Light interuptions.

if a plant grows outside, it will still get light from the moon. Just gotta be easy on the amount of light its getting. theres always light outside in my area, i can walk through a cornfield no problem cuz of the moon. yet every plant is happily asleep.

a question i have, dont call me stupid either lol, But dont plants learn? Plants adapt to their enviroment, so ive always ASSUMED that if you keep constant on something with a plant it wont notice the difference. I def am more careless upon these kinds of things vs. other growers here. As i will prolly turn my light on in my room that has my tent open at least 1-2 times a night. but its had the routine like that since it was a seedling basically. I figure it adapts to what it need to. like i said its all an assumption ive done my entire grow, so i could be wrong, but it is just a plant and more fragile to touch than to play with lights it seems.

"By interrupting the night period with light, you can keep these plants vegetatively growing for another month, yielding plants of about twice the size.
The amount of light needed to prevent flowering is quite small (about .03 foot candles95 - on a clear night the full moon is about .01 foot candles)." - google

So basically by doing your nightly checks you're risking your plants getting stuck in a vegetative growth. May I ask why you have to see your plants twice every night? Should be easy enough to tend to them in their 18 or 12 hour period.

Carthoris said:

How does the plant tell the difference between a day interruption (2 hours of storms/eclipse) and a short night period?

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A cosmic question!
This one's easy. I won't go into too much detail so I don't fry anyones brain here. The sun emmits UVA & UVB lights along with vitamin B and a whole bunch of other good stuff. When there is a storm or when the day is very cloudy, sun rays like UVA & UVB ect still penetrate the clouds. Even although it is darker when cloudy/stormy the sun is still directly shining on your part of the world. People of a light complection (gingers ect) can still get sun burn even when cloudy if they are in a hot climate.

Now when night comes and the moon reflects the sunlight onto Earth those UVA & UVB rays don't get to earth, they are absored or diminished if you like by the Moon thats why you don't have to put sunscreen on at night time. Ye Dig?

P.S Street lamps aren't really an issue as plants in your garden will grow and flower normaly with a street lamp shining on them. However if you really don't want it shining on your crop then either block the window of the room they are in (if they're in a room that is) or if they are outside then I would suggest a dark sheet of say tarpaulin or something like that to cover your plants to stop the street light, just buy some rods bigger than your plants to mount said sheet over them, five or six rods would do in order to hold the sheet in place ( 2 in the middle and 4 on the sides in a square shape). Oh and some thick string to stop the wind blowing your sheet into the neighbours yard.

If you try to flower a plant using a light that lacks UV rays what happens?
Could you flower under .03 foot candles if kept in total darkness otherwise?
Im assuming that street lamps are brights than .03 foot candles since they are brighter than the moon (ie: the lights light up your yard better than the moon)
Aren't street lamps what we use to grow more or less?

I see a lot of back and forth about all aspects of growing, and I understand the theory of why(more or less) but Ive never seen any studies. I'm not questioning that its true, just looking for the smoking gun, ya know?

Just make sure the room stays COMPLETELY DARK during the 12 hour dark period.
Break in the light period might stress slightly, but nothing serious unless it's a regular happening.
I turned a good portion of a room hermaphroditic with one of those green eye headlights. BEWARE!!!

Carthoris said:

If you try to flower a plant using a light that lacks UV rays what happens?
Could you flower under .03 foot candles if kept in total darkness otherwise?
Im assuming that street lamps are brights than .03 foot candles since they are brighter than the moon (ie: the lights light up your yard better than the moon)
Aren't street lamps what we use to grow more or less?

I see a lot of back and forth about all aspects of growing, and I understand the theory of why(more or less) but Ive never seen any studies. I'm not questioning that its true, just looking for the smoking gun, ya know?

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Street lamps are slightly different from grow lights. For example, I have an apple tree which gets hit at night by a street lamps that don't affect the plants lifecycle. Although if your yard is lit up like a foorball field then I would probably build a cover for use at night time, just to be safe.

Using a light that doesn't produce UV light Radiation, for example sakes a few small 60W flourecent tubes will result in small buds that aren't even worth making into Hashish nevermind smoking. This one I learned from experience.
HPS lamp or HID lamp or even a combination of both is what most will use for vegging and flowering.

