Chiro's Dinafem Blue Widow - 2 plant DWC ScrOG - 96w T5 Veg / 600w HPS Flower

Hi everyone. This is my third grow and third grow journal. I hope you guys follow along. Because GC is being so crappy, I'm actually putting this journal on another site. If people follow it there, I may jump ship, despite loving the community here.

My first grow was a 2 plant Nirvana Wonder Woman under 400MH veg. I started with 3 seedlings

I removed the center one due to a bucket leak. I started flowering under 400w HPS and then switched to 600W a couple of weeks later. The end result looked something like this

which I harvested and ended up with 7.8oz of grade A and 1.2 oz of grade B bud.



My second grow was a White Widow (almost single plant) grow and ended with 8.2oz. I had problems with dud beans, and so only one plant was ready to go in.








Now that that's out of the way we can start this journal. I got a free Dinafem Blue Widow seed from the attitude so I decided to run these. I run semi-perpetual, so as soon as the previous plant comes out of the flower cabinet a new set goes in. The veg process of the Blue Widows overlapped the flowering of the last one, and the White Widow overlapped the flowering of the Wonder Woman.

11-06-11
I think this is when I took cuttings for the Blue Widows. I was going to do a coco run, because last time the roots got tangled in the veg tub and I decided coco might be a better way to go.



11-21-11
Had the "genius" idea to install a wall in the tub to keep the roots separated in veg, thus enabling me to try DWC for another run. This ultimately failed.


11-28-11
Moved the Blue Widows into the Veg DWC tubs.


Here's the one that didn't make it into DWC


12-05-11


12-13-11



12-22-11



12-26-11



12-31-11
The plant is definitely overgrowing the cabinet. Did aggressive supercropping and continued until I could move the plant into flower.




1-22-12
I finally got the Blue Widow into the main cabinet. In doing so I found out that the roots of the two plants had busted their way through the silicon and were somewhat tangled but not much. I cut them apart and stuck them in the flower cab.





Here you can see the incredibly distinctive pattern that occurs due to heavy lst when the plant is very young.



01-25-12
Right before the flip. On the night of the 25th, these plants got their first darkness.





Here is some weird discoloration, could be a deficiency or maybe just from spilling nutes on the plant when it was very young. If you know what it is please let me know



01-27-12
Two days after the flip to 12/12





01-28-12
This morning I awoke to find the light was off. At most they lost 2 hours of light. I'm not sure if it was the ballast or the bulb, because I swapped out both to a 400w hps and lumatek switchable ballast. If a bulb goes out should the ballast go cold or stay warm if it has power? My ballast was cold, if that means the ballast is dead I'll probably just run a 400w this time around. If it was just the bulb I will replace it.

01-30-12
Day 5 of 12/12These plants are stretchy. Despite all the LST that went into the plants during veg, I am confident that they will grow at least 8" above the screen, which is my goal. From what I've been reading, Dinafem Blue Widow is a medium yielder, but it grows so vigorously and nicely that if I get a decent amount it may be my go to strain. Provided of course that the smoke is any good.


Today I spent a good deal of time trying to get the canopy even. Luckily the stems are still really flexible and I have a lot of slack underneath to rearrange. Pretty soon I'm just going to have to let nature take its course though. Also, when I trim under the screen, there's gonna be a LOT going.. I hope I don't send the plant into shock.



Well that catches everyone up, I'm sorry there aren't as many descriptions of the various days as there should be. If you have any questions about anything please feel free to ask, or just general chatter is welcome on my journal. I hope you follow along and thanks for reading!

So that's what you missed on glee.

lookin good homeslice.

Will be cheering for your man. Congrats on your other grows and I hope this one goes well!

lookin good homeslice.

Thanks! This grow is going pretty well, so if it screws up it's my fault more than anyone.

Will be cheering for your man. Congrats on your other grows and I hope this one goes well!

