Hey people I found here: A Tip About Flowering The leaves of a plant are the only part that can carry the flowering signal. The mechanism that causes this signal is an interesting process. Plants contain very specific color pigments, two of which are called phytochrome (red) Pr, and Phytochrom (far red) Pfr. Pr absorbs light at 660 NM. Pfr absorbs light at 730 NM. A long, dark period allows the Pfr to dissipate and causes hormonal change that makes the plant flower. For production purposes, give the plant a good start by diminishing the Pfr; induced flowering is started with 36 hours of darkness before the first 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark. Someone tried this? Does it work? I'm confused, need help. Thanks.
Thats what I just did because I heard about it on here b4. http://forum.grasscity.com/absolute-beginners/124373-my-plants-female.html
Yes, it definitely speeds things up, and I recommend it all over the place (here and elsewhere). It resets the biological clock, so to speak. You can often see sex within two or three days of 12/12 by simply giving them 36hrs darkness first. I recently had a plant in it's 36hr period, showed sex (male) and had already dropped a few pods of pollen by the time the 36hrs was over! Fortunately the females with him waited until a few days later to get their tits out. *phew* Another 36hrs of darkness before harvest is also highly recommended, but for different reasons. -mu
So if I were to do this should I put a bag or something over each plant so they don't pollinate eachother? Or would it hurt if they got a minute of light every 12 hours during the 36 so I could check for male/female?
I wouldn't bother. Males can generally go from zero to pollinating a lot quicker than females can show flowers. Even if a female showed sex in the 36hr dark period (as well as a male), the worst that would happen is you might get a couple of pollinated flowers, a few seeds. No biggie. Yes, it would hurt. Even a flash of light would ruin the whole thing. You might get off with using a special plant torch (green) for a couple of minutes, but no longer, and definitely no other kind of light. -mu
Hey great info MU I have one more for you....How dark is dark for plants? I mean does it need total darknessor can a little show? I have a very crude grow box with 3 larger plants on one side and the other smaller plants are growing. So between the two I have a piece of drywall (White side tward the plats) but there is light showing frm the other side? I mean how anal do I need be? My first thought is they seem to grow ok at night with a moon in the ski and that is about all the light that shows thru.?? Thanks fellas
There are three basic views of how to start flowering, and they aren't necessarily contradictory. The most basic is to simply switch to the 12/12 light cycle when ready. Another is what is being discussed here -- jump-starting the hormonal change with an elongated dark period to start the flower cycle. The third idea is the exact opposite, though, to ease into it by changing the lights gradually over a week or so (for example going from 18/6 to 17/7 the first night, 16/8 the next, and so on until reaching 12/12), in the belief that this gradual transition more closely mirrors the light changes that occur in nature. What is interesting is that none of these to my knowledge is considered to be harmful or ineffective -- they all will work, it's more a matter of what you are most comfortable with. The jump-start approach is the quickest, if only by a few days.
Quite anal! The very worst thing you can do (hermie-making-wise) is flash them during their dark period, so you need to ensure that when you switch on the room lights, there aren't any light changes inside the flowering chamber. And of course, you never open the flowering chamber during the dark period. A very dim glow is okay. So long as it's constant, they don't mind too much, particularly if it's from down low somewhere. But that's a very dim glow, basically no more than a pale moon would provide. If you can take a picture and get something, it's too light. -mu
Once again thanks for the info...I just started there dark period so I will not mess with them till its been 36... On a side note...I had 5 small sprouts growing in the other chamber and I went to check and 2 were gone...! I have mice in my garage would they have snatched them?? What ever it was only grabbed two out of the clay pots and left the other bigger ones alone.. Oh well....This is just for fun anyway.
plants have an internal clock ...so theoretically if a cannabis plant is growing on 18 hours light ...some say to use 36 hours dark to reset its clock but its really a bunch of donkey doodoo ... just veg for 18 hours & lower the hours gradually like as if they were growing outdoors ...cannabis is & will always be an outdoor nature growing plant if you want to grow good weed indoors ...you basically have to do everything nature would (simulate outdoor) ....yes mice eat even dry buds ...well not the buds ...they strip the buds off the flowers & eat the sweet stalks ...they go nuts for it !! put your plants in 48 hours darkness or very low light before chop ...this causes some stress & the buds & trichs start to really swell up resins are created in the dark period , where the level of water is higher ...so with 48 hours darkness , the plants thinks its going to die so she starts filling her buds with water , causing them to swell & puts on more resin to protect herself more bud more resin !!!....it doesn't always work ...grow conditions do have to be perfect peace John
If it works, and it does, how is it donkey doodoo? Unless you are outdoors, then you are indoors! Deal with it. We are basically jumping the plant from spring to autumn in a indoor normal grow. To replicate nature, you'd have to gradually lower the light hours over many months, not exactly practical for indoor growing. And a nightmare for setting up your timer. Also, using gradual changes makes it difficult to have any kind of schedule in your growroom, unless you know your strain very well. Some strains will trip into flowering at more hours, some less. Throwing it into 12/12 (after 36 hours darkness) guarantees you'll get a flowering response within a few days, tops. What's the downside? -mu ps. yup, mice, cats, rats, lots of animals love weed!
