First Grow Ever - Humboldt Dream 2024

So just my 2 cents.. haha

First, Great information about photon levels and light duration on the plants. A lot of information I had lacked before, thank you.

I find that lab results and life results offer different results often. In this case, I have the life results and experience of a few hundred farms in Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity county with all sorts of different scales and environments. Light flashes below 30 minutes a night will not turn your plants. It’s common practice to headlamp spray for 30-60 minutes at night (obviously passing light over plants as you spray, not keeping light on all plants entire duration)
I also know of several farms with roadside greenhouses and no black out measures, meaning they have vehicles passing with lights going through the greenhouses several times a night.
There seems to be a lot of scare information, and maybe that is the case for plants used to an indoor environment where ‘night time’ means truly zero photo level, where as plants accustomed to outdoor environments have adapted to accepting low levels of photons at night without sending the chemical signal to change up sex or re veg. It’s an environment used to bright night sky’s from the sun photons reflecting off the moon and into the stars giving the forest its magic night glow.

Just my 2 cents and experience, controlled studies may not reflect all real life environments. Don’t stress on hitting your plant with a bright headlamp a few minutes a night.
I use night interruption here in Hawaii in my veg house. 13w LED bulbs on a timer that goes on midnight, 2am, and 4am. That's been working perfectly for years to keep my plants in veg. If I wanted to re-veg a plant, I could put it in the veg house and voila, it would return to veg after, what, 10 days?
 
So just my 2 cents.. haha

First, Great information about photon levels and light duration on the plants. A lot of information I had lacked before, thank you.

I find that lab results and life results offer different results often. In this case, I have the life results and experience of a few hundred farms in Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity county with all sorts of different scales and environments. Light flashes below 30 minutes a night will not turn your plants. It’s common practice to headlamp spray for 30-60 minutes at night (obviously passing light over plants as you spray, not keeping light on all plants entire duration)
I also know of several farms with roadside greenhouses and no black out measures, meaning they have headlights passing with lights going past and through the greenhouses several times a night. Sometimes more.
There seems to be a lot of scare information, and maybe that is the case for plants used to an indoor environment where ‘night time’ means truly zero photo level, where as plants accustomed to outdoor environments have adapted to accepting low levels of photons at night without sending the chemical signal to change up sex or re veg. It’s an environment used to bright night sky’s from the sun photons reflecting off the moon and into the stars giving the forest its magic night glow.

Just my 2 cents and experience, controlled studies may not reflect all real life environments. Don’t stress on hitting your plant with a bright headlamp a few minutes a night.
I agree growing up spending 12 years watching my family grow they would walk out at night time and turn lights on fairly often and I would have to say we grow the best weed around. Never had bad weed or saw a plant under 8 feet tall in the whole 12 years and he had flood lights and motion sensors on his plants that would periodically go off and it never made a noticeable difference but like I said on paper it probably makes a difference on a chemical level for a short time which is technically stress but if it's never ruined a crop from my experience.
 
Only very specific wavelengths of green light are not perceived by the plants, so what's green to you might not be to them. My advice is don't go poking around your plants at night except by echolocation. :)
The wavelengths that interrupt flowering are a very specific band in the red part of the spectrum. A green bulb that doesn't contain these wavelengths will not affect flowering. Period.
 
I use night interruption here in Hawaii in my veg house. 13w LED bulbs on a timer that goes on midnight, 2am, and 4am. That's been working perfectly for years to keep my plants in veg. If I wanted to re-veg a plant, I could put it in the veg house and voila, it would return to veg after, what, 10 days?
Great information! See I think that’s environmentally for you, where you naturally have 12 hours of light no matter what to back you up. Here in Northern California, we’re dipping below 11 hours of daylight depending on what part of a mountain and hillside and how close a house is, porch, tall trees. Like, big trees. California and the big trees man. @StarkRaven knows lol. It gives us more leniency for night light interruptions. Plus our plants are accustomed to some bright night sky’s.
Again, every body has different setting. I know some light assist greenhouses here that are big on black out and green light. But if your plants are used to the night sky and short fall nights of California, you don’t have to stress on light interruption style revegging. It’s not that easy here. Even the cold nights prohibit the re veg growth.
 
Stoner thought guys man I'm ripped what if their is a strain made from crisper to resist light when sleeping like a strain that won't wake up at night haha. I mean we already are isolating terpenes and cannabinoids I don't see why people won't isolate the DNA and just make a strain that's resistant to light stress. Theoretically you could make the strain do anything with crisper. Or Cas 9 gene editing.
 
