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more than 12 hours light for flowering

TychoMonolyth

Boreal Curing
Dude you just blew my mind. I kept thinking about methods to increase the daylight to 14-15 hours to give the plants extra time under the light each day.

However you’re absolutely right, you can accomplish the same thing by just “shorting” the days. For example, if using powerful LEDs, we may discover our DLI is 10 hours. So putting a plant under a 10/12 schedule frees up 2 hours each day. Over the course of a week, we gain 14 hours. This gives us a little over 2.5 extra days per month. Bonus points if you can get the plants to accept a 10/10 schedule, freeing up 28 hours every week. You all know the song... “Ain’t got nothing but love girl... 8 1/4 days a week!”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kle2xHhRHg4
Maybe you could put a light on them at 1am for an hour to keep them in veg. Just throwing that out there. I have solar powered LEDs on my front step that would blind you.
 

f-e

Well-known member
Mentor
Veteran
We seem to be drifting to the topic of night break lighting. Where a sleep long enough to induce flowering is split into two halves, not the single long night required for budding. This lighting technique of waking them in the night, can keep greenhouse plants in grow, when natural light is telling them to flower. Useful for equatorial greenhouses, wanting to veg plants under natural light, without the big power bill of extending the day.
 

Hookahhead

Active member
A side thought - if the cheap timers were not 24hr cycle timers, but arbitrary on/off period timers, we'd probably know a whole heck of a lot more about this by now.

Honestly I don’t know why more people don’t discuss it but a knock off Arduino board, a timer break out board, and a relay can all be bought off eBay for less than $50, probably less than $40 honestly. With this you can make an unlimited on/off timer with only a few lines of code. Such a device can be used to gradually increase/decrease the light schedule daily, weekly or whatever internal you decide. For a few extra bucks you can add a decent temp/humidity sensor, and use that with another relay to control other environment control devices.

I’ll be bringing my boards back with me when I’m in the US. I’ll do a write up, for real it’s stupid simple.

We seem to be drifting to the topic of night break lighting. Where a sleep long enough to induce flowering is split into two halves, not the single long night required for budding. This lighting technique of waking them in the night, can keep greenhouse plants in grow, when natural light is telling them to flower. Useful for equatorial greenhouses, wanting to veg plants under natural light, without the big power bill of extending the day.

I just so happen to live a few clicks off the equator and have a greenhouse. I have considered this a lot, but it think it only makes sense if I had 2 or 3 greenhouses and could block the light. My dream is to have 3... 1 in veg, 1 starting flower, and 1 a month into flower. Oh man how great would that be. For now I grow plants indoor under LED until they’re about a meter tall, then move them out to the greenhouse. Our yearly daylight deviation is only 11.5-12.5 hours so they all flip right away coming off 18/6. This way I can keep the perpetual going.

Edit: Also just for clarification when I was discussing the possibility of a 10/12 or 10/10 schedule on my previous post I was talking about flowering plants. My previous notion was similar to what dankwolf confirmed, some plants may enjoy a longer period of light during flower. However, now I realize if your setup is able to hit the DLI quicker, and get the plants to sleep quicker with far red... you may be able to cycle days faster instead. As I pointed out, If you’re able to rub a 10/10 schedule, you free up 28 hours per week. This is 1.4 of your new “days”. So it MAY be possible to get an 8 week strain to finish a week to 10 days earlier? Imagine if you could shave 2 weeks off a 12 week strain? I definitely think it’s something worth investigating, unfortunately I’m not really set up for such a thing.
 
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f-e

Well-known member
Mentor
Veteran
An ANLY Twin Timer costs about $25 and can do 10/10 out the box. It's just a 555 based astable timer, where both on and off duration's can be set differently. It's also very easy to mod one to do different time scales.
 

zif

Well-known member
Veteran
Or go IOT and use the Sonoff. They’re hovering around $2, and allow you to wirelessly switch via cloud or local network. There are good open source firmware options if you’re uncomfortable with IOT security in general (and tech savvy).
 