the response of flowering does not happen in a few days ...it takes weeks -10 day's the least do not mix yourself up with the Premordial Stage there are no short cuts to growing cannabis ....the point of everything is to stay as close to nature as possible .....seeing a hermie & high male ratios in nature is very very rare ... but indoors it's pretty common , why is that ?? because no matter how much we try to stabalize & train a plant to grow indoors ,it just doesn't want to do, what we want ...it always feels that it should be under the sun & growing with normal daytimes peace John
Dude, why don't you actually try it, and then come back here and say it doesn't work. And there are *lots* of shortcuts in growing cannabis. Maybe you just don't know about them. I put three different strains into flowering a few weeks back, after 36 hours darkness, and three days 12/12, they are all flowering madly. Not premordial flowering, real flowering. One cross, two Sativas. Was I just lucky? Sure, I was skeptical when I first heard it, but I tried it, and it works. Like I said, try it. And trust me, no one is replicating nature in their grow more than I am - well, there may be a few - but I'm not kidding myself into thinking I AM nature. Do you veg all your plants for three or more months? No, neither do I, unless I'm growing outside. Let's not be silly. Being indoors gives us way more control than that. We can sex and clone, and train and do all sorts. By the time a plant has reached its genetic maturity for maximum yield, we can two harvests already in the bag. Mother nature rarely takes clones, but she did make it possible. There is a difference. As for how plants "feel", perhaps they enjoy indoors more than you think. Perhaps they like not having too much competition, or nasty predators. Perhaps they more enjoy us being there every day, singing to them, caring for them, than they do being alone in a valley somewhere. Don't start me off on plant's feelings! We'll be here all night! -mu ps. as to the male/hermie ratios, in a field of cannabis, as they approach flowering time, the females will lean towards the nearest male. In other words, they are aware of their surroundings, and surrounding plants. Indoors, because there's much less plants around them, for survival, they need to have enough local pollen to reproduce successfully, and while there's only, say, six plants, an "eigth of a male" would be plenty, but it's not possible to have an "eigth of a plant", so you get a whole one. Less than ideal environment can also be a factor, particularly with hermies, but many people have 9:1 or 8:2 ratios of female:male germination indoors, so clearly their environment suits the plants just fine.
How quickly a plant flowers -- using any of these lighting schedules -- depends in part on how long the plant was vegged. If you are flowering after 3-4 weeks of veg then flowering will take longer because the plant wasn't really ready, but if you start flowering after 8 or more weeks the plant is already pre-flowering and champing at the bit. I think it is fair to say that plants evolved and adapted to natural, outdoor conditions, and those tendencies don't disappear when you grow a plant indoors. But we can suppress, isolate, maximize, and otherwise manipulate these inherent responses with the controlled environment of indoors. As an analogy, people are natural creatures too, and some of us are born to be faster runners than others. But take two equally fast runners and let one just grow up without any training and take the other and give him/her intense training, exercise regimens, vitamins, maybe even steroids, and train with the best shoes, on the best track, in the best weather and temps, and that runner will blow away the other in a race.
is this addressed to me ??? ...so you work with hundreds , thousands of plants like me every day ....you have my humble apology 24 hours veg ..36 darkness ....hmm & then growers wonder how they get hermies a single female grown under optimal conditions indoors will produce 60 % female seeds ...so you can believe what you want , its your right ! its good thing we professional breeders check out the forums from time to time so we know ,we are not doing anything wrong peace John
No, one single 36 hour dark period before entering 12/12. And the tip originally came from a breeder. -mu
a breeder is where i heard about the 36 hour method. i use it and i noticed the difference. it does (for me anyway) speed things up. the "last" thing i want to do is mimmick growing outdoors. i want to speed things up, not slow them down. gradually switching from 18/6 to 12/12, in my thinking, slows down the transition from veg to flower. i want that plant to know what i want it to do, and do it quickly. i've never done it, but i know people who use green lights to tinker around after lights out. it doesn't seem to matter how long the green light is on. no problems with hermies. i think the 18 or 12 hours that the light is on, is plenty of time to take care of business. hope this all makes sense. i'm a bit medicated. peace