Why veg at 18/6 vs. 24/0?
- Thread starter cleef
- Start date
For me, I veg 18/6 for a few reasons, 1. Power consumtion 2. Saves hours on bulbs(I know it's cheap) 3. Temp drop at 'night'(hard to get the temps down 10+ degrees with the lights on daily) Some say the plants store energy throughout the night for use during the day, others say fuck the night time, let em use that energy 24/7. Kind ur call on it. I've yet to try a 24/7 vs 18/6 grow, but thats not out of the question either.
cleef
Well-Known Member
Widow also mentioned the power consumption thing in his growing guide. I guess that's assuming it takes your plants a certain number of days to get to the point of flowering, as opposed to assuming it takes a certain number of light exposure hours.
If it's true that 24/0 leads to a quicker harvest, then is it possible that you'll make up the additional 6 hours of power consumption/day by saving in total days?
In other words.....
If you veg plant 'a' 24/0 for 30 days you have used 720 hours.
If you veg plant 'b' 18/6 for 40 days you have still used 720 hours.
All else being the same, which plant is superior, a or b?
If it's true that 24/0 leads to a quicker harvest, then is it possible that you'll make up the additional 6 hours of power consumption/day by saving in total days?
In other words.....
If you veg plant 'a' 24/0 for 30 days you have used 720 hours.
If you veg plant 'b' 18/6 for 40 days you have still used 720 hours.
All else being the same, which plant is superior, a or b?
KaliKitsune
Well-Known Member
Problem with 24/00 light is after two or so weeks the plants are out of the seedling stage, and need a dark period for some of their biological processes to kick in.
Plant B will be the better plant.
Plant B will be the better plant.
Bubba Kushman
Well-Known Member
Plants need the dark cycle to store sugars and do other plant stuff. 24 hrs light is not normal for plant life. In nature the only 24hr days are at the poles and not much grows their that will grow anywhere else on the planet?
Tsolrathe
Well-Known Member
I'm still on my first grow, but from my limited experience, I'm going to say 18/6 provides better growth on top of saving power, keeping it cool, etc. I started on 24/0, and the plants were growing pretty fast, but then I switched to 18/6 and they grew even faster. I don't know for sure that they were growing faster because of that, or any number of other factors, but about 75% of the growth seems to happen when the lights are off. This is true for flower as well as veg. I think the darkness actually triggers them from gather to grow mode, and without it, they just stay in gather mode.
Maybe the accellerated growth was caused by the storing of the sugars during night time, yay or nay?