Some advice for a WW plant

A question from a fellow grower:

White widow - everyone that I’ve planted I’ve either had to thrown out
or they are growing very weird. They almost look like seed pods in the
bud but there are no seeds. It’s they way they have all grown. Have
pics. Please contact!

Those are pollen sacks, best I can tell. I am legally blind, but I believe I see pollen sacks. You have a hermaphrodite plant. Pick off the pollen sacks carefully before they open and ruin all buds.

Yes, that plant is a hermaphrodite, I too can see a good mix of staminate and pistillate.

And the plant looks stressed and unhealthy, I’m pretty sure I’m seeing pH problems and related nutrient deficiencies, lockout or toxicity. The red/purple in the leaf stems is a dead give-away.

Ya you are wright Latewood pollen sacks for sure

Will

You can almost tell a male by the distance the nodes and branch leaves grow . Because females are close and compacted and very Bunche almost .

That’s interesting It’s amazing what we come up with when we grow. Iem going to keep that for future reference

Will

I would never cull a plant judged by the distance of nodes, you could be throwing away expensive genetics if grown from expensive seeds.

The only way to know for sure is to wait until actual flowers, staminate or pistillate actually show. Even latewood said recently that when ever he tries to guess by growth pattern or such, he always ends up wrong more often than not guessing wrong. I have never tried to really guess, so I can’t say, but everything I read basically agree the only 100% sure way is to take a clone and flower it, or wait intil the whole plant is put into the flowering period.

MacGyverStoner, I need advice on how to upload pictures. I am having problems on both my WW and GL. I need to upload pictures to show the problem. Thanks. Keep it green.

Just above where I am writing are simbles the one with the arrow pointing up click that to upload picks or you can drag ad drop your pics into your message.

Will

Let’s get you started with a ILGM support ticket that Latewood had first developed. It’s is a great checklist of things in your plant’s environment that might help give us an idea of what could be going wrong.

Answer all the relevant questions the best you can, if you do not know, or do not use something, just say so or put ‘NA’.

ILGM Support Ticket:

What is the strain and type(strain name, unknown bag seed, regular seeds, feminized seeds, auto-flower, etc)?

Indoor or Outdoor? If outdoor, planted in ground or in a container?

Size of space (max height and area, length/width)?

Soil or Hydro? Type of Medium used? System type?

pH? Of the soil or medium (root zone/reservoir/runoff) and of the water and/or nutrient mix that is fed to the plant?

Type and strength of nutrients used? NPK? EC/TDS/PPM levels?

Temperature? Day vs. night temp or highest and lowest temps? Root zone temps?

Humidity %?

Light system/watts/lumens/FLUX/PAR?

Ventilation system? Size? CFM? CO2? AC, Humidifier, De-humidifier?

Number “weeks/days” from into Season, Vegetative Growth or Bloom/flowering?

Add anything else you feel would help us give you a most informed answer.

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Your e-mail went to my spam folder and I just found it today.
ILGM Support Ticket:

