Sort of on topic, I think...
I've been thinking about mimicking seasonal changes with my lights. I built a DIY COB light with (2) 5000, (2) 4000, and (4) 3000k Cree 3070 series COBs. Each group is on its own plug. The simplest way I've used this is to veg under 200w -- the 4's and 5's, and flower under 300w -- the 4's and 3's. But there's nothing quite as satisfying as complicating something simple that has already proven to work...
I've thought about vegging under the 4's and 5's for a few weeks, and then adding the 3000's -- but using separate timers, so the 3's come on first, then 60-90(?) minutes later the 4/5's come on, and then "at the end of the day" it reverses and the 4/5's shut off first, etc. A couple of weeks into veg, I would also go from 18/6 to 20/4 in increments, to mimic the lengthening of days. I would maintain that for a week or two and then reverse it out, and start to shorten the days until I hit 12/12 (a half hour beginning and end of day would bring me from 20/4 to 12/12 in 8 days. I use those cheap mechanical timers with the flip tabs, each tab is 30 minutes, its not hard to knock an hour off a day). I'd run that for six weeks, and then drop the 5000's and move it to 10/14 for the remainder.
OK... no doubt I have too much time on my hands. The hypothesis is that a happy plant produces better bud, and the more "natural" the environment the happier the plant. Science is not in the building, this is just late night stoned speculation.
