Anyone Tried Flowering With Less Than 12 Hours Of Light/Day?

We all accept as gospel that pot plants must have a 12/12 light schedule to promote flowering.
Maybe I'm too linear in thinking, but, if flowering is prompted by shorter "days" why won't
even longer nights promote flowering even more? If maturity is sped up by shorter days
then it seems like a 10/24 or even a 8/16 schedule would speed things up even faster.
But remember, I'm the guy who thought that if 2 aspirins kill a headache in 20 minutes,
then 20 aspirin.... You can see how linear thinking can get one in trouble, eh?

Anyone tried flowering with less than 12 hours light per 24 hour day?

BigSteve.

LOL. I think like that too.
Anyway, I read something about shortening the hours close to harvest would 'trick' them into thinking season was close to end, and therefore hurry them along.
I am trying this right now, am bringing them in before dark, and putting in closet-in essence, giving about 10 hrs light.
However, week before last, I had a solid week of 40 degree nights, and that pretty much screwed up my experiment, slowing down whatever may have been sped up, but my Sativa dom. plant seems to be picking back up while my Indica dom. plant is still struggling with yellowing/dying fan leaves that were phosphorus deprived from the cold.

I have read about success with many options. But most usually add up to 24 hours. 10/14 13/11 you get it. I have also read that it is good to keep them in the dark a whole extra right before you harvest. I would think that you could really experiment with time. Maybe 6 hours on, 6 hours off 6 hours on 6 hours off, or 45 min on and then 15 min dark whne vegging? Who knows until you try

bigsteve said:

We all accept as gospel that pot plants must have a 12/12 light schedule to promote flowering.
Maybe I'm too linear in thinking, but, if flowering is prompted by shorter "days" why won't
even longer nights promote flowering even more? If maturity is sped up by shorter days
then it seems like a 10/24 or even a 8/16 schedule would speed things up even faster.
But remember, I'm the guy who thought that if 2 aspirins kill a headache in 20 minutes,
then 20 aspirin.... You can see how linear thinking can get one in trouble, eh?

Anyone tried flowering with less than 12 hours light per 24 hour day?

BigSteve.

Click to expand...

Keep thinking outside the box. But with this one it's been proven that reduced hrs light will not get a plant to finish a wk early, or make it kick out more resin (or else we'd all be doing it now). You need light to build resin so the more the better. That being said, I'm currently playing with equatorial strains from Hawaii and I had to reduce my lights on by 30 min (11:30 on) to get them to flip,,, after a wk I can bump it up to 11:45 and they continue strong.

The best would be to match nature. Throw them in to flower at 12:15 light and let the light diminish daily at the same rate the region the strain is native to. But 90% of the strains available through the breeders these days have so many crosses you can't say what region they came from anymore.

I don't think reducing would be a great idea. While darkness promotes the flowering aspect, the growing aspect is still controlled by sunlight and the amount of chlorophyll (or whatever the hell it is that gets produced by your plant from the sun) is based on the time spent in the light. I also believe a plant goes to sleep and wakes up, similiar to how a flower closes at night and opens in the morning, and adjusting it to something like 45 mins on 15 mins dark (yes u were being sarcastic) would stress your plant out a lot.