Thor1911 said:

"By interrupting the night period with light, you can keep these plants vegetatively growing for another month, yielding plants of about twice the size.
The amount of light needed to prevent flowering is quite small (about .03 foot candles95 - on a clear night the full moon is about .01 foot candles)." - google

So basically by doing your nightly checks you're risking your plants getting stuck in a vegetative growth. May I ask why you have to see your plants twice every night? Should be easy enough to tend to them in their 18 or 12 hour period.

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Well my grow tent is in my bedroom. I leave the tent open at night to allow it to get cooler. Im 70 days into flower right now so i dont think veg will be a problem atm, but idk i guess my house is a lil active in the late hours and we need light to see in the room lol. I dont leave the tent wide open just the front zipper isnt zipped shut at night. Ive never had problems with the routines. But as for looking at the plants. Ive sat staring at my plants for countless hours lol. prolly spend a solid 2-3 hours a day of just checking it out.

Inside we make our own sun and darkness. It's not natural. So when the plants receive total darkness for 12 hrs then 12 light, they think that is normal. When you screw with what is normal they naturally stress. The more stress the less yield/potency and possible hermie.

Carthoris said:

Golden, How can people grow where the light of street lamps shine on the plant or at night with the moon?

The plant has to have some sort of tolerance or it has to be a relative matter. Maybe since the sun is so bright the moon isn't visible. Kind of like when your inside at night and you walk outside it takes a minute for your eyes to compensate for the light. I'm sure there are lights from cars shining on every different kind of plant from the roads, and they don't all hermie. There has to be some sort of limit in the amount of light it takes to cause a hermie or other factors involved.

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Its in every grow book. Stress from light interruption ( during the dark ) can be a major cause of Hermies.

So, If you ran a small led light mimicking the moon in your dark period, your plant still flower normally and accept that as being normal more than likely?

i had 30 plants turn hermie this winter fed up my hole summer grow. there a little piont in the timer that moves over the fingers on the timer the point was going between the fingers shuting my light of ever 5 minutes. i def will make them hermie. the emergency light is a good idea. but if the powers out what are you going to power the cfl with.

oh and the light that comes from the moon is green light and does not effect plant life.

A plant indoors has no Ideal what the moon is. You can turn on a Green light and that will never bother them. They don't see green light.

CFL's only run 13-26 watts, it only 40 bucks for a 400w battery backup system for a computer at walmart. I think it would run it for a few hours no problem. My power went off the other day for like 2 minutes, first time that I can remember it happening in the last 3 years. Im not sure if a 13 watter would be enough. You just plug a timer into your battery backup and set up the cfl. If the hid was run through the battery backup it obviously wont power it, however, would the timer continue to work or would the hid drain all the power? I dont have a battery backup on my timer.

plant hormones take a while to kick in, thats why when they are flipped it does not show flowers until some time later. (also why some people throw them in dark for 24 hrs then going 12/12) so once the plant recogonizes an extended dark cycle as normal, it triggers its hormones to go into flower. once in flower the plant is looking for the night time to tell it what to do (hormonely, obviously the day time is work time). thus a 2 hour night cycle in the middle of a 12 hour day cycle wont do shit as long as it gets its 12 hours of dark. (ie 4 hours on, 2 hours off (fuck up) then the remaining six hours on / 12 hours night) is a day interupt. But reverse it and turn them on during the night and there is no full night time.

thats (i believe) how plants recognize the difference.

IMHO

Wouldn't giving it a 2 hour night cycle in the middle of the 12 hour light cycle be the same as just giving it a 2 hour night cycle every other day?

Anyone have any idea how quickly plants recognize the difference between light and dark or how they do it at all?

I am dealing with a few hermies right now, but only from one variety in the room. I had a few terribly hot days due to a crazy heat wave, plus my timer box wanted to crap out on me, resulting in a few too-short days plus a single period of 36 hours without light. Everything is fine now, but I'm going around tweezering seeds and flowers.

I have learned to look at hermies this way: If your plant goes through stress and is convinced that the NEXT generation would fare better than it will, it will begin investing in the future generation by trying to produce seed. I was told to give it a bit of zinc to help unscramble the plant brain and get it back on track. We'll see if it works this time. But generally I just tweeze the male flowers, and try my damnedest to keep the environment consistent.