  1. What is the strain and type(strain name, unknown bag seed, regular seeds, feminized seeds, auto-flower, etc)?
    White Widow Feminized (4 each) & Gold Leaf Feminized (2 each).
  2. Indoor or Outdoor? If outdoor, planted in ground or in a container?
    Indoor.
  3. Size of space (max height and area, length/width)?
    Total available space 800 cubic feet (8 ft. ceiling X 10 ft. X 10 ft.) although I am growing in a 5 ft. X 5 ft. space. Inside of the 10 ft. X 10 ft. space I have a 3 ft. X 3.5 ft. closet that will be used for a cloning space and vegatative growth room.
  4. Soil or Hydro? Type of Medium used? System type?
    Soilless. I recently switched from a 75% Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, 25% Perlite medium to a 40% Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, 40% Coco Coir, 20% Perlite medium. I had a test pot. No plant, just growing medium. After a few weeks I tore it down and determined that I was not getting even moisture/nutrient distribution throughout the growing medium. That is why I changed to the new formula for growth medium. I don’t know yet if this will solve my moisture and feed even distribution problem. I remain hopeful.
  5. pH? Of the soil or medium (root zone/reservoir/runoff) and of the water and/or nutrient mix that is fed to the plant?
    I checked the Ph and TDS (ppm) levels as per one of the tutorials posted on the ILGM site. The Ph at the root zone was way low at 5.4. The TDS was way low at 280 PPM. I had been feeding the plants 1/2 strength Techiflora BC nutrients but I believe that I had been feeding too often. The TDS of 280 ppm does not agree with that but when I changed to the new grow medium on 5-27-2015 I rinsed to roots in a 6.5 Ph water and then repotted the plants into 4" pots which they were already in (I sterilized new pots to repot the plants in). I have since re-potted the plants into 1 gallon pots with the new formula grow medium. I have changed my feeding schedule. I am now using full strength nutrients and the watering schedule is now feed, water, water. I am not sure about the intervals yet as I am still trying to figure that out. Whatever I put on these plants whether it be water or nutrients the liquid gets Ph adjusted to 6.2 to 6.5. I do not know yet what the runoff Ph is.
  6. Type and strength of nutrients used? NPK? EC/TDS/PPM levels?
    I use Techniflora BC nutrients and additives as follows as per their recommendations:
    BC Boost 3-0-2
    BC Grow 1-3-6
    BC Bloom 1-4-7
    Thrive Alive B-1 Red 1-1-1
    Thrive Alive B-1 Green 1-1-1
    Magical 2-0-0
    Awesome Blossom 2-11-11
    Root 66 1-1-1
    Sugar Daddy 0-0-0
    In addition I have also added:
    Great White Premium Mycorrhizae
    General Hydroponics Flora Blend Vagan Plant Booster
  7. Temperature? Day vs. night temp or highest and lowest temps? Root zone temps?
    Daytime temperature is 75 to 81 degrees. I shoot for 77 and can pretty well maintain that. Nighttime temperature drops down about 7 degrees when the lights are off. I am running a 20/4 light schedule. I don’t know what the root zone temperature is.
  8. Humidity %?
    Humidity was running around 16% which is way low. When the humidity was running this low I was using an HID light. I have since replaced that with an Advanced LED Lights DS XTE 300 light. I also installed a 115 CFM fan in the ceiling above the grow space where the plants are vegging. This brings in some heated air but I have an 18,000 BTU air conditioner so that doesn’t pose a problem. I could have gotten the humidity up simply by the light change I believe but I also wanted some direct outside air to replenish CO2. My humidity now runs from 55% to 77% while more normally being around 66%. So far I haven’t had a mildew problem at this humidity level.
  9. Light system/watts/lumens/FLUX/PAR?
    Advanced LED Lights DS XTE 300 light 300 watts. I am not sure what the lumens/FLUX/PAR values are but the light seems to be doing great. Here is what Advanced LED Lights says in that regard:
    Features of the NEW Super High Flux 5W LEDs:
    113% Higher PAR/Watt than a 600w HPS (XTE-200: 14.71 vs. 600w HPS: 6.90)
    79% Higher PAR/Watt than competing 5w LED grow lights. (XTE-200: 14.71 vs. 5w Competitor: 8.10)
    36% Higher PAR/Watt than the California Lightworks 200. (XTE-200: 14.71 vs. Solarflare 200: 11.02)
    28% Higher PAR/Watt than the Kind L600. (XTE-200: 14.71 vs. Kind L600: 11.47)
    Of course since this is from the manufacturer it must be taken with a grain of salt.
  10. Ventilation system? Size? CFM? CO2? AC, Humidifier, De-humidifier?
    In addition to the air conditioner and ceiling fan mentioned above I also have a 3500 CFM blower powering a 12” carbon filter. I only run this blower when smell gets to be a problem and then I lower the fan speed down as low as I can and still get rid of the smell when it becomes a problem.
  11. Number “weeks/days” from into Season, Vegetative Growth or Bloom/flowering?
    These seeds all sprouted on 5-2-2015. About 3 weeks into the program I discovered that I was not developing a sufficient root mass. This has been a consistent problem for me. Shortly after that I found and started using the Great White Mycorrhizae and the root mass problem improved greatly. I have always had a problem growing a sufficient root mass. Maybe I have found the solution for that in the Great White.
    Add anything else you feel would help us give you a most informed answer.
    This is by far not my first grow but I have never had a successful grow. I always grow beautiful, robust, healthy plants but they just don’t grow nice buds. I am sorry that this has gotten to be so long. I know that you have plenty to do besides reading a lengthy dissertation from me but I have had a problem for a long time and I hope I have said something here that will give you a clue as to what I am doing wrong. I can provide pics if you want.
    I appreciate any help you may be able to provide. Thanks in advance. Keep it green…

Yeah, there is a whole lot going on.

I don’t understand exactly what you mean by that they don’t grow nice buds.

I also won’t try to figure out what all your different nutrient mixes mean. I can’t, I just can not try and learn every single nutrient mix and schedule out there, and besides I keep it real simple following basically the simple Lucas formula, with only slight tweaks during veg vs. bloom, regardless of what nutrient “brand” I am using. The EC/PPM of your nutrients might be very low, 280PPM is very low, except for clones and seedlings.

If your roots don’t get enough oxygen or enough nutrients, both of these things will reduce root mass. The mycorrhizae from the great white should help with both, the roots getting more oxygen and nutrients, but something else might also be going on.

Another thing is, I don’t really flower in soil, so I can’t really help you there. I flower in DWC, and in DWC, you almost never hear of a problem developing root mass.

I’ll tag @latewood to this post, he has a lot more experience with soil-less mixes like yours and might have some additional insight.

One other note as you are using a LED system. A 300 watt LED might not actually consume 300 watts of power, depending on how the manufacturer labels things. However Advanced usually does use pretty darn close to what they claim, and so if it says 300 watts, the power consumed will usually be very close as opposed to a cheaper LED that uses, say, 100 x 3 watt LEDs and is actually using only about 150 watts of real power, but calls itself a 300 watt because it uses 100 LED’s that have a max rating of 3 watts each even though they are never in reality run at their maximum wattage.

And so even if your light is really using 300 watts of actual power, even with a really good light like Advanced LEDs, you will not get the actual performance of a 600 watt HPS, sorry, it just doesn’t work like that in reality.

In reality, maybe you can get away with using 35 watts of LEDs for every 50 watts of HPS you are trying to match. As you can clearly see this is not a 50% ratio of 300 watts of LED equaling a 600 watt HPS. A 300 watt LED by Advanced will only maybe come close to equaling about 500 watts of HPS, if that, and even in Advanced’s tutorials they admit that it is about a minimum of 35 watts of LED per square foot of canopy, or 50 watts of HPS for every square foot of canopy, and so you can clearly see, it seems you might be severely under lighted. This alone will severely restrict your flower’s development.

I will be glad to help out, but we need to move this support ticket to a dedicated topic. It does not belong in this topic. :slight_smile: If you can re post in your own topic, I will be glad to check in tomorrow in order to share the “topic” with all. Thank You. lw

p.s. place lw in title for nutrient guidance. Peace, lw