Help_Needed's third grow - femmed white widow in hydro

Well, here goes grow number three. Hopefully it will be even more successful as my last one :stoned:. My first grow failed when four plants out of four ended up being too manly for use. The second grow was....educational. And I have to admit it was succssful as far as newb grows go, depsite it's problems. And now I'm trying to improve on things......


Strain - Femmed white widow from Dr. Cronic. No manly plants for me this time. And I've got to say that I was really impressed with the Doc's speed, and his "stealth" packaging left me laughing for hours.


Grow Style - Not going to try anything fancy, but I am going to work on improving my yield over last time. I've heard that white widow gets tall during flowering so I'll be topping all of the plants at least once before I turn them on to 12/12. I want o get some short little bushes going and then I'll flower em.


Grow Location - Hydro hut :dance:...in the closet of course. It's the only way to keep nosy people and curious dogs out of my grow. Especially the dog...he's decided he likes the taste of weed. Not sure where he found it, but I caught him munching on a small nugget last night. I must have dropped it while I was jarring my last crop this weekend. And I've got to say a naturally hyper min-pin who's high on weed is NOT a good thing rofl.


Lighting - CFL's for the first couple of weeks until they're truly in veg. Then 400 watt HPS for the rest of the grow :dance:


Grow Medium - Well, hydro, DUH! :D I've got a drip feed, 6 plant DWC system. And yes, I'll be using the Lucas Formula again. It's easy. It's stable. And it gives good results. If it ain't broke, don't fix it .


Other thoughts - I've read somewhere that WW doesn't like a lot of nutes and burns easily, so I'll have to be careful about that, especially when I bring the nutes up to full strength for flowering. I may not be able to run at 950ppm, even with HPS lighting.

Also, on a sad note, my grandmother is very sick and they don't expect her to make it until Christmas :(. So there's a very good chance during this grow that I'll be making a 3-4 day trip out of town during the grow. With the Lucas Formula I won't have to worry about the pH or nute concentration too much, but I will need to work something out to keep the reservoir topped off while I'm gone. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

While visions of sugared buds danced in their heads :D.

I put five seeds in rapid rooters to get them germinating. Hopefully I'll have 4 or 5 new little girls in a week or so.

Well, it wouldn't be a Help_Needed grow if there weren't any problems, and I've already got my first lol.

I tried to set up my brand new, shiny hydro hut yesterday. Apparently whoever packed the box at the factory had trouble counting to four. My box had 5 bottom corner poles, and only 3 top corner poles. Needless to say it's all back in the box and I'll be going back for a new one today.

No sign of sprouts yet, but hey, it's only Day 1 .

AHH! Damn merchandise packagers! My Cooltube arrived broken not more than 2 weeks ago, I had to wait for a new one. :cursing:

What's up Help_Needed. The grow sounds good! I JUST popped my Cinderella 99 seeds into the ground on the 13th. Seeds should be popping up in about a week as well, looks like we will be growing alongside each other in the Grow Log section this fall/winter....

Sorry to hear about your grandmother.....best wishes.

Woot! Thanks for stopping by. That's a really nice setup you've got going there. I'm a bit jealous lol.

The only closet I've got that's big enough is the walk-in in my bedroom...and it's actually too big. Not to mention that I've got to have SOMEWHERE to keep my clothes and stuff. Last grow I tried to just let the plants sit at the back, but it made things a bit tricky when I switched to 12/12. Not to mention that the lighting just wasn't optimal. So I'm looking forward to seeing how much the new hydro hut and HPs improve things.

It's been a few days since my last entry and unfortunately there have been a couple of rather bad setbacks. I'm actually considering scrubbing this grow and trying again in a couple of weeks (once a new set of seeds gets here).

I did finally get the hydro hut set up, although it just barely fits in the closet. I'm very impressed with the quality of the hut's construction, although it's a bit of a bitch to assemble. And unfortunately I didn't realize that I hadn't attached the flange for the exhaust port until after it was up. There is absolutely NO room to maneuver in there, so I'm going to have to partially disassemble the hut to put the flange in. Same goes for any other flanges I want to install. :( I've got some pics of the hut below, for those who are curious. I don't have everything set up in side yet. In fact the HPS is still in the box (in front), and I have the two new mother plants that I grabbed from the last grow in there too, for now.

Four of the five seeds sprouted over the weekend. Two of them stretched really fast, and I don't think it was the light, since I'm using the same lighting as last grow and I didn't have this problem. I did remove the humidity dome, though, so I can move the light down a bit closer.

That said, I've already lost two of the sprouts. As I mentioned earlier, my dog likes the taste of weed, and I was stupid enough to leave him unattended in the room with the closet door open for a couple of minutes. *munch, munch, munch* Let's just say that I came very close to forgetting how much I love the little guy :o. Ah well, at least two of them survived, and I learned my lesson. On the plus side, I took a peak and it looks like the fifth seed has cracked open, so I may end up with a third plant.

Last, I received the very sad news that my grandmother passed away on Saturday morning :sadcrying. While we all knew she was very ill, her passing was even sooner than expected. It also puts me in a bad spot with this grow, since seedlings are really too fragile to leave unattended for the 4 days or so I'm going to be gone for the funeral. I may just say to hell with it and order another set of seeds and start this grow over when I get back. Or maybe I'll just set things up the best I can and if they're alive when I get back, so be it.

Nice setup , i think you will have some great dank in a couple of months. I'm gonna follow the process, if you keep us posted and load up some nice pics. of your plants:thumbsup:....And I am sorry to hear that your Grandmother passed away:(....