Weaselcracker, most white widow strains vary from breeder to breeder. Some are close to the original strain of white widow created in the 90's while some have had its genetics altered slightly to improve yield. Just as there are auto flower white widow plants now. They took a white widow strain, and bred it with a ruderalis weed plant, to get the shortened nature and unchangeable bioclock dictating when it flowers instead of a light schedule. Things like that have been done to white widow over the last couple decades and due to that is the reason why the strain differs from breeder to breeder and why 1 grower can have no problems growing it out and others from other breeders can have issues, its what that particular strain you got was bred with, some have more of a sativa content than indica, which can throw off not only feeding, but also the grow time of the plant, any plant that is showing sativa dominance, will most definitely need to be flowered around 10 weeks instead of the 8 the breeders tell you, even if starting flowering weeks after buds have already shown. I think that about covers it.
The best advice I can give for growing white widow, is keep the ph in check, and that most apparent feeding issues with white widow plants, whether it looks like they are overfed or underfed, I would first and foremost add more calmag to plant, I grow only in hydro so this is what I do, for soil I couldn't tell you. For example, my white widows look like they are constantly underfed, and that's at 1600-1700ppm. When they start looking like that and the ppms in my bucket say 1600-1700ppm, its a calmag issue, the plant used up all the calcium and magnesium it had and the other nutrients cant be taken up by the roots without the calcium and magnesium to ride up the plant on. Adding more calmag into the bucket of course increases ppm, but in a couple hours you will see the ppms dropping since the plant has been soaking up all the available nutes along with the newly added calmag. White widow is a CALMAG junkie and always looking for a fix, give it to her and shell love you for it, deny her and shell give you nothing but problems. That's what Ive learned from growing them from a few different breeders. True North Seed Bank has one of the closest of the white widow strains available from what I have bought from and grown, Ive grown the strain from True North Seed Bank, Herbies, and Attitude, and Bonza. True Norths has been the best so far. And they happen to be a sponsor on this site, Ive also never had a problem with my seeds orders from them or herbies or bonza.
For the plant you have in flower that's doing okish, try adding if your using hydro, botanicare sweet if you can get it, for flower sweet works better for the plant since it no longer relies on CALMAG during mid and late flower. It needs the carbs and sugars for it to do the same as the calmag, and act as a small steroid for your buds, since sugars are what make the bud swell during the bud swell stage of the plant. Adding this to your plant should make it bounce back with some vigor, I do know that soil growers use molasses or honey for the same effect, by mixing it in with the soil, I just don't know the amounts.
Hope that helps anyone with questions about the different breeders selling the same strain and why there are differences between them, hopefully I covered why those differences are there, and a couple ways to combat the problems associated with growing this plant. I am no way a pro, but I am a scientist, and experiments and tests are kinda my thing, I didn't want to grow 5 or 6 different strains when I first started growing, I wanted to grow 1 strain, learn all its flaws, the best way to grow and harvest it, the best ways to increase yield and so on and so on. ive been growing this plant, only this plant, from multiple breeders, many different ways for many years and the info I share about them are all based on my grow experiences and logs from all my grows and what they react to. I figured I would learn the ins and outs of a particular strain before moving on to other strains. White widow in hydro is a very forgivng strain, it can withstand high heat without CO2, ive had it in temps around 91-92F and it grew with no heat stress, add some CO2 and see what happens
Co2 also enables you to have your plants in higher temps.
As for my scrog, well I didn't like the way it was growing through the scrog, I felt like the branches still could have been stretched and grown more under the scrog so we pulled the branches back through the screen and ran them up under the screen, then we pulled individual bud sites on each branch through the screen making sure to keep the branch under it completely. This makes sure that the only thing on the top side of the screen is bud sites and not branches that will grow and cover up other bud sites, this makes it more uniform. The holes are too small to weave the branches through them every few inches, this way I don't have to worry about tearing the leaves up and it spreads everything out more and more evenly. Since doing that it doubled almost doubled the amount of screen that it was currently filling up. maybe only 1 more week of veg then I will flip to flower.
Since I thinned a couple of plants out from the bottom and cut off growth branches, the plants do not have as many branches or bud sites as the other 2 plants, which makes their footprint a lot smaller, I'm hoping to use that additional space to fill it with buds from the other 2 healthier plants.
I put the screen in around 8 inches above the growing medium, this time its 9 inches, and if i was going to scrog like I did before switching styles this time, i would let it grow about 3in through the screen and then bend it through another hole, making sure to have enough distance to have the top bud pop through the farthest hole. then let that bud site or branch grow another 3in and do it again. in hydro under good conditions I get anywhere from 1in to 1.75in growth per day. so about every 2 days you weave it through. This system this time keeps all the branches completely under the screen and you only pull bud sites up and put them through the holes, not the branch itself.
I really hope that I have answered everyones questions and if there any more I would be more than happy to give my advice. Hopefully I have also covered some things that people have thought about and haven't really reasearched yet, hopefully i can be a source of info as well. I wish everyone luck in their grows and I will post updated pics later after light comes on, I am currently going to attempt to make a pain cream with the magical butter machine. Using emu oil and buds and a few other ingredients. I will also post a report on how it turned out. I'm hoping it will be an alternative for people with pardon the pun, joint, pain. an oil they can just rub in and get relief from their pain. Emu oil is the ultimate in skin penetration and absorption. I'm hoping using the emu oil as a means to reach down into the skin and joints and tissues will bring the medical effects of the medical marijuana into the muscles skin and joints. Anyway I will let everyone know how it turns out,
I have another grow as well, but its commercial and at a different location and hard to take pics of daily, in my resume of plants grown and worked with, are Dr. Grinspoon, Big Bang, Ultimate purple, Chocolope, Jack Herer, Critical Kush, and Agent Orange along with the White Widow of course. I have grown white widow by far the longest, but I do have a couple years experience growing all the others. Ive learned a few things about them as well as I have grown them.
Thanks for reading these long posts I put up, most are to say what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, and also to answer questions that are asked, along with giving info that I have picked up and learned over the years that may take a while of googling to find out. Again thank you for your patience and time and stay tuned my grow is about to get to the good part, flower in about a week or so then well really see these babies take off!
