Timer failed, had 20 mins too much light in flowering...

[racerboy71]

you should be fine.. cannabis flowers by the amount of dark hours it gets, most people use 12 / 12 because it's easy, but not necessarily the amount of dark hours a plant needs to flower..
so long as you don't interrupt the dark hours with light, as in lights coming on in the middle of a dark period, and not just once, a few or more times, they should be just fine.

 

[olafthegreen]

most people use 12 / 12 because it's easy, but not necessarily the amount of dark hours a plant needs to flower.

This is really interesting, and leads me to wonder...

I guess that as this means that each variety requires a minimum darkness period to flower, there is actually an optimum period of light to give any plant which could equate to something like 13hrs 23 mins of light / day? Is there a way of determining this time?

In nature the day length is continually shortened through the flowering period from both morning and evening (unless they flower in the spring) - does this mean that ideally the darkness period should change daily to emulate this when indoor, or does it make little or no difference.

How about the spectrum? It's going to be redder in the mornings and evenings presumably, would changing the spectrum throughout the day indoor actually have any effect?

These are things which are almost certainly way too much effort to get into on a small basic indoor grow like mine, but I find it interesting to think about. I have very little botanic background - but analysing things is fun.

 

[Rainbow Warrior]

I'll try treating my babies less like babies and more like teenagers now then Thanks guys.

If u treat ur babies like teenagers you end up with circular arguments, stinky socks, bedrooms that smell like puma cages, and you have to listen to their shitty music.
Then again, if u treat them like teenagers you won’t have to do a thing as they know everything....

Can you tell I’ve had kids?

RW

 

[guitarguy10]

2 days is a problem. 20 minutes...ummm...it's a fucking plant. Not a child.

My girls will always be my children until the day that I chop them.

Some growers experiment around with 11 or 13 hours of dark because it's not important that it be 'exactly' 12 hours and I guess they are trying to optimize their grow. It's like you said they receive different amounts of darkness every day during the season.

As long as they get *at least* 12 hours it's not like your plant knows the difference between 12.0 and 12.5 hours. Trying to optimize the light they get every day though is kind of a waste of time if you ask me though because every strain is going to be different and the gains if any wouldn't really be noticeable.

 

[racerboy71]

This is really interesting, and leads me to wonder...

I guess that as this means that each variety requires a minimum darkness period to flower, there is actually an optimum period of light to give any plant which could equate to something like 13hrs 23 mins of light / day? Is there a way of determining this time?

In nature the day length is continually shortened through the flowering period from both morning and evening (unless they flower in the spring) - does this mean that ideally the darkness period should change daily to emulate this when indoor, or does it make little or no difference.

How about the spectrum? It's going to be redder in the mornings and evenings presumably, would changing the spectrum throughout the day indoor actually have any effect?

These are things which are almost certainly way too much effort to get into on a small basic indoor grow like mine, but I find it interesting to think about. I have very little botanic background - but analysing things is fun.

you ask some very good questions... all of them to be honest..
i'd imagine there would be a way if you had the time and space to slowly adjust your dark hours by x amount of time over z period of time until you start to see signs of flowering, which would demonstrate how many dark hours are needed for the plant for flowering to commence..
as for the question about different spectrums during different times of the day, another good one, although i don't think i've ever seen anyone really do much research into it, could be a fun rabbit hole to go down, again, if you had the time and space and money to allow so..

 

[olafthegreen]

if you had the time and space and money to allow so

*Applies for research grant.

It's probably possible to get a grant for such a study, however it would require a change of country or some kind of crazy license!

hmm...

I like your idea for the flowering test time- that would definitely work to determine the initial flowering period.

I was thinking about the spectrum. With these modern full spectrum lights you've probably got enough of everything in there most of the time so the plant just uses what it needs. However I imagine there are probably optimal amounts of each wavelength to give at certain periods of the day, if we're talking absolutely perfect conditions.

May have a look into that if I get a chance, someone must have done some study, somewhere!

 

[racerboy71]

*Applies for research grant.

It's probably possible to get a grant for such a study, however it would require a change of country or some kind of crazy license!

hmm...

I like your idea for the flowering test time- that would definitely work to determine the initial flowering period.

I was thinking about the spectrum. With these modern full spectrum lights you've probably got enough of everything in there most of the time so the plant just uses what it needs. However I imagine there are probably optimal amounts of each wavelength to give at certain periods of the day, if we're talking absolutely perfect conditions.

May have a look into that if I get a chance, someone must have done some study, somewhere!

quite a few of the members here who frequent the led section of this site are super knowledgeable about things like par and what exact wave length plants use the most / best for photosynthesis, and as a result, build systems that have this par range for optimal plant growth.. saying all of that, i'm not the most up to date with all of the led tech, and am not the one who has such info.. if you're interested, check out some of the led threads by some of the bigger member who have the knowledge.

 

[racerboy71]

here's a bit of info on par, and how it pertains to growing our favorite plant..

Essentially a PAR is the amount of light that is actually available to be used during the photosynthesis process. There may be more light emitted from a particular source, but your plants don’t make use of all of it – some of it has no real effect on the photosynthesis process. It might be best to explain this with an example. For the human eye a bright white or yellow light bulb seems to illuminate the room most effectively, whereas blue or red light appears to our eyes to be very dim and so for us we prefer the brighter bulb to light up a room.

The lumen is a measure of brightness or how much light is actually emitted from any particular light source at a given time. Unfortunately, plants don’t really use that bright yellow light for photosynthesis, and while your traditional light bulb may be high in lumens it won’t necessarily be very high on the PAR scale. Plants experience the best growth when exposed to both blue and red lights and this type of light, while still visible to the human eye, is better measured in terms of PAR’s than lumens. As part of the visible color spectrum blue and red light is found between 400nm and 700nm and as you approach 700nm the PAR exposure increases. As a plant grows from a seed to a mature plant its need for light shifts from the blue to the red end of the spectrum, and you can measure how much exposure to light it’s getting in nanometers by using special instrumentation – the closer the light gets to 700nm the higher will be the PAR reading. As long as you keep your plants exposure between that 400nm and 700nm range at the appropriate levels for each stage of the plant’s growth cycle, you’ll end up with healthy and productive plants


https://www.lumigrowth.com/par-lumen/

 

[olafthegreen]

here's a bit of info on par, and how it pertains to growing our favorite plant..

Thanks, that's really informative, going to start reading into all this later today.