In my experience during California fall and winter, you need 4-6 hours of constant light at night to keep veg cycle going and a greenhouse for warmth.
Would that work if I had lights under the plants and they turned on 3 hours before the sun rises and 3 hours on after the sun goes down?
 
Would that work if I had lights under the plants and they turned on 3 hours before the sun rises and 3 hours on after the sun goes down?
There are growers who use far red pucks to shut the plants down more quickly and can run 14/10 in flower for bigger harvests. @Rider509 ran that in his big grow room and grew some really big plants. I created a summary set of links to his info here for anyone interested. You can see how well his plants did on it in the very first link there.
 
Great information! See I think that’s environmentally for you, where you naturally have 12 hours of light no matter what to back you up.
All photoperiod cannabis plants everywhere will respond to night interruption lighting, in order to stay in veg. It isn't location dependent, and has nothing to do with what local plants are adapted to.

Of course, in NorCal and other northern locations, you have (more-or-less) May, June, July, Aug, where plants can be outdoors and not flower, due to short night length. We don't have that here in Hawaii.

Surprisingly, there's a new kid on the block called "semi-autoflowering" cannabis that I learned about this year, which mimics what we have going on here in Hawaii... it will flower as soon as it's sexually mature, regardless of night length. So, you can control flowering using night interruption lighting. Calling it "semi-autoflowering" I'd say is misleading, because it is indeed light sensitive. I'd say psuedo- or quasi- would be better.

Here in Northern California, we’re dipping below 11 hours of daylight depending on what part of a mountain and hillside and how close a house is, porch, tall trees. Like, big trees.
Shading does not affect the phytochrome of the plants. Daylight is daylight. They need complete darkness to be affected. If you are talking about trees blocking a light source at night... sure, that can be effective to protect flowering plants.
 
In my experience during California fall and winter, you need 4-6 hours of constant light at night to keep veg cycle going and a greenhouse for warmth.
So here we are talking about the difference between daylight extension and photoperiod lighting. Of course, if you sufficiently extend the daylight length with photosynthetic lighting (mimicking the sun), you will bring the dark period down sufficiently to keep the plants in veg. If you are doing that for warmth, that's completely understandable. You could also just use heaters and short-duration night interruption lighting (a few minutes), whichever is more energy efficient. BUT... daylight extension also gives the added benefit of more photosynthesis and plant growth.

On the other hand, if you are using low-intensity lighting for daylight extension, the benefit isn't that great for plant growth.
 

I don't think this flash did much 😀 definitely won't do it again without a greenlight just to be safe though.
Hey StarkRaven! :high-five: I don’t think you’ll hurt them much at this stage or send them into veg. These girls are intent on finishing! It’s a beautiful pic of that monster plant just off your deck! Not too many ppl can get that kind of a pic on this tall of a girl!:woohoo:
:hug::love::hug:
 
There are growers who use far red pucks to shut the plants down more quickly and can run 14/10 in flower for bigger harvests.
OK, so indoor grow, photoperiod plants in flower, 14 hours light, 10 hours dark (instead of the usual 12/12). I think he's using normal indoor grow lighting for the 14 hours, which of course includes the far red part of the spectrum. Exposure to far red (only) converts the Pfr to Pr. Pr is the form that's present and needed during flowering.

Hmm, I think he's using the pucks during the dark hours to make sure the plants stay in flower with only 10 hours of darkness. Interesting... sort of the opposite of night interruption lighting. If he ran 10.5 hours of darkness, I think most cannabis would stay in flower naturally. So he's gaining some photosynthesis, but not a lot. Perhaps enough to make a noticeable difference.

Here's the thing, though. The effect of light on the leaves is localized. So, unless the pucks are giving off enough far red light to hit all parts of the plants, some parts will still be subject to the 10-hour dark period, and will want to stay in veg. What could be happening with this technique, in this case, is that 10 hours is actually a sufficiently long dark period for the particular strain being grown to stay in flower. EDIT: In other words, maybe the pucks aren't doing anything. If he did a comparison grow of the same pheno (clones), same soil, same everything, except one has the pucks and one doesn't, that would confirm the technique.
 
He ran the pucks 15 minutes after lights out. If you click the link you can read all about his method.
Thanks. I'm gonna pass on that! Others may be interested. If there's a comparison grow that anyone did, I'd like to see that.
 
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