6 on 6 off

It would grow and never flower. If you don't understand the importance of a 12 hour dark period in flowering, stop growing now, do some reading, and resume your grow when you have basic knowledge under your belt.

Originally Posted by PJ Diaz

If you don't understand the importance of a 12 hour dark period in flowering, stop growing now

I think ive fallen foul of this!! regular interruptions to the 12 hour dark period have put my plant about a month behind.

I vegged 2 plants let my mate have one and his is being cut in a week!! whether he's cutting early or not his is considerably more developed than mine.

To conclude, 12 hours of uninterrupted light is very important to plant growth..

Originally Posted by Monkeyknifefight

I think ive fallen foul of this!! regular interruptions to the 12 hour dark period have put my plant about a month behind.

I vegged 2 plants let my mate have one and his is being cut in a week!! whether he's cutting early or not his is considerably more developed than mine.

To conclude, 12 hours of uninterrupted light is very important to plant growth..

It's not important in veg. In flowering it's not only important, it's absolutely NECESSARY! You can fuck with the "lights on" hours all you want, but don't mess with the 12 hours of darkness, or your crop will suffer big time.

I concur!! learn by my mistakes bites ass but its still looking eye wateringly epic!! hence why i cant leave it alone

What i lack in patience i make up for in obnoxiousness so it kinda balances itself out.

Originally Posted by brewing,up

what would happen if you do 6 on 6 off from seed?

Its a reasonable question.

I think the answer depends on the strain in question.

Some strains might stay in vegetative growth indefinitely on this regimen.

Some strains might get "confused" by the odd light pattern, figure winter is near, then eventually autoflower and/or exhibit signs of hermaphroditism. Some strains not typically thought of as "autoflowers" (typically indica-dominant ones) may eventually go into flowering based on age under ANY light regimen, and that might happen in this case.

You might actually get an autoflower type strain to flower normally under this regimen.


But whichever of the above three things happens, you're probably NOT going to get as good results as you would if you stick to the conventional 24-0 (or 20-4) / 12-12 (or 14-10) vegetative/flowering lighting cycles that indoor growers typically use.

good answer jogro +1 rep

Originally Posted by PJ Diaz

It's not important in veg. In flowering it's not only important, it's absolutely NECESSARY! You can fuck with the "lights on" hours all you want, but don't mess with the 12 hours of darkness, or your crop will suffer big time.

I don't believe this is true.

First of all, if, for example, you ran your plants in "15 hour day" cycles of 3 hours on, 12 off, I think you'd find that they'd probably flower, but finish really fast, and with minimal bud creation. Yes, you can interrupt your daylight period if you like, but plants DEFINITELY need a certain number of hours per day of light to do their photosynthesis for growing and flowering if you actually want to get some kind of yield.

In terms of "need" for darkness, in fact autoflowering strain plants will grow and flower perfectly fine running from seed to harvest under continuous (24-0) lighting with ZERO hours of darkness. Now, in fact, many of the "serious" autoflower growers I've seen discuss this seem to believe that 20-4 lighting is optimum and works as well if not better than 24-0. But I can say for sure that autoflowering plants will perform quite a bit better under 24-0 than under 12-12, giving significantly greater yields with no decrement in potency. They don't seem to "need" darkness.

With conventional strains, some growers (including commercial ones) like to run 14-10 lighting during flowering, believing (with some justification, I think) that the extra 2 hours of lighting time per day in flowering compared to 12-12 helps pack on extra bud mass. This is, of course, at the cost of more energy used and a potentially longer absolute flowering time in calendar days. Again, you don't "need" 12 hours of darkness in an absolute sense.

Whether or not plants actually "need" *ANY* period of darkness for "rest" (let alone one not shorter than 12 hours) is, I think, debatable.

The idea is widely promulgated on the internet, and lots of growers definitely believe it. Despite that, I haven't seen any empirical evidence that its true, and I've provided some evidence to the contrary (with autoflowers). If this has actually been "proven" I haven't seen the proof.

I think the idea just goes back to the days of all photoperiod plants. Unless you give them at least 10 hours per day of uninterrupted darkness, most strains simply won't flower at all! Its not too much of a stretch of faith to jump from there to assume that something "special" happens during periods of darkness OTHER than accumulation of the light-sensitive flowering hormone that permits flowering growth.

Arguably, if you want the "best" possible flowering schedule, it might be to try and replicate what happens in nature, and decrease the available daily hours of light during flowering by a certain amount each week, to simulate the natural shortening of daylight that happens in the fall when plants are "supposed" to flower.

You can believe what you want, but until you prove myself and thousands of botanists wrong it doesn't make a lick of difference.