Anyone tried 13+/12 or similar?

[Kttlz]

Hey guys, this might be a total noob question (I'm only first-year in Hort), but:

If cannabis is a critical night-length plant, would I be able to give my baby a long daylight 13h+ for extra photosynthesis, and still let her flower in twelve hours of darkness per cycle?

I tired looking it up on google and in Bergman's, Cervantes', Iverson's and McCormick's books. Nada.

My botany textbook is also unclear on the topic.

If any of you have tried that would be great. But I'm going to go ahead and try with one of my lovelies, but I don't have any others even near flowering, so I can't double-blind.

 

[go4snypr]

13 and 11 will probably still work to flower, if you start getting longer 14 and 10 or 15 and 9 it probably wont, and if you play with it too much you may cause it to go hermie.

 

[Emilya Green]

Over the years I have done many experiments in this area after a good friend tried to get me to do 10/14, saying that this produced faster ends, tighter buds and more trichomes.

I tried it and compared it side by side to 12/12 and found that if you use 10/14 all throughout flower, you do get tighter buds, but at the expense of them being smaller buds. 10/14 just does not provide as much energy to the plants, so your overall yield goes down.

Next I tried 11/13 and with similar results... a little closer to 12/12 in yield, but the same thing was happening.

I believe that I have found what works best though, and you can find my current grow log is talking about what I am doing. I am simulating the sun totally in this grow, and I have confidence that I am going to prove that this is the most efficient way to do lighting that we know of.

First in veg... I am not running 24/0 or 18/6 as I always have done in the past. I am running 12-1. That is 12 hours on, 5.5 hours off, 1 hour on, 5.5 hours off. The lights run for a total of 13 hours a day, and the plants stay in veg, vigorously. Reports are that the transition to flower instead of taking a week, will be almost immediate, simply by taking the extra hour away. My plants are thriving right now, seemingly loving the shortened daytime and extra dark time. 12-1 not only works very well, but it also saves a hell of a lot of electricity.

Next, flower. It turns out that in nature, the plants only see 12/12 for about a week and again reports are that they really don't like the consistent 12/12 throughout flower. When I switch to flower on Nov 15th, I will be switching immediately to 11.5/12.5 and will hold it there for only a week. Every week for 9 weeks, I will take 15 minutes off of the time, ending up the season at 10/14. The plants will get the extended daylight in the beginning when they need it to form the bud sites, and will see the day length decreasing just like in nature. This I believe will be exactly what the plants want to see, and I expect to verify the reports that this is by far the superior way to manage lights in flower.

I am also throwing in a third trick in my garden this season, and for 3 hours each virtual noon, I am turning on a second light. The primary light is a 600w HPS, but for those 3 hours a day a 600w MH will join in on the fun. I believe that this 1200w of energy every day at noon will produce crazy amounts of trichomes and deep penetration into the canopy.

Follow along on my grow log to see how this works. Already the 12-1 experiment is proving to be remarkable and I am really looking forward to see what happens in flower.

 

[Kttlz]

You didn't get the question, go4snypr, I want to do 13 or 14 hours of light and still 12h darkness.

 

[Kttlz]

As in a 25 or 26 hour cycle...

 

[Emilya Green]

As in a 25 or 26 hour cycle...

that is a fascinating idea, but how would you possibly automate this?

 

[Kttlz]

Thanks!

It just soo happens I live with an electrical engineer, but I think it's as easy as a microcontroller... When/if we nail it I'll post schematics - is that the right word?

Although it's still very hypothetical, but no-one be nay-saying.

My logic is that the longer the plant is above the photosynthetic compensation point, the more photosynthesis. And that means more, and more dense, buds, no?
And then with 12 hours darkness it doesn't fuck with the Pr and Pfr.

I'm still new to the site, and the biology, but I've been growing for a while, and it occurred to me the other day and got me really excited. But alas, no research was found.

 

[go4snypr]

I do understand the question, and stand by my answer. play with it. if you trick the plant into flower and then start giving it veg lighting, it wont know what is going on, and if it does flower it will probably hermie on you as it does not know what is going on. also there is still only 24 hours in a day. no matter if you give it 12 dark and 14 light. one day it gets 12/12 the next it is getting 2 extra hours of light. 14/12 and so on. let us know how it works out though.

 

[Kttlz]

If you understand the question, you might want to go read up about photo-periodism, specifically the principle critical night length.

You might also want to research environmental control - grow rooms don't necessarily use the day as timing, and some people light at night and give darkness in the day, so adding two hours to the cycle just makes it run in a longer cycle and there's no need to take two hours off the next cycle. The cycle doesn't need to be 24 hours.

Also I'm not too sure about the plant consciousness debate, so I wont say anything on whether plants know things.

Thanks for the enthusiasm though.

 

[Spitz]

Sounds to me like your adding a week to an 8 week flowering cycle. If it takes you 9 weeks to simulate an 8 week cycle, you'd need to harvest roughly 10% more to equal straight 12/12. I'd be more inclined to push the envelope on the other end. I'm more interested in running 10/10 or 12/10 and get more day cycles in. As long as your not running pure sativas, your plants will flower fine in 10 darks.

Either way.. Let us know.
Good luck!

 

[Kttlz]

WOW spitz! thanks man!

That's way more sensical...

ONE PROBLEM... My grow equipment has been re-claimed by it's rightful owner - something about paranoia about me posting online... so now I don't have anywhere to do this. Still very ilegal where I am

I will pose the question to my botany professor. He has a license to grow, so he might be just as excited.