18/6 never again

growman27 said:

what about Alaska?.... isn' it light out for like 6 months out of the year?lol

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gladstoned said:

• The 12-1 lighting schedule is as follows 12 hours lights on, 5.5 lights off, 1-hour lights on, 5.5 lights off, and repeat schedule. The 1 hour on in between off period fools the plants that stay in vegetative growth state! Your immediate savings are 5 hours in energy costs daily, as well as your bulbs and equipment lasting longer. But how do the plants react to this lighting schedule?
  
  You see immediate growth response from your plants, they are happy from the added rest time. By day 14 the plants tripled in size. The plants are bushy with twice as many bud sites without topping or bending, In fact when you top and stretch your plants out, you get many more bud sites than you would have had under 18-6 using same procedure of topping and stretching plant, your growing bigger and better and faster.
  
  So your saving 5 hours daily in energy costs, as well as your excellerated growth pattern which also saves you time and energy and equipment use.
  
  In the flowering stage, never use 12-12, start your flowering period at 11 hours on 13 hours off. When your are growing outdoors each day you get less and less sun light, you should copy the way the sun acts naturally in your indoor grow. So first 2 weeks of flower you go 11 on 13 off, the next 2 weeks you go down to 10.5 on 13.5 off, next 2 weeks 10 on 14 off, next two weeks 9.5 on 14.5 off and the last weeks of flower you should be at 9 hours on and 15 hours off. You’ll get bigger and better buds by copying the way the sun light works on cannabis outdoors.
  
  Cannabis is an outdoor plant and you should copy the way it grows outdoors indoors. The only thing that 18-6, and then 12-12 lighting schedule's do is make the energy companies rich as well as the people who sell lights and equipment, the more you use the more you spend. 12-1 lighting schedule is a more natural way to grow indoors and you well have the best results you have ever had and save as much as 50% in energy costs​

  
  
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That is off this site.

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AlmightyPapaC said:

Personally I feel the rest period is essential. I run 18/6
On a 400 Watt MH. In 3 weeks they were 3 feet tall.. I
had them in 1 gallon milk jugs. So I disagree that 24/0
would make much of a grow increase. Let your ladies
rest. That's what nature would do. KEEP IT STUPID SIMPLE!

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stumpjumper said:

But it does, they stretch less and have closer node spacing. They do not need rest.

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stumpjumper said:

http://www.marijuanapassion.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-39970.html

"It's been established for many many many years now that cannabis is a C3 plant. It does not need a dark period.

C3 plants gather CO2 only during the light period when they are photosynthesizing. As long as the light is on, C3 plants gather and use CO2 for photosynthesis.

Some growers practice a version of anthropomorphism with their plants. They believe that since people need rest, plants do as well. Concerning cannabis, this is not true.

Every grower can make a personal choice about light cycle. They can save on their electric bill or prolong ballast/bulb life. 18/6 can be less of a "shock" when changing over to 12/12 for flowering than 24/0 or heat issues can be addressed by fewer hours of light, but basic botany has proven long ago that cannabis needs no dark period.

Ed Rosenthal, Mel Frank and Robert Clarke all have covered this extensively over their careers.

hXXp://www.mellowgold.com/grow/mjbotany-removed/marijuanabotany1.html Marijuana Botany Chapter 1 - Sinsemilla Life Cycle of Cannabis
hXXp://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/3127.html Need the dark
-------------------------------------------------------------

"This is a direct quote from Ed Rosenthal whom most of you know is a marijuana growing guru:

Marijuana plants photosynthesize as long as they receive light as well as water, air, nutrients and suitable temperature. Photosynthesis is the process in which plants use the energy from light (primarily in the blue and red spectrum's) to combine carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and water (H2O) to make sugar while releasing oxygen to the air.

Plants use sugars continuously to fuel metabolic processes (living) as well as for tissue building. The plant combines nitrogen (N) with the sugar to make amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. They are the substance of plant tissue. When the light is off, the plant's metabolic processes, respiration and growth, continue.

The plant can photosynthesize continuously so it produces the most energy and growth when the light is on, continuously. Continuous light does not stress the plant, which reacts somewhat mechanistically to it.

Plants under an 18-6 light-dark regimen are producing sugar only three quarters of the time. They are thus growing at only 75% of their potential. Leaving the light on continuously will result in bigger plants, faster, which leads to higher yields."

-------------------------------------------------------------

"The following information is straight from Greg Green's "The Cannabis Grow Bible"

Cannabis is a light demanding plant. Professional growers keep the light on their plants using the 24/0 photoperiod for this reason. Plants that grow under 24/0 flourish and do not need a quantity of darkness in order to rest and perform photosynthesis properly. Plants that are grown in optimal conditions under 24/0 light regime grow vigorusly and the benefits of a 24/0 photoperiod can be seen actively in the results. More nodes are formed, more branches are created, leaf numbers increase, the plant is growing at its finest.

Some growers opt to use 18/6 as their photoperiod. This is 18 hours of light, six hours of darkness light regime. Under these conditions the plant will grow quite naturally but not as vigorously as the 24/0 photoperiod.