Mr. J

Well-known member
It's all a waste of effort. Any gains made by increasing the number of hours in a "day" are offset by the extra time it takes to bring the crop to harvest, and any time saved by decreasing the length of a day is offset by reduced yields. This has all been tried before. 24 hours is the best length for a day, probably because a day is supposed to be 24 hours long.
 

Finnichaze

New member
I personally think it's the gradual increase of darkness that triggers flowering in most strains. And I mean consistently GRADUAL. Like 2.5 minutes a day. But that's outdoor and what do I know. Still, this would allow for flowering to start at 15hrs of light.

One should note, that outdoors the gradual change of daylength might not be perceived the same way by the plant. Based on my humble observations, the biggest reason plants start flowering earlier outside is because of weather and solar line of sight deadzones. A rainy or overcast week or two can make the plant flower earlier (provided there is still some light to provide energy for the plants), as it make the plant think the night has come earlier (especially if the clouds block the late afternoon rays or early morning). This is also why I think my outdoor grown plants (had 4 strains once to compare outdoor/indoor growing) come with more seeds.

The outdoor spots I've chosen and sees some mates choose, were always somewhat hidden so there was no direct line of sight from nearby trails or roads. This almost always led to the situation where the first hours of sun were blocked by nearby trees/plants and same for the last hours. Generally this was favourable at my latitudes where winter usually comes early >62° and midsummer almost 24 hours of light. Good for some sativas which would otherwise ripen too late, but not all indica strains liked the extra shade.

Currently testing 13/11 in contrast to 11/13 I was using earlier. Main reason for trying bit of change was that my Kushes started to bloat at week 10, Super Lemon Haze at week 11 and Amnesia was not showing any signs of getting fat at week 12 of flowering. Hoping to cut week or so of the flowering stage, 2h difference is almost ~20% more light each day. Also hoping for the plants to stretch bit more during flowering. 3 of the strains are the same for this test as with 11/13; Kush Critical and Queen. Critical is so damn fast that I probably won't see a difference, with Queen the slower phenos will be long enough to note and with mouth watering I will be keeping my eye on the dark coffee - flavoured Kush and waiting it to bloat for consumption.
 

Drewsif

Member
It's all a waste of effort. Any gains made by increasing the number of hours in a "day" are offset by the extra time it takes to bring the crop to harvest, and any time saved by decreasing the length of a day is offset by reduced yields. This has all been tried before. 24 hours is the best length for a day, probably because a day is supposed to be 24 hours long.

But we can account and offset for leap year and gain a few minutes by rotating our plants .986° daily. Some one should invent a computer controller for that. 4 minutes a day adds up.
 

Hookahhead

Active member
It's all a waste of effort. Any gains made by increasing the number of hours in a "day" are offset by the extra time it takes to bring the crop to harvest, and any time saved by decreasing the length of a day is offset by reduced yields. This has all been tried before. 24 hours is the best length for a day, probably because a day is supposed to be 24 hours long.

Increasing the light to 13/11 or 14/10 doesn’t change the length of time to harvest at all.

Running a strain on 10/12 or 10/10 if possible MAY speed up the finish time (I haven’t seen any tests myself). Again the two major factors to make this work are hitting DLI and getting the flowering hormone to build up quickly.

It’s funny that you think “all of this has been tried before”. I’m sad for you if you think you already know all there is to know about cannabis. She’s a teacher and there is always something new for her to show you. With legalization spreading across the globe, new academic research papers on cannabis are being published weekly. Within the past 6 months science has shown that we’ve been doing a lot of “classic” things wrong for a while (if you need some info let me know). Many people don’t realize just how much LED lighting has/will change the game.


Haters gonna hate always, I just don’t know why they’re so set on spreading that hate?
 

Mr. J

Well-known member
Increasing the light to 13/11 or 14/10 doesn’t change the length of time to harvest at all.

Running a strain on 10/12 or 10/10 if possible MAY speed up the finish time (I haven’t seen any tests myself). Again the two major factors to make this work are hitting DLI and getting the flowering hormone to build up quickly.

