I posted this over in general indoors, but wanted to post here too. Im wondering what happens when a plant receives more darkness than light in flowering. 12/14 (light/dark) as opposed to 12/12. Or 12/13. If the 24 hour day is for some reason unknown to me sacred to cannabis, then 14/10 or 13/11. Im not trying to substantially reduce the photosynthetic period, but ive seen articles that plants work just fine with 6 hours light in a 6/12 scenario, on an 18 hour day. I see the advantage to that, fewer days to reach harvest (at least, fewer days to achieve the same amount of darkness), but I would think the significant drop in light times could effect bud density. and thats where my 12/14 idea came from. put it on a 26 hour day. just to get it out of the way, I have a digital timer very capable of handling the odd schedules. I program a day and time to turn on, and a day and time to turn off, up to 20x. so, I do on at noon, off at midnight on at 2:00pm, off at 2:00am on at 4pm, off at 4am and so on, or similarly for 12/13. Anyone try something like this before and able to convince me it wont work? Anyone think it might be beneficial? My goal would be to ripen my trichs in a fewer amount of days, by shifting the total amount of flower time slightly towards darkness, so maybe flowering takes 6-7 weeks instead of 7-8, etc I would be doing this schedule throughout the entire flower cycle. maybe Id do 24/0 veg instead of 18/6 so the plant has no environmental reference to what a day should be, only a genetic one (if it does, might not since 24/0 already works)
google research has told me tha it will ripen more quickly, yet have a lower yield, which makes sense. that leads me to think it would be more beneficial after 4 weeks flower weeks 1-4, 12/12 weeks 5-7 or 5-8, 11/13 (24 hr day) or 12/14(26hr) im also leaning towards 11/13 or 10/14, but I have found evidence that supports a longer total day. Besides, if you can do 24/0 (that aint natural) then you can do tons of variants. Or what about 18/12? a 30 hour day would be crazy, but would maximize the photosynthetic period and still give 12 hours of darkness to keep it in flower
Greenhouse suggest with some of their strains to give longer dark period during final week to "coax out as much resin as possible and halt regrowth " First point sounds a little like marketing, but I believe deff helps the entire plant ripen more evenly something that can be difficult to achieve but usually not first priority for me. The thirty hour day is interesting but I don't think a plant could make that adjustment to your intentions and would probably really mess with it. Would like to see what happened if someone hear has seen or done this.
From my understanding throwing the light at it in different schedules will increase the risk in hermies. There's nothing wrong with our current light cycles, you've waited this long what's the extra 2 weeks espeically if you are getting more weight.
ok, heres where Im at after a TON of reading a plant requires 12 hours to properly develop the flowering hormones. you interrupt this, its over (some plants are ok at 11, maybe 10 hours according to cervantes, just strain to strain). So anything with less than 12 is out. The effect of extended darkness seems best suited closer to the end of flowering, as it does speed up the ripening of the trichs (multiple sources). So, no advantage to going over 12, maybe 13 hours dark at a time. HOWEVER, a plant has no true receptors that depend upon light schedules, only dark. So, I cant find any research that shows doing 18/12 light/dark would be bad. If anything, it would be good. A lot of growers will do 14/10 about 75% of the way through flower, as they find the increased photoperiod allows for more bud growth/density. The harm is that the reduction in darkness from 12 hrs to 10 seems to stunt the ripening. Why arent we on a longer day then? A plant, according to what I know/researched, only needs 12+ hrs dark AT A TIME to flower, but theres nothing regulating how often it gets that darkness. Assuming that, and a figure I found that says 18-20 hours at a time is really the most efficient use of the photoperiod (metabolic rate stunts after this mark), then there SHOULD be a bud density advantage to metabolizing more of the hormone produced in the 12 hours dark. Making a 30 hour day optimal, right? If anyone has some logic behind why this is bad, please tell me. Wives tales about hermies arent wholly supported in the research Ive been doing, certainly if it still has 12 hours darkness. I definately plan on trying at least a 14/12 or 15/12 schedule on my next run (end week 3 flower currently, dont want to throw THIS plant off, but I think if thats all it knows that it would be cool. 18/6 to 18/12 just seems logical to me
I too am looking forward to the results of running 18/12. I'm a medical patient and as soon as I get an "extra" cab running here, I'll be able to start experimenting. I'm wondering what type of effect this would have on the 6 month sativas I've been planning on running? Most likely 2 things will happen. 1 The flowering period will be extended 2 The final harvest weight will be increased Seeing as the time to harvest on these babies will be extremely long, my intention is to find out the efficiency of it. No point in doing it if the returns are only marginal. Now, if the medicinal content (not necessarily thc potency as you can keep the high, I'll take the medicinal relief.) is in any way increased by going 18/12 you can be sure that I'll be running it as standard on all my grows. Just went through a week smoking resin (freaking disgusting week, bleah!) and there was 0 medicinal content left over as far as back pain and muscle relaxation is concerned. I've been all torqued up because of it. *grrr*
hydroganic, Im hoping it will increase the yield as well as SHORTEN the flower period. I think it might metabolize a higher percentage of the flowering hormones, allowing for the bud to develop in fewer periods of darkness. maybe it wont shorten it, but hopefully it wont extend the flowering period.
