Konnasure was barking up the right tree although its actually NOT that simple, there is currently a bunch of research being done about red wavelength and flower set.
Basically the easy way to think about it is this... plants are ALWAYS producing a flowering messenger (hormone) called florigen. When a certain level of florigen in the plant is reached... flower production begins. The catch is this.. light, not just red light, breaks down florigen QUICKLY.
So.. if you need X amount of florigen in the plant then you need X amount of DARK to let the florigen build up to a level where flowering starts.
It actually gets REALLY COMPLICATED fast when lookinh at different wavelengths of light, short day plants, long day plants, etc etc. But im a nutshel, that is how it works.
Your plants will actually start flowering with only 10 hours of dark, not 12. We run 14/10 for the first 5 weeks of flower. That enables us to provide 15% more light which equals 15% more growth in the key growth phases.
Then 12/12, then 10/14 for maturation.
when you run 14/10 do you go red heavy or blue heavy ?
I`ve had some strains where if you vegged for over 14 hour days every plant would sex male, I vegged at 20/4 and 18/6 and got all males off some "white diesel autos" so I stepped down to 14/10 for veg and then they started sexing female when I went to 10/14
Obviously they were not auto`s
but it did get me thinking I`ve seen study's normally higher veg temps, longer veg days and red light/excess heat can produce males, also more potassium during veg can also produce males
It`s my thinking that some people try to force males, if you force male sex then the females you get should be more stable
so there is something to be said for getting 10 regs and stressing them male hoping for just 1 to 2 females that way you would have a very stable female
All feminized seeds seem to be able to chuck out balls if you treat them certain ways, I think all females can do it pretty much maybe at one point canna was asexual or the plants survived once due to a hermi I mean it seems that if you fuck with them enough every strain can hemi ? so if a plant can hermi then it could have sexed male out of the pen with the right treatment
humans all start female and some due to chromosomes then develop into males this all still happens in the womb
canna seems to pick sex just around when its branches start to stagger, but almost all females seem to be able to throw out balls later too, I wonder if males can be made to make buds later in flowering I mean a plant should have full access to its dna profile they normally carry full dna lines of both male and female sides of the family tree, so they can regress and throw out anything momma or poppa could
or you know that`s how some girl with a PHD and a dna sequencer explained it to me after she said "plants take longer to sequence" and I asked why.