Me too! I sort of consider the last one a failure, although I consider it a success considering it was a single plant grow. I think I will be doing White Widow next time around to see if the pheno I have is any good, I don't think the last run did it justice.

Question for you guys - lollipopping. So the plant is sending these awesome tops vertically like planned, but I've noticed that the tops all have little side shoots which are also growing straight up. I don't know if they'll get big, but I have just about as many tops as I want colas so I was planning on lollipopping them. Do I just cut these off as soon as I see them? Or would that remove the budsites in those crevices?

Thanks!

i dont think you should worry about ''anemic'' yields bro your plants are huge lol

how are you keeping the drain fixtures in the tubs from leaking? Every fitting i have tried leaks like a sieve.

i dont think you should worry about ''anemic'' yields bro your plants are huge lol

They are pretty big, but most Blue Widow journals I read go "wow they look so big it's amazing" then drying occurs and then "not a great yielder but the smoke is good.."

how are you keeping the drain fixtures in the tubs from leaking? Every fitting i have tried leaks like a sieve.

I use grommets. I find they work better than the O-ring type stuff on the curved surface of the buckets.

Day 7 of 12/12
I love this part. Plant is visibly growing every day. Growing a bit uneven, it's gonna be tough to keep the canopy uniform. There are definitely tops that want to win.




Here you can see the tops racing. Who will win? Chiro will!


Here's the question for you folks! When lollipopping do I remove these guys now?

Or do I wait until they shoot off some? I definitely want to pick the winners this time around or this cabinet is gonna get crazy!

I've been reading a lot of Dinafem Blue Widow journals, and while I'm a little worried about the yield, I notice that Dinafem says it only flowers for 55 days. It says the same for the White Widow, and in general the days it lists for flowering are pretty short. I can interpret this a few ways. The first is that the plants flower real quick. The second is that Dinafem counts from the point the plant starts to flower not from the start of 12/12. The last is that Dinafem likes to put short dates so their genetics seem more attractive. Some of the early journals from more experienced growers seem to say BW can take a while to finish, which makes sense to me given it is so sativa dominant. I've never flowered a plant less than 60 days, and without a good estimate it will be difficult to figure out when to flush. Anyone out there have experience with Dinafem genetics enough to know if their numbers are accurate?

subbed -- That root ball was gigantic! Looking great!

Dude I can only hope to pull a HP off of the (4 potential females 1 clone)... I started with soil but I'm working my way to hydro.

Joining you on the light side!

Day 7 of Flower (again)

What two updates in one day? Amazing huh? I decided to flush today, as it's been about 10 gallons of water that have gone in since I put the girls in, and my res holds 10 gallons. I'm going to be doing the flush style Lucas formula instead of the add back this time around I think. Last time I only flushed to pure water before my harvest, and I think this was why there was some yellowing. I think since because I don't use RO water, the plant takes up N P K leaving all that other crap, so the EC/ppm readings aren't indicative of the level of nutes. Old school flushes should solve this.

Anyway While I was doing this the light switched off, giving me a rare opportunity to get some pics under regular light so you guys can see the beautiful blueish leaves that Blue Widow has. The color of the leaves is remarkable and somewhat unique, so I'm glad I get to share with you guys.









I also think my grow might be kind of boring for you guys, since there's nothing really strange or innovative about it. So since I redid my bonzai DWC moms today, I thought you guys might be interested. Not too many people do DWC for moms, since they grow really fast. I haven't flushed the mom tub for at least 3 months, maybe 4. As a result the plants were growing really funky and stunted. I was okay with this since who cares, I only need two cuts every two months anyway. Well last time I took some cuttings and they haven't been doing very well, and I think it's because my moms are in bad shape.

Sad looking clones

Thus I'm changing out the nutes and giving them a trim, canopy and roots.

