No offense taken at all as far as you question goes: Plants open their stomata at night in nature and use that time to exchange gasses, so one could deduce that they NEED that 6 hours... However, plants are amazing!!! They will actually force themselves to enter the dark reactions whther they actually get darkness or not! So, in short... it does notmatter whether you go 24/7 or 18/6 as far as growth goes, but you must consider the following... plants use the energy from photoexcited electrons to conduct their business... So, light does this and when the plant's metabolism slows it produces all the things needed to make sugar and whatnot. People say 24/7 is better because it takes no energy to conduct the Calvin Cycle (no input anyway - just the electrons harnessed during light hours) - so they figure this will all happen regardless... and they are right, but... So, I ask myself which would be more effective? Actual darkness and the natuural stomata opening or a forced shutdown of the plant's metabolism from lack of darkness? I have no proof of this, but I personally belive 18/6 is the way to go (best mimics mother nature) and lowers electric $$$ PS - oh, and your right... I have absolutley no idea what the heck you said in relation to audio engineering... chinese to me..lol
@ gonejah: ...................................... i got some alpine speakers thats all i know lol! @Xelatoth: damn man you know whats up on some plants! thats whats up! you probbly just screwed your self and opened the door of a billion questions
Right on! Thanks xelatoth, for both your harder and easier to understand explanations of daytime/nighttime photophosphorylation. Even though scientific terminology often goes over my head, I'm pretty good at putting it into context, but either way I appreciate the breakdown. I figured from your first post on "angiosperm reproductive systems," that you kinda had a clue and I think gonejah just wanted to make sure you B.S wasn't in BS. < How long did your PC seeds take to germinate? > All six had popped open in less than 48 hours. They soaked in distilled water for 6 hours before moving to paper towels and were placed in the dark on top of a reptile heating pad... pretty close to a seedling heat mat. As far as the 24/0 vs. 18/6 debate goes... I don't have enough evidence or experience to recommend one over the other. I had good relusts with 24/0 in my last grow, and good results with 18/6 during this grow. Which cycle has the potential for optimum quality and quantity? I'll leave that up to the experts to suggest, cuz your guess is as good as mine. As for my grow, what I'm most concerned with now is when to stop training the tops and just let them grow taller. hmmm more guessing.
doob, I swear you're some kind of wordsmith cuz what might take me paragraphs to get across, you can always sum up in one sentence. gnome sayn? **edit** either that or I was really high... lol
very nice grow man! HGS carries some nice genetics from what I have seen in my grow so far I am pretty sure you can get free seeds from HGS regardless of where you post the journal and their forum (last i was there) didn't support photos without photobucket or something similar which to me was not something I'd be willing to do photobucket is an american company, DEA "could" easily get access to server logs IF they wanted to...
So this is my current dilemma. Purple Cindy is advertised as a 10 week (70 day) flowering strain. I switched to 12/12 on 3/19, so 16 days so far. My last grow flowered for about 60 days and I kinda remember the stretch lasted for like 3-4 weeks. I think the stretch for this grow could last up to 4.5 weeks and I'm trying to figure out when to stop training the tops and let them grow taller. I only have about 14" of vertical space to raise the lights so timing this right is critical. It's hard to tell exactly how much taller the plants have gotten in the last 16 days because all the stems have been trained horizontally, but I estimate it's been about 8"-10". Here's my breakdown. Can you guys tell me if this makes sense? - 70 day flower minus 16 days already at 12/12 = 54 days left to flower. - Estimated 32 days of stretch minus 16 days already stretching = 16 days of stretch left. - First 16 days of stretch = 10" of vertical growth So if I have 14" of wiggle room and can expect about 10 more inches of growth in the next 16 days should I let them go now? Decisions Decisions...
Oh... about posting pics up on the HG forum... why not just link the pics to the ones you have hosted here on the gc server? Is that wrong? was I not supposed to say that?
Sounds good, but be conservative for sure... A grow I did years ago ended up going into the lights and had to be chopped a bit at the WRONG time..hehe. I underestimated the growth... she appeared to slow to a crawl and begin to fatten up, but then.. boom! another 6". You should be good.. just keep on top of it. As far as any questions... I would be happy to anser any plant physiology related questions, but as far as actually gowing this plant... not so much.... I am a n00b to MJ growing and so many great and knowledgable people on here just amaze me with their green thumbs... some pics... words can not describe PS - the 4 PC seeds still havent cracked (3 days!)
pics from here work on other sites if you are not logged in? YES THEY DO! I'll definitely post an end to end grow log in there! (when mines done of course)
"Sounds good, but be conservative for sure...A grow I did years ago ended up going into the lights and had to be chopped a bit at the WRONG time..hehe." Dude tell me about it. My last grow... I literally BROKE the stems over... the WHOLE canopy I snapped every single branch about 14 inches bellow the tops and literally laid them down on top of supporting tie lines, and the plants didn't skip a beat... Talk about resilience!! The plants were literally snapped in half.. and the tops would have been hanging straight down without the support lines. That's exactly why I want to get this right... Thanks for the input and you're right, I think I should be conservative with my estimations "PS - the 4 PC seeds still havent cracked (3 days!)" Damn man, I don't know what to tell you about that. What kind of water did you use... tap, distilled? I read another post... I think it was sneaker's... he's growin PC and he had some germination issues too. Hopefully they're just extraordinary plants taking their sweet time, makin you wait for their glorious arrival.
how tall were they when you put them to 12/12? at this point, wouldn't it make sense to keep training for a bit longer, just to stay on the safe side?
They were like 2 feet tall, and *sigh* yes... you're right, it would be better to stay on the safe side. I swear... what is it about growin this stuff that brings out my impatience lol.. I fu**in love it
Okay... so there's not much change since the last update. The 2 females are filling out nicely. I'm still top-training but will probably stop by mid next week. I have a mix of shots taken from the last two days. Here we go: - One of the main tops stands above the canopy. - A full canopy shot - A shot from above - Closer shot on one of the tops - A little closer on a top More pics on next post.
Thanks smash! Thanks AW! Here come a few more. I think these shots are little more interesting to me. - This is where the canopy is right now, trained horizontal as even as I can get it. - Minor sun burn (UVB damage) I left the UV-lamp on for five hours and this was the extent of the damage. Only slight yellowing/bleaching on the leaves closest to the lamp. - This picture is very intriguing to me. I noticed my camera was doing some weird things when the UV-lamp was on and I would take shots directly underneath it. So just on a whim I reduced the exposure setting on my camera to as low as it can go and took two pictures. The HPS light was on for both shots but 1 was with the UV-lamp on and 1 with it off. When the UV-lamp was off, the the picture came out almost completely black (even with the HPS on) and this is the shot with the UV-lamp on: I know the human eye can't see UV light but is it possible that my camera is picking it up? Cuz I don't see any blue color at all when looking at the plants with my naked eye when the UV light on... but that's some crazy deep blue/violet color the camera captures.