I have played with your idea years ago and went with a 21 hour day (9/12). I chose 21 hours to make it easier to program my timer and I liked the idea of 8 days in one week. Theoretically it should shave 1 whole week off a 8 week strain but my results were that it only saved me 4 days. But that could just be the plants I used, which if I remember correctly, where Mr. Nice or Rosetta Stone. The yield was less then normal but I had no problem with hermies or plant stress. It wasn't worth trying again for me as a way to reduce time, just an experiment to feed my curiousity. I did consider going with a 28 hour day (16/12) for a 6 day week, but never did try it.
Juggernugz, mj doesn't require for it's dark period to equal it's light period. It just turns out that most strains do require around 12 hours of dark for flowering so it's just by chance that the 12/12 is the way it is. I'm not sure if 24/24 would be good for the plants, they may require their dark produced hormone more fequently then a 24/24 would allow. There also may be a limit to how much of that hormone it can produce during a dark period, rendering the remaining hours of darkness after peak wasted time. It has been many years since I researched this so I'm just going on the little that I remember. Unfortunately the discussions I had about this subject were lost with OG.
Sounds like something i might try to do! The only issue i see is somehow i have to set a timer to do this, cause i would have weird times to have to flip the lights on.. I might just figgur eit out on a calender and set my alarm.
im experimenting. This is also my first grow so i said, wtf why not try. Im Lst'ing my girls and all 4 are under about 250W of Florescent light. I dont see how it could hurt them so i am willing to try.
Yeah well im willing to try.. As long as i calculate how much herb i can smoke a day till my next bach finishes i should be ok! And im just playing around with some dank bag seeds right now so its no big deal. Im going to try and keey them about 3Foot at max also.. Thanks for the input tho, +Rep
I will, Im interset in seing the result and will give that a read. Thanks. p.s. +rep is always accepted back! lmao.
Juggernugz, how do you see the outcome of a 24/24? I'm curious if it would take twice as long for the plant to finish or if double the amount of dark and light would somehow allow it to finish in the same amount of time as a 24 hour day.
This is an interesting topic! As Juggernugz stated MJ is a short day facultative plant! However, from what I've read on this matter, as a short day plant, MJ does not measure the hours of sunlight, but rather, the hours of darkness. MJ needs 12 undisturbed hours of darkness to flower, with 14 more than likely working just as well. "Short day" is another way to say "long night", or longer night really. In the real world a plant can't physically receive 12 to 14 hours of night and more than 10 to 12 hours of daylight, but in a manmade environment, its completely possible. I could not find anything regarding a ratio of daylight to moonlight seeing as the plant doesn't measure the amount of daylight it receives. After reading Amorils post along with the few others in this thread, and the small amount of information I've gathered on the internet, would it not be possible to flower on lets say a 18/14 schedule? The 12+ hours of night signal the plant to start budding, as this is what the plant recognizes, while the 18 hours of light would increase growth and yield, no? The plant is indifferent to the amount of light it receives because it doesn't release a hormone to measure it. I think its safe to say that plants don't grow in the night, as they don't consume CO2, so would extending the daylight hours between moonlight not decrease the time to maturity as the plant is receiving an extra 50% of daylight per night/day cycle?
Ah, I see. I'm still googling and haven't found much information on short day facultative plants to be specific. As for the roots, I did know that ! I was more so referring to the part of the plant that one medicates himself with! I wasn't aware they only produced sugars at night, however. At least it was worth a thought, thanks for the speedy reply! I did however see a thread a while back that indicated a 14/10 flowering time, which if true, would throw off the ratio but yet still had buds growing.
so, I havent chimed in on the recent bump of my old topic, for a couple of reasons. Mainly, ive addressed my findings and current perspective on the matter in other threads, since someone had to use search to find this thread, I figure theyd probably already seen my rant on it..... but now, I feel like making a contribution. The first paragraph is more or less accurate, but the second paragraph contains some things that wont work. 18/14 more than likely will fail to successfully flower most plants, youll most likely stay in vegetative growth. I say most likely, because some plants will flower in 14/10 (some heavy indicas), and then there is cannabis ruderalis, the autoflower, which flowers regardless of photoperiod...so there are exceptions to this rule. Its the ratio of light to dark. Ill explain why in a minute...the hormone stuff is almost right. Couple points to make on this post. First, its actually the same "hormone" in two different forms...and, hormone isn't a word I like to use. The chemical is phytochrome, and it's reactive to various wavelengths of light, mainly blue, red, and far-red (660-720nm wv or so). So, in actuality, it is the ratio of Pr : Pbr. Pr and Pbr are the two abbreviations for the common forms of phytochrome. Also, cannabis is actually a C3 plant, which means it doesnt require a dark period to synthesize sugars.... 14/10 will flower some plants, for sure. There are others that wont flower with anything more than 10 hours of light...hows that for the other end of the spectrum
marijuana does not require 12 hours or more of darkness to start flowering. where are you getting your info? lol. so yea.. you know that they start flowering way before the solstice right?? i mean, 13.5-14 hours of light and they are still gonna start to flower. talk to people im sure that they have plants start to flower in july and august even though technically the light/dark period isnt 12/12 until later in september for most places... but im stoned idk
but i get what ur sayin about 18 hours of light, then 12 hours of dark, then 18 light and so on.. at least i think thats what ur sayin. like i said, im stoned lol