Hey all, So as I was driving home today from the store, I was thinking about how plants know when to start flowering. From what I understand from everyone and my own knowledge, plants begin flowering once the days get shorter. Normally, people trigger flowering indoors by setting the canonical 12/12 light cycle. I also read that outdoors, if you wanted to artificially trigger flowering, you would have to cover the plants so no light got in at all in order for it to successfully flower. So here comes the question. Lets say you did this, triggered the plant to flower, and it did. But then later, what happens if you just stop doing such controls and exposed the plant to the natural outdoor lighting again. Would it continue flowering? What if you didn't even hold a consistent lighting cycle? What would happen then?
Well if you have a plant that's flowering and then start giving it like 18/6 or something its going to reveg. There are some auto flowering strains that will flower no matter how much light they get. The advantage to those strains is you can give them more light of course lol. Do you mean say give it 12/12 for a while then 18/6 then like 15/9 then 12/12 again? As long as you aren't giving a flowering plant 12/12 then like 18/6 for a while then 12/12 again its fine. I'm no expert but I'm sure your plant will seriously stress out and probaly go hermie. Hope that answers your questions. Peace.
plants evolved to live outside, where the sun sets and rises is a VERY predictable manner. if you screw with that schedule unpredictably, it stresses the hell out of the plant (sometimes causing it to hermie). it is possible to bring a flowering plant back to vegetative growth, but it takes some time and is difficult on the plant. so to answer your first question, no it will not continue flowering if the days are still long when you re-exposed the plant to the natural light cycle of the sun. if the days are short when you re-expose to the natural outdoor lighting, then yes it will continue flowering but i suspect it will take some time to adjust.
I mean it doesn't really apply to my plants. well. it could. As far as im concerned I am actually moving mine outside, I have been holding a 15/9 (my cycle outside), and will move them tonight. If i did want to force them to flower I would have to do garbage bags and whatnot, but i rather wait. But I was just terribly curious because I didn't know what would happen if a plant was already flowering then it received a light cycle such as 24/0 (where days obvi arent getting shorter). Yeah that answered em, thanks bud, +rep to ya.