put my plant indoor in the dark for the dark period and from what I noticed a bunch of the fan leaves died off and there is more brown hairs. sealed it off today so I wont open for another 5. (unless you guys convince me I should worry) I checked her today cause I was sealing light leaks and checking humidity with meter I bought at walmart. whole house is at 45% but when I left it in the dark room for a while it went all the way up to 60% and stayed there. should I worry with that much humidity? temperature feels cool but says its 84 degrees F on same meter its a bedroom and has good air circulation with a fan and the ceiling fan plus the A/C... but I am not sure if that's good enough because its not recirculating new air except just from A/C? its still in the pot so its still getting moisture from the soil IT IS NOT DRYING/CURING YET.
I think 24 hours of dark is good enough, 5 days seems pretty excessive. If the pistils have receded into the calyx you should be good to harvest.
I have been reading if you do it a bit more than 24 hours you get noticeable results; with the plant using all her stored energy to fatten up those buds before she dies, as a last effort to get pollination to occur and keep the species going. I was reading this also from a thread on here that a bunch of people noticed a difference in 3 days of total darkness with no interruptions. plus my last watering was Tuesday so I just wanted to get a head start on drying while still getting her to use her stored up energy, which I can see she used up a bunch already. I am worried about the humidity though. even when I start the drying/curing process I do not know if I should be worried about this as far as getting mold. the humidity is at 60% and temperature is at a cool 80 degrees F. with A/C and a small fan + ceiling fan blowing most of the pistils have receded though. right before I put her in the dark room more then 50% of the pistils were white now its more like 75% red/orange 25% white