Blue Widow mom

Blue Widow trimmed rootball

And then we have the White Widow mom. I haven't been too impressed with this pheno. The seeds I got from Attitude (Nirvana seeds) were sad and kind of immature looking, and the plant didn't get as frosty as it should have. It could very well have been my less than optimal grow however, so I would like to give it one more shot.

White Widow mom

White Widow roots

And then we have the Wonder Woman. I'm not even sure why I'm keeping her. She's really short since I don't want her growing into the fan, and I honestly can't think of a scenario where I would run her again. I should probably just cull her and get some AK-47 or Kalashnikova seeds. There's just so many really good high quality high yielding indicas out there, that there's no legitimate reason to keep around this mediocre one. Plus I have some more Wonder Woman seeds stored somewhere from the first batch.

Wonder Woman mom

Wonder Woman roots

Sad looking moms back in their tub

And unrelated, here are some good clones from the Blue Widow, that may go in next time. One of them may turn into a mother if I do decide to go all coco. If I go DWC, two of them are going in and I don't know what happens to the other two. When I took these clones I was just practicing, and I took different kinds of cuts for each. By the time they rooted I couldn't remember what the difference between them was supposed to be.

Beautiful plants and roots!

How do you keep your roots so white? Don't your nutes discolor them?

Beautiful plants and roots!

How do you keep your roots so white? Don't your nutes discolor them?

I use maxibloom which is basically clear to pinkish. Cheapest Lucas you can do and not weird colored. If you look at my first grow the rootball is pretty crazy too. I can grow roots pretty well, if only I could grow bud

Dude I can only hope to pull a HP off of the (4 potential females 1 clone)... I started with soil but I'm working my way to hydro.

I think going coco like you are is a good medium step. H3ad is so damned easy to get good results. I just love Hydro so much and am already set up for it. I can't figure out what kind of light you have in your tent from your journal. I know you added CFLs, but what's the main light? That will probably determine more than anything what you pull.

Great stuff, Chiro.

You get some awesome roots, man - while I only did a few bucket runs, I was never able to fill up the bucket that well.

What two updates in one day? Amazing huh? I decided to flush today, as it's been about 10 gallons of water that have gone in since I put the girls in, and my res holds 10 gallons. I'm going to be doing the flush style Lucas formula instead of the add back this time around I think. Last time I only flushed to pure water before my harvest, and I think this was why there was some yellowing. I think since because I don't use RO water, the plant takes up N P K leaving all that other crap, so the EC/ppm readings aren't indicative of the level of nutes. Old school flushes should solve this.

That's interesting, actually - makes sense. Now that I can manage my res easier I may end up flushing sometimes to see.

Hi there Chiroman:wave:

Let me start by saying, nothing boring about your thread, love all the pics and info your putting up, very informative. Your second grow with the white widow under scrog looked amazing. It looks like you had a very similar cola density to what I'm going to end up with. Did you experience any problems with mold as a result of this?

Subbed for sure.

Hi there Chiroman:wave:

Let me start by saying, nothing boring about your thread, love all the pics and info your putting up, very informative. Your second grow with the white widow under scrog looked amazing. It looks like you had a very similar cola density to what I'm going to end up with. Did you experience any problems with mold as a result of this?

Subbed for sure.

Thanks! It's good to know people actually look at the journal sometimes. I didn't have any mold problems, but I have a fan in the cabinet as well as a one constantly exhausting. I think when the canopy is that dense each cola doesn't get quite enough light so they don't get as big as they would otherwise.

Awesome grow can't wait to see how things turn out!

Thanks! It's good to know people actually look at the journal sometimes. I didn't have any mold problems, but I have a fan in the cabinet as well as a one constantly exhausting. I think when the canopy is that dense each cola doesn't get quite enough light so they don't get as big as they would otherwise.

I Know it can be dishearting when it seems no one is showing intrest but atleast do it for yourself if noone else. Its good to keep a record of everything as there's always room for improvment. Even if your thread helps one person become a better grower then that's great.