It’s funny that you think “all of this has been tried before”. I’m sad for you if you think you already know all there is to know about cannabis. She’s a teacher and there is always something new for her to show you. With legalization spreading across the globe, new academic research papers on cannabis are being published weekly. Within the past 6 months science has shown that we’ve been doing a lot of “classic” things wrong for a while (if you need some info let me know). Many people don’t realize just how much LED lighting has/will change the game.


Haters gonna hate always, I just don’t know why they’re so set on spreading that hate?
Increasing the number of hours in a day isn't the same as 11/13 or 13/11 or even 23/1. Buck up crybaby of you think telling you that your experiment on making a day longer or shorter than 24 hours, which has been done, is "spreading hate" because you're acting like a little girl. I honestly have no idea where or how you managed to find "hate" in my post.
 
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Gypsy Nirvana

Recalcitrant Reprobate -
Administrator
Veteran
ehh - lets not let the thread nose-dive into calling each other 'little girls' and 'haters' etc - agree to disagree civilly - without the added drama -
 

TychoMonolyth

Boreal Curing
I have a buddy who refuses to change to LEDs. Said he doesn't want to grow Basil. lol.
OK then... keep paying $300 bucks (?) a pound to grow.
 
M

MrGanjaMan

Has anyone ever tried the 'Gas Lantern' technique?
It's basically running veg 12/1 in the dark. Where one hour of light is in the middle of the dark period.

12_1_lighting_cycle.jpg
 

TychoMonolyth

Boreal Curing
^^^ Apparently it only takes the light of a 100 watt bulb to keep them in veg. Big money saver. If I didn't have so many "experiments" running, I'd try it.
 

Hookahhead

Active member
The gas light method would work, but if you’re trying to push production you’re better off running your lights until the plants reach their daily light integral before cutting the lights.
 

Hookahhead

Active member
Buck up crybaby of you think telling you that your experiment on making a day longer or shorter than 24 hours, which has been done, is "spreading hate" because you're acting like a little girl. I honestly have no idea where or how you managed to find "hate" in my post.

Lol I must have hit a nerve there? Sorry if science scares you, I get it ignorance is bliss.

The truth is I wasn’t necessarily calling you a hater, though I understand how you got that since I quoted you on the first part of the post. There were 2 other “negative” comments after yours. Honestly all I was trying to say is I don’t understand why people have to contribute negatively to any thread on here. If you don’t have anything useful to add just move on? Isn’t that easier than actually commenting?

If you had evidence, either personal or otherwise, of how the procedure I outlined does not work, we would all love to see it. Contribute useful information or don’t contribute at all. Science doesn’t give a shit about your feelings.
 

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
My experience with the 'gas light method' says it works, but better with NLD and NLD dominate hybrids.

I've been studying the LED scene for a bit now, and I believe you can get what you want without changing the 24hr cycle. My question is, did you want the same harvest time or a shorter one? With the addition of the right amount of far-red, applied at the correct time, you can shorten your dark hours, while increasing your harvest weight. You'll harvest at the same time, with a higher weight. 14hrs on/10hrs off.

Without the far-red being applied properly, 14/10 will have a longer flowering time. Your weight will also be slightly higher, simply due to the longer exposure to light each day.

Using leds, with too much far-red during 100% lights-on, will cause your plants to stretch and produce fluffier flowers. Decreasing night hours will increase flowering time and harvest weight, and you'll still get fluffier flowers. (This is why you want to be sure of the spectrum you're getting with your LED lights. For now I'm enjoying 'no far-red' in my spectrum)

The proper use of far-red, (from what I understand) is from a short period before lights out, till some time after lights out. The far-red speeds the conversion of the flowering hormone (the process was mentioned earlier in the thread), so a full 12hrs is no longer needed. 10hrs of dark, with proper far-red application, is sufficient to trigger the same flowering response as 12 does without the far-red.

Read up on it, it's rather interesting. :)
 

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