Help needed! Want to change light on time.

My plants are ten days into flower and starting to stretch. They vegged for over 5 weeks and they seem to be very healthy.

My problem is that daylight savings time has just kicked in where I live, and the clocks have gone forward an hour. The daytime period for my plants was starting at 11pm, but now it's an hour later at 12pm, which is inconvenient for a few reasons.

I'd like to change the light cycle so that the lights come on earlier - ideally around 6pm, which is 6 hours earlier than they come on now. I'm worried that the shock of changing the schedule will stress them out and they'll hermie. Should I wait until they're properly flowering before making any changes? Does anyone have any advice?

I was thinking I could start moving the start of daytime back gradually, say something like this for the next week:

Saturday (last night): Lights on 12, Lights off 12
Sunday: Lights on 11:30pm, lights off 12 midday
Monday: On 11:30, Off 11:30am
Tuesday: On 11, Off 11:30
Wednesday: On 11, Off 11
Thursday: On 10:30, Off 11
Friday: On 10:30, Off 10:30

And so on until I get back to a regular start-time that fits in well with my working day.

Any advice or opinions would be greatly appreciated, + rep, etc.

The next time they go off just leave them off until 6pm then start that cycle. They are just getting some extra darkness that first day you switch.

Thanks very much for the tip Aim Aim. Will they take some time to adjust to the new timing? I know next to nothing about plant biology but I assume they'll experience some stress?

They will adjust fine in the fact they will photosynthesize when the light comes back on and rest during dark periods. I'm not sure this would even be considered stress. It'll work fine.

Nice one, thanks for putting my mind at ease!

I always change my time after daylight saving times and never had any problems, I doubt it would stress them at all.

Just switch it! Like the man said-- you are miking this more complicated than need be...

The next time they go off.. reset the timer... that's it.

And give them only six hours of darkness? Or leave it a full 30?

completeretard said:

And give them only six hours of darkness? Or leave it a full 30?

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I'm a little confused on your exact lighting schedule, but you want to maintain that 12 hour minimum of darkness. So it would be 30 dark hours in your case. Once you go to 12 dark keep it as a minimum. I don't think it would be disastrous to have a 6 hour dark period but I'd really want to avoid that, might slow down progression of flowering a bit.

To clarify, right now the lights come on at 12 midnight, and go off at 12 midday.

I'd like to change this to lights come on at 6pm, turn off at 6am.

So without doing it gradually, I either have to have a dark period of only six hours, or one of 30. I'm aware I'm probably overthinking this and worrying too much, but I'd be pretty pissed off if they hermie'd due to underthinking or lack of worry!

just do it and move on

highfirejones said:

just do it and move on

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Ha you're right.
I never considered the other option of simply cutting the day period short by six hours. Tomorrow I'll turn the lights on at 12 midnight, and turn them off again at 6am, and start 12/12 from there.

A plants natural habitat is outside.....you have street lights, headlights regular lights and of course the moon. Do as you stated and forget about everything else. You will be good to go