Flowertime
Active Member
Is it really worth the time to keep your plants in total darkness for 3 days? Does anyone have any pictures of a plant before the 3 days and then some pictures with a noticable difference 3 days later?
3 days of total darkness?
- Thread starter Flowertime
- Start date
I have tried it several times before harvesting can't notice any difference myself so I don't do it anymore.
skirk
Well-Known Member
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
Hi @Flowertime ! I have done 36-72 hours of darkness several times in my grow journals and documented the difference for all to see. It seems that despite this, there are still those who refuse to believe. For me, I am convinced that it makes a huge difference in the quality of the end product, enough difference to go to all the trouble to make it happen.
Got a link? Every time I read about someone having had a positive result, they either didn't use clones from the same mother that were basically at an identical stage of development, or their results were based on subjective things instead of lab test results. Ideally with three plants (harvested at day n, day n + three days of darkness, and day n plus three days of normal lighting schedule.
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
Nope, I don't have any of that. I have only my personal experience and personal observations to go by. I did not do a lot of exact side by side comparisons, but I did do some, and of course my results are subjective and totally based on my own biases and prejudices. According to exacting standards of science my results mean nothing and prove nothing... officially.
But, I have put my personal reputation in this forum, my reputation as a grower and my reputation as a self pronounced expert at growing weeds into my words that endorse this method of increasing potency at the end. I state unequivocally that I think that it works, and not just think that it works but that I am convinced that it works so much that it has become a standard way of finishing out in my gardens. I have finished out several of my grow journals with variations of this method, putting myself out there as an advocate, simply because this question does come up over and over again, and someone needs to take a definitive stand on it.
So, sure... you can discount everything I say because I am not a lab coat wearing scientist and maybe you don't even like me much as a person or think that my scientific method is flawed. Fine... I don't think that you are real either. How do I even know that your soul has ever been tortured? Got a link?
All drama aside for a moment. I think with most techniques in growing its best to experiment yourself and make up your own mind. Thats what I try to do.
I like it!I did 3 days of darkness this last harvest. No controls. No comparisons. No problems.
I’m probably wrong but I think this all started with Shantibaba saying that his black (white) widow would frost up after a week or 2 in darkness. I’ll see if I can find his original information on this...
CanadianJim
Well-Known Member
It won't kill your plant, so if you want to go ahead. I've never noticed any difference the times I tried it.
But as everyone on this site should know by now, two growers can do the same thing and get very different results.
But as everyone on this site should know by now, two growers can do the same thing and get very different results.
Unwad those undergarments, lol. I was not casting aspersions on your good name, your reputation, your competency, or your virtue.
It's just that things like cannabinoid content/ratios are objective things and can be measured in a lab. How the product affects a person, though, is a subjective thing. While still generally useful, that kind of thing is "YMMV."
You're probably correct about the thing that got it started (at least generally; individuals may have been doing something on their own for an unknown length of time). I'm thinking that suggestion started getting stated slightly before Shantibaba got disgruntled and split from Greenhouse in 1998, but it has been a long time and I cannot swear to the exact order of events. And I might be misremembering here, but I seem to recall that it wasn't so much a question of "frosting up," but of getting the plants to finish. Again, it has been years.
I don't suppose it'd matter even if it did. After all, they're pretty much in line for the chopping block at that point, anyway. It'd be like a condemned criminal falling down the stairs and breaking their neck on the way to get strapped down to the table for their IV cocktail. (Discounting a few tender - and misplaced - sensibilities and a few others who'd use the incident to fuel some sort of political agenda, of course.)
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
I have good, what I think are scientific reasons, for doing the darkness thing. We all know that bright light degrades the trichomes. We also know that our plants do grow at night. Combining those ideas gives us the darkness method... 36-72 hours for the trichomes to be able to continue developing and maturing, without again experiencing the degrading light. My buds never see bright light again, and indeed I dry and cure them in the dark. I think that just logically, this method has to have at least some merit.
- Thread starter
- #12
Flowertime
Active Member
Thank you and I will attempt with my current ladies "if"i can get them to finish up about the same time within the next two weeks.
Sancheh
Well-Known Member
Mine r ready to do the darkness thang!!
I'm on it
I'm on it
Timhomegrow
Well-Known Member
So it's best to go dark 36-72 hrs and no water for 72 before chop? Anything else a newbie should know before breaking out the axe 
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
I never said anything about no water... if it is time to water while they are in the dark, and they are still taking it, give it to them. If feeding day falls in there, feed them. You arent trying to actively kill them... you are trying to get them to finish out.So it's best to go dark 36-72 hrs and no water for 72 before chop? Anything else a newbie should know before breaking out the axe
- Thread starter
- #16
Flowertime
Active Member
One more question Emilya,
Do you try and get around a 20° temperature swing during lights out at the end of your flower schedule and the 36 hours of dark?
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
no, but I am an indoor grower primarily and I am trying to keep temperatures more or less steady, although in the end of the grow I do try to bring the temps down a little bit to bring out the fall colors. I have also backed off the lights a bit the week before this. Some people give a dose of ice water as the last watering too. I also put a nail or a screw through the trunk as I move them into darkness, just to make the further point that their world is ending, and it is time to get on with the finish.
- Thread starter
- #18
Flowertime
Active Member
I assumed that a 20°swing would help imitate fall better and bring out even more of their sweet notes and etc.
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
I don't worry about a swing... I just bring the average temp down 10 or 15 degrees
- Thread starter
- #20
Flowertime
Active Member
After taking your reply in for a day or two, if you feed your plants in the dark wouldn't it be a waste of nutrients because of no light and there isn't any photosynthesis happening? Just wondering?
