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Final Grow/Smoke Report
Okay, so now that I have looked over my scribbling and dried all of the bud, I will offer up some observations on this strain. As usual I would like to say that a handful of plants hardly constitutes a fair and scientific investigation and more thorough growing is needed to make anything more than general conclusions. On a good note, I found this strain to be very stable and all plants were fairly uniform and similar in requirements and appearance barring the obvious color and leaf variation. With that in mind, here are some of my findings:
Shared physical traits:
White Widow absolutely loves hydro. I have never watched a plant grow quicker in the vegetative stage than these girls. It was an amazing rate of growth. After two weeks in the buckets, all of the plants had stocks as thick as the circumference of a quarter. The root systems developed very quickly and nearly reached the capacity of the buckets by the end of their cycle.
The speedy growth compelled me to prune these plants very aggressively. I literally trimmed a full sized garbage bag full of pruned branches and leaves. Pinching was a mistake this grow. The plants went sideways in a hurry, forcing me to quickly tie down certain branches to achieve decent light penetration. The WW?s will definitely get bushier and thicker when topped or pinched.
My cramped space unfortunately, was not well suited to this condition and I paid for it with poor bud development on the lowermost branches. Due to this issue I have re-designed my grow room to allow more spacing between my plants. I am convinced as ever that there is no substitute for balanced light coverage.
I?m undecided if yield increased with all my tweaking, but without pruning these girls will overrun your house.
Training is very easy with this strain as the branches are very pliable and easy to position. The fan leaves are gigantic and numerous, making it a constant struggle to maintain light to all of the areas of the plant. For this reason I see the WW as a great SCROG/SOG candidate.
Super Cropping was effective with this strain and it recovered quickly with minimal stress. Care must be exercised when handling the branches and leaf stems, as they are very soft in the veg stage and easy to damage if you are careless. I split more than a few branches but they healed quickly with very little lag time in growth.
During the 12/12 stretch, the plants surprised me with their relative short stretch. Although they more than doubled in length during flower, I had expected much more. Some of this may be due to the excessive veg time. These plants were all fairly mature before I went to 12/12 light cycles. I guess I was envisioning a vicious stretch based on their quick development in veg. Instead these girls behaved like typical Indicas and sported a short, but husky, appearance all the way to the end. Stretch lasted until the 7th week of flower.
Plant heights were all similar throughout and finished around 40?. I have a feeling that there is a more Sativa dominant pheno within this release that I have yet to discover.
Nutrient needs -Deficiencies
Germination/Vegetation
All five seeds germinated in five days or less and growth rates were uniform. The stems were not rigid enough initially to support the weight of the plants. Adding splints for support quickly solved the problem and by week two they were able to go unsupported. Keep a close eye on light-to-plant distance, as they will stretch very quickly if the light intensity is too low.
The cloning solution seemed more than adequate for the first weeks. No other food or supplement was used until week three. As I said earlier, the plants grow very quickly and will surprise you each morning with their nightly progress. I encountered no significant nutrient related issues during veg. Possibly the most trouble-free grow overall, that I have had.
The plants all stressed a little during the first transplant and reacted poorly to the HID initially. The plants also reacted to temp changes unfavorably, so try to keep any changes to a minimum in the early days of life. The roots grow very quickly on this plant in optimal conditions, so be prepared to move them to individual containers soon if that is your intent.
I would recommend going easy on the nutes until you feel that they are lagging and then bump it up a bit. Unlike my previous grow, these seem to perform better with a less is more attitude concerning food.
The plants really didn?t smell much until the 4th week. At that time I started to notice a very strong odor. The odor is very skunky and will carry for miles if you let it. You will not be able to eliminate this smell without using some form of odor control; dryer sheets are not going to cut it.
Flowering:
I flowered all of the plants at around 18? and my initial flowering mixture was around 900 ppm.
This was too high in my opinion and resulted in minor edge and tip burning on two of the plants. After taking it down progressively to 700, I think the plants were much happier. I?m not convinced that higher nutes are beneficial in this case and I will certainly be less aggressive the next time around. I maintained 600?800 through week 8 and then diluted the mixture to 0 gradually for flushing in the following weeks.
Bud sites appeared roughly two weeks in and sex was evident at around 10 days for my one hermaphrodite, and at two weeks for the remaining three females. The hermie wannabe had shown obvious stress during transplant and as a result warranted my suspicion. Sure enough, it turned to the dark side and was destroyed quickly.
Phenotypes
There were two phenotypes in this grow and they looked nothing alike.
Pheno #1
This type was more Sativa dominant in appearance and featured bright reddish-purple calyxes and long very thick buds. It matured a full two weeks ahead of the others and yielded the most of the three.
This plant finished at 44? tall and was theoretically ready to cut at week 8; I let it go longer hoping for more resin and crystal production. Although the plant finished very sticky, I doubt that the extra time was worth it. Because of the quick maturity and decent yield, this was the better of the two phenotypes and I would recommend keeping it if you come across it, as the finished smoke is pretty good stuff.
Calyx to leaf ratio was average, but there seemed to be quite a lot of trimming and hash fixings at the end.
Color: bright green with dark red calyxes that turned purple in week 4 of 12/12.
Beauty: 10. Sweet looking colas and leaves.
Ease of Grow: 10. Great strain for a first time grower.
Smell: 8+. Don?t grow this plant if you can?t remove a great deal of odor.
Yield: decent – 120g.
Smoke Report
I have heard many conflicting reports on WW and I wonder if that has to do with all of the crossbreeding and different seed banks. Regardless, here are my thoughts.
