the process it also caused my plant to wilt HEAVILY. You know, the kind of wilt a soil plant would get if it hadn't been watered for a few days. Hopefully she makes a comeback. I completely flushed again and added regular strength nutes. Hopefully she recovers over night.

Demigod4G63 said:

Well. It appears the physan 20 got rid of all the slime on my roots. But in the process it also caused my plant to wilt HEAVILY. You know, the kind of wilt a soil plant would get if it hadn't been watered for a few days. Hopefully she makes a comeback. I completely flushed again and added regular strength nutes. Hopefully she recovers over night.

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Wow, when I transplanted my Cindy99 x Haze back into the bubbler after she wilted BIG TIME (you can see pics in my grow journal) and she bounced right back. She had that on her roots too - glad to know that's what it was!! Thanks

No problem. I hope others can learn from my mistakes lol. Two things I would do differently is only add 2 ml to 5 gal rather than 3 ml and only leave the roots in that water for 6 hours instead of 12. She was looking slightly more perky this afternoon so I'm thinking she'll recover after she has a chance to sleep again so we shall see tomorrow.

Demigod4G63 said:

No problem. I hope others can learn from my mistakes lol. Two things I would do differently is only add 2 ml to 5 gal rather than 3 ml and only leave the roots in that water for 6 hours instead of 12. She was looking slightly more perky this afternoon so I'm thinking she'll recover after she has a chance to sleep again so we shall see tomorrow.

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Give thanks!