Quick question about light cycles...

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fireclaims4

Active Member
So, I recently switched to 12/12 on my plant, but I was having a hard time switching it by hand every 12 hours exactly. So I started turning lights on at 5:30 PM and switching them off at 3:30 AM every night, and the buds started growing MUCH more rapidly than just on a 12/12 light cycle. Is it ok to give plants a longer dark period, such as keeping them on a 10/14 schedule, or will I just run into more problems down the road?
 
ChaoticMetal

ChaoticMetal

Well-Known Member
fireclaims4 said:
So, I recently switched to 12/12 on my plant, but I was having a hard time switching it by hand every 12 hours exactly. So I started turning lights on at 5:30 PM and switching them off at 3:30 AM every night, and the buds started growing MUCH more rapidly than just on a 12/12 light cycle. Is it ok to give plants a longer dark period, such as keeping them on a 10/14 schedule, or will I just run into more problems down the road?
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You will end up running into more problems and less yield. Also the more ya keep changing it around the more of a chance for stress and then a hermaphrodite. Some growers will do a 13 light and 11 dark though which is just preference.
 
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fireclaims4

Active Member
ChaoticMetal said:
You will end up running into more problems and less yield. Also the more ya keep changing it around the more of a chance for stress and then a hermaphrodite. Some growers will do a 13 light and 11 dark though which is just preference.
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Well now that it's on 10/14 should I just leave it?
 
I Love Marijuana

I Love Marijuana

Active Member
trying to flower with no timer.....wouldnt even try experts have studied this long before us and its 12 / 12 for a reason, maximum yeald least plant stress.
 
I Love Marijuana

I Love Marijuana

Active Member
No i agree but in nature theres a gradual decrese from summer to winter and vise versa, and if you wanted you could flower using this method but you would have to use a very accurate digital timer, set it so that it adds a few minutes of light a day untill you reach 18 hours then set it to take a few minutes off every day untill you get to 12 / 12.. The only disadvantage is that you would only get one crop a year... But it should be one hell of a crop
 
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fireclaims4

Active Member
I Love Marijuana said:
No i agree but in nature theres a gradual decrese from summer to winter and vise versa, and if you wanted you could flower using this method but you would have to use a very accurate digital timer, set it so that it adds a few minutes of light a day untill you reach 18 hours then set it to take a few minutes off every day untill you get to 12 / 12.. The only disadvantage is that you would only get one crop a year... But it should be one hell of a crop
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Actually that would be really interesting to try! Have you done that or heard of it actually working?
 
desertrat

desertrat

Well-Known Member
interesting thread, mind if i jump in? what you;re suggesting would certainly mimic nature better but is that what we're trying to do? i seriously doubt that you get those award winning trichome covered bud shots from a naturally occuring and growing plant. i think the years of indoor growing has generated a lot of innovation that beats mother nature - tailored genetics, added co2, pruning/lst and so on. just my opinion
 
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fireclaims4

Active Member
desertrat said:
interesting thread, mind if i jump in? what you;re suggesting would certainly mimic nature better but is that what we're trying to do? i seriously doubt that you get those award winning trichome covered bud shots from a naturally occuring and growing plant. i think the years of indoor growing has generated a lot of innovation that beats mother nature - tailored genetics, added co2, pruning/lst and so on. just my opinion
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That is actually really interesting; the fact that we've created a much more efficient process than nature can offer. I can feel the beginnings of a stoner rant coming on, haha
 
GreenphoeniX

GreenphoeniX

Well-Known Member
Cannabis simply requires a minimum of 12 hours of darkness to initiate flowering. If you give them 16 hours darkness, they'll still flower, but seen as they need light to grow, you want to give them as much light as is possible, which is 12 hours, because you need the minimum 12 hours of darkness to initiate flowering, and that leaves you with 12 hours of light.

Some sativa's can be given longer light periods and shorter dark periods later on in flowering as they'll continue to flower anyway, and auto-flowering strains will flower according to age, no matter what the photoperiod is.
 
GreenphoeniX

GreenphoeniX

Well-Known Member
No i agree but in nature theres a gradual decrese from summer to winter and vise versa, and if you wanted you could flower using this method but you would have to use a very accurate digital timer, set it so that it adds a few minutes of light a day untill you reach 18 hours then set it to take a few minutes off every day untill you get to 12 / 12.. The only disadvantage is that you would only get one crop a year... But it should be one hell of a crop
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This has been tried years ago.
There's no need to gradually change the photoperiod indoors because it simply wastes time, plants aren't as sensitive to small changes in the photoperiod as people make out, by skipping the gradual change, you can get more of the desired growth in a shorter amount of time. For example, if you wanted to go from veg to flowering gradually, you may slowly change the light time down over the course of 4 weeks, the plant will only start to initiate the flowering process after it's got 12 hours of darkness anyway, that's what triggers the release of the required hormones. So those 4 weeks of gradual change could have been skipped and gone straight to flower initiation, meaning less time before the plant flowered, or those 4 weeks could be used to veg under a full veg period, meaning the most potential vegetative growth before flowering, instead of using shortened veg periods causing less growth with gradually reduced photoperiods.

You can use photoperiods like 10/14 for flowering, anything with 12 hours or more of darkness, 12/12 is simply the optimum for growth and development. The photoperiod can swing the other way in later stages of flowering with some strains too, this can improve yield and speed up the flowering times of some long flowering strains like 14 week sativas and such.
 
ChaoticMetal

ChaoticMetal

Well-Known Member
fireclaims4 said:
So for auto-flowering strains no light change is necessary?
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Correct, you can give them 18/6 and they will veg and finish flowering in 60 days. The down side is ( & I have never grown/done extensive research on this one) most if not all yield very very little , like a 1/4 ounce a plant.
 
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fireclaims4

Active Member
Ah, well we wouldn't want that now, would we? I'll stick to changing the lights.... damn I wish they were compatible with a timer...
 
GreenphoeniX

GreenphoeniX

Well-Known Member
Correct, you can give them 18/6 and they will veg and finish flowering in 60 days. The down side is ( & I have never grown/done extensive research on this one) most if not all yield very very little , like a 1/4 ounce a plant.
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You can give them 24/0 if you want, they'll still flower when they want.
I'm not a fan of auto-flowering strains basically because I like to have control of when my plants do what, and also they get their auto-flowering trait from the ruderalis species of cannabis (I know, you've probably only heard of indica and sativa, but ruderalis is one too, not often heard of coz of it's low THC content and small yield), I don't like plants with ruderalis genetics in them, but they are getting better by selectively cross breeding the auto-flowering trait into indica and sativa dominant strains.

I still prefer to have control over when my plants veg and when they flower tho.
 
sinsemilla666

sinsemilla666

Active Member
Sorry dude i actually think that i learned something from your thread, in order to keep my grow spot secretly i had to change my timer from 12-12 to 12-10 because there is some light leak, now i dont know if i should change the photoperiod gradually to 12-12 or leave it like that.
 
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