how long should i put plants in darkness for before flowering?

hey i was wondering how long use put your plants in complete darkness before the 12/12 switch? ive read some ppl do it for 24 hrs others for 36 or 48, but yeh what have you done and how were the results?

i have never done that just go from 18 to 12 hr i always have good results

Ive always just switched.. keeping morning the same but switching the bedtime.. no dark period needed inbetween.. But Im not sure if that helps get it into flower faster.. Ill be checking to see if someone posts something helpful! lol.. The only thing I know is that if your plant has been vegging for long enough and is starting to have alternating nodes you can flip your lights 12/12 immediately and have flowers show around a week after the switch. Last one I did the plant was still really immature (forced into flower after 2 weeks veg) and it took a little over 2 weeks to see flowers appear after my 21/3 to 12/12 switch... I would worry about stress with a dark period but then again.. the immediate switch is prolly a big stress too.. hope i helped a little..

During the final stages of flowering giving your plants 48-72 hrs dark has been shown to increase resin production by 30% in some plants (if i remember correctly from what I read before) I think it helps and is worth doing. didnt know if maybe thats where you had heard of giving an extended dark period..

i never understood why people do this taking away any light to induce flowering what i think the op should do is figure out hrs would be best to suit his 12 / 12 thinking the most i ever had lights off when switching to 12 /12 is like 8 hrs to suit my schedule of 12 / 12

Never done that either always just introduced them to 12 straight away I'm perpetual also so can't shut em off in flower room

My last round of ladies I put them into a 36 hours of darkness. I was going to do 24 hours but 36 landed right where I wanted to start my 12 on 12 off cycle. I kid you not two days after my 12/12 started I had bud sites showing on all my girls. This was the fastest I had ever seen this in my experience, but I had done some research on it and decided I wanted to find out for myself. Now as far as the dark period at the end I remember reading about that in one of Ed Rosenthals books. I'm on the last week and a half of the same series and I plan on trying that as well since he suggested it based on his research.

I never wait.

way to bump a 3 yr old post

well done sir

How the fuck do you even find a post this old without doing some retarded page skipping.

We should bring some more dinosaur back

I've almost bumped really old posts by doing what we wish all the advice seekers would do. When I search for an answer instead of just asking the question in a new thread, I try to remember to look when the threads I find were posted so as not to do the same thing.
I admittedly have done it before.
I do not think it is necessarily a bad thing though.

We don't say retarded anymore, its now "special"!