We all should know that flowering is genetic, it cannot be speeded up or slowed down.

Yet my question is; is it that the plant's genetics are such that they recognise light and dark, or that they measure only light?

In 24 hour veg the plants only recognise light (and I've never noticed a difference between giving them a rest and not, except the 24 hour veggers seem to grow quicker and bushier).

Maybe flowering is triggered when the light drops, not when the dark rises (if you see my point).

If it is the case that the plants only actually recognise light then it could be true to say that flowering might be 'speeded' up somewhat by introducing an extra half hour of light to your flowering cycle.

Just a thought, and i'd be interested to know any opposing views, and of course why.

Cool topic , because last week i added an extra hour on my light cycle (7 weeks flowering then) with the thought that in the last couple weeks of flower budz can really bulk up and that the extra light would be an advantage at this time . I am 8 flowering weeks now and will leave the extra hour on another week and then back to 12/12 for the last week before harvest . My budz are super thick and still getting bigger , can anybody back this theory up

light adds power, power can add grow, but the amount of power a plant gets decides to switch on or off parts of its dna, so if you add to much light - give it to many light hours, the plant will go back into veg eventual.

technical you can flower with 12-14 hours of light, but some strains won't start until they get less then 13 hours.

__________________
keep the thumb green and the gun oiled, !

Say you have a plant that flowers for 56 days, I'm suggesting that maybe by giving it 12 h 45 mins of light you could get that down to 54 days.

Maybe, genetically the plants age with the time scale of the light. Obviously to push this too far would result in the plant reverting. Maybe (if what I'm saying is true) that we shouldn't age the plants by days/weeks but rather by total hours of light received.

Hiya Skunky

The plants measure both the light and dark periods. They do this with a hormone called Phytochrome that lives in the plants chloroplasts in the leaves. Phytochrome contains two pigments - Pfr and Pr. One of them is stimulated by the far red in the spectrum of sunrise and sunset and changes into the other when there's no red light, usually during the dark period. As soon as the red light arrives (sunset and sunrise) it converts back into it's previous form again.

This is how the plant monitors the light and darkness hours and knows when it's time to start flowering.

__________________
Mandala Seeds Kalichakra and Satori Grow
Holefillers 0.6gram per watt 64w Micro Grow

^^interesting, nice to know this one

__________________
keep the thumb green and the gun oiled, !

You beat me to it. Nice explanation. Its amazing how smart plants are. They can tell time of day by the % of Pf vs. Prf. I still wonder what the next mechanism is that triggers flowering. As far as I know, the pathway by which plants "turn on flowering" is still unknown.

Lol very interesting. Look at my thead in same forum, called "Difficult Question, Flowering Hormone?', it co-incides with this one kind of. This "next mechanism that triggers flowering" could be what I mention in my thread, its a hormone called "Florigen". Read it.

It's not possible to fool them?

Flowering begins in veg', not the instigation of 12/12. All you have to do is wait long enough for the plant to mature, usually 6 weeks to 2 months. Even if you switch to 12/12 early, the plant will still take the extra time to mature before showing. Never flower your plants from seed until they show sex. This is usually after about 6 weeks veg'.

I flowered my first grapefruit crop after 4 weeks veg. One of the plants took 4 weeks to start showing sex. The rest were on the the 3 week mark.