To be objective I cured the bud for a minimum of two weeks in glass Mason jars after a two week dry and smoked it in a clean glass pipe, which really is the best way IMO.
The buds burn very well leaving only a fine white ash behind. They are very tight and one good-sized nugget will get 4 people very high. The taste is unique and hard to describe. Some skunkiness yet too sweet to be afghan. A very slight citrus after taste that isn?t unappealing but doesn?t make you crave it like the berry or haze strains do.
This is sleeper herb, and sneaky at that. The tendency is to smoke more than you need only to find yourself impossibly stoned. My eyes got a little puffy and Cotton Mouth set in shortly after the first hit. After two hits from my Steam Roller, I am ready to sit out for a while. Not trippy, but very tingly and cerebral. I have come up with several cool ideas while under its influence, now if I can only get motivated to act on them.
The taste is average, but should get better with a longer cure. The high is very reflective and can fuel some very interesting late night conversations. No munchies or other side effects were encountered other than the eyes and cotton mouth mentioned earlier.
Potency: 8. Coming from me, that is pretty high.
Taste: 5. Not too good, not too bad.
High: 7. Above average, good daytime buzz, not a sleep aid.
Desirability: 6. Way too much out there that is better and finishes quicker.
Social Liability: 0. A good up high with minimal physical impairment.
Paranoia: 0. No paranoia at all.
Friend Maker: 9. Very social weed that offers a good time for all.
Pheno #2
The last two plants I flowered and the one straggler that I kept in veg, fall into this category. They all lagged about two weeks behind pheno #1 and yielded less at the end. The calyx to leaf ratio was poor. Bud sites were small and surrounded by legions of fan and shade leaves. Just keeping even light exposure became a nightmare requiring numerous pruning sessions and creative uses of string.
Not spectacular yielders by my standard and they matured much too slowly in flower for my tastes. Both flowered plants were nearly identical in yield and final size.
In a bigger grow this pheno wouldn?t have made the cut, not enough buds for the amount of leaf material, and they just didn?t keep up with the others.
Color: dark green leaves and calyxes, with bright red hairs at harvest.
Beauty: 10. Very pretty leaves and bud formations.
Ease of Grow: 10. No problem.
Smell: 8+. Skanky.
Yield: average, 80-90g.
Smoke Report
These buds took a long time to dry, even now as they cure, they are damp with resin and very sticky to the touch. The nuggets are not as dense as pheno #1 and mash together very easily when handled. The smell is wonderful and I look forward to opening the jars up each day for that initial blast of MJ goodness.
The nugs burn very evenly and reflect the thoroughness of my flush. The stone hits you immediately and the taste is quite pleasant. A tasty mixture of spice and pine, with a hint of fruit. The high is body in nature and quickly extends to your face, legs and arms. Your joints quickly go numb and the rest of your body quickly follows. It?s like being immobile but your mind is clear as a bell. Unusual in that you think you are okay until you take a step and think better of it. Not a true couch-lock, but close.
No nasty side effects, but there is a mildly unpleasant aftertaste that may or not disappear with more curing. Overall a nice smoke with muscle relaxing and face numbing tendencies.
Potency: 8
Taste: 7. May get higher rating in future.
Smell: 9. Very pungent and strong. Prepare to smell like weed.
High: 7. Body high with clear head.
Desirability: 5. Poor yielder, too many leaves.
Social Liability: not good for social smoking, motivational vacuum.
Paranoia: 0
Friend Maker: 10+. Great gift for friends in need of medicine.
Summary
White Widow is another one of those famous strains that I had wanted to grow for some time. The lack of clear information on WW was frustrating, but overall I feel it is an excellent plant that requires a good deal of growing to find that elusive ?killer pheno?. I was encouraged by the stability of the strain and the relative ease of the grow. First time growers should definitely give this one a shot. Expect a few lemons in the group, but even the lemonade isn?t too bad.
The plants were happy with lighter nutes in veg and flower and will reward you with fantastic rates of growth if given the right balance. These are very responsive plants that quickly tell you if there is a problem. I managed to shock one into Hermieville, but that was my fault and I don?t associate the event with the strain, rather, the stress coupled with feminized seeds was the culprit.
Yield was above average from pheno #1 and average for pheno #2. I believe that pinching increased the yield on pheno #1 but might have been harmful to #2. A SCROG would optimize this strain and pull out a higher yield.
Like I mentioned before, this is a very quick growing plant that requires maintenance throughout the veg period. Left to its own devices, it could easily Overgrow the world.
Color appeared on the one pheno but the others remained dark green with a heavy coating of resin. It is impossible to come away from these plants in flower without a strong odor of dank. Even brushing your bare skin against the buds produces slight tingling and numbness to the affected area. From that perspective, these are the most resinous and naughty plants I have grown.
The clones I took rooted very quickly and seemed to grow well after the initial shock period was over. Care must be taken to properly support them early on, as they are very pliable and easily bent. All six rooted within ten days and were ready for transplant.
A harvest time of 8 weeks was probably optimal for pheno #1 and 10 weeks turned the others into couch lock. I would think 8 weeks max for the types I grew; the additional two weeks had little benefit other than a slight increase in Resin/CBN?s.
The trichomes are easily visible and can be observed without magnification, even in the early stages. I would still advise using a magnifying lens to be accurate.
Aja
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Garden Information for this report
DWC: 4 – five gallon airstone supplied buckets w/controller
600 watt HPS w/Hortilux bulb
3′ wide x 2′ deep x 7′ high, grow area
Nutrients: Olivia’s Cloning Solution, General Hydroponics Flora Series 5/5/5(ml) veg, 0/8/16(ml) bloom
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Report added by: TommyUK
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