The 18/6 photoperiod expels 3/4 the amount of light that a 24/0 photoperiod does. Although this does not mean that a plant produces 1/4 less leaves,branches and nodes under the 18/6 photoperiod, it certainly does show the correlation between light and cannabis growth. As we have said already, cannabis is a light demanding plant. There are no problems associated with 24/0 and although some have attributed cannabis sexual dysfunction (the hermaphrodite conditon) to 18/6 photoperiod these problems are actually the result of heat stress.

A 24/0 photoperiod requires that your grow room temperature be kept well monitored. The 18/6 option is cheaper to run. You use a quarter less electricity and this will have an impact on your electricity bill. Also the 18/6 photoperiod will generally extend the bulb's lifespan. During the 6 hours of darkness the grow room is allowed to cool down for this period but a well maintained good grow room setup should not require a cooling down period.

24/0 and 18/6 both share the same problem though. Once you start the photoperiod you should keep that way especially when the plants near maturity (the preflowering stage). An irregular photoperiod can cause more males than females to develop. It can also cause sexual dysfunction to appear. Whether you choose 24/0 or 18/6 as your vegetative photoperiod try to keep that photoperiod unitl your plants are mature enough to express their sex."

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gladstoned said:

I thought that was a problem too, but 12 on, 5 1/2 off, 1 on, 5 1/2 off can be set on basic timer.
I said I was going to look into it next week and I actually spent 3-4 hrs looking it up immediately after I said that. I guess I felt like a POS for bringing up something I didn't understand basics of. 9 times out of ten though a bunch of pros jump in and give thoughts, not this time.
Anyway the thing I find odd, is every thread I have found going over this, other posters get mad. Why in hell would you get mad at someone experimenting with grow techniques. Fucking weird. If you said dripping ink on a plant stalk every morning increases yield and you try it, I can't imagine me getting pissed off and yelling at you everyday while you try it (as long as they ain't my plants) lol. Anyway a 25% reduction in my electric bill over a year adds up to quite a bit of medicine. I think having two small tents for experiments like this is one of my few good ideas. lol. But, I often think that when I get an idea. lol.
With your timer, just set your 12 hours on and then bust up you twelve dark with an hour of light in middle. Do you have set-up to try it? I should have my other tent tomorrow and setting up both lights may take a week or two. I have a damn lumatek ballast that I sent somewhere about a month ago. Wonder when that SOB will surface. That will help determine when shit is up and going for office.

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tomcatjones said:

stumper.. i want to see this in writing somewhere. i have yet to find such facts.

you may get FASTER growth. but you'll get MORE Growth with a dark period.

but the node spacing is ALL about temps. not the hours.

node spacing for me - less than a centimeter on all plants. (except power kush)

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gladstoned said:

• The 12-1 lighting schedule is as follows 12 hours lights on, 5.5 lights off, 1-hour lights on, 5.5 lights off, and repeat schedule. The 1 hour on in between off period fools the plants that stay in vegetative growth state! Your immediate savings are 5 hours in energy costs daily, as well as your bulbs and equipment lasting longer. But how do the plants react to this lighting schedule?
  
  You see immediate growth response from your plants, they are happy from the added rest time. By day 14 the plants tripled in size. The plants are bushy with twice as many bud sites without topping or bending, In fact when you top and stretch your plants out, you get many more bud sites than you would have had under 18-6 using same procedure of topping and stretching plant, your growing bigger and better and faster.
  
  So your saving 5 hours daily in energy costs, as well as your excellerated growth pattern which also saves you time and energy and equipment use.
  
  In the flowering stage, never use 12-12, start your flowering period at 11 hours on 13 hours off. When your are growing outdoors each day you get less and less sun light, you should copy the way the sun acts naturally in your indoor grow. So first 2 weeks of flower you go 11 on 13 off, the next 2 weeks you go down to 10.5 on 13.5 off, next 2 weeks 10 on 14 off, next two weeks 9.5 on 14.5 off and the last weeks of flower you should be at 9 hours on and 15 hours off. You’ll get bigger and better buds by copying the way the sun light works on cannabis outdoors.
  
  Cannabis is an outdoor plant and you should copy the way it grows outdoors indoors. The only thing that 18-6, and then 12-12 lighting schedule's do is make the energy companies rich as well as the people who sell lights and equipment, the more you use the more you spend. 12-1 lighting schedule is a more natural way to grow indoors and you well have the best results you have ever had and save as much as 50% in energy costs​

  
  
  ​

That is off this site.

Click to expand...

st0wandgrow said:

I think I'm going to try it. I have a perpetual garden where I harvest every 3 weeks, so I'm not too worried at all about the plants coming out of veg. If it doesn't work out, I'll have another batch 3 weeks behind it. My only concern would be my mama plants that I clone from. I'm running 4 different strains, 4 mamas, and I'd be pissed if they hermied or something.

Maybe I'll swap my mamas out for new ones, and start those on the new light cycle. Something tells me that mamas that have been exposed to 24/0 lights might react adversely to a new light schedule.

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dickkhead said:

i was vegging 18/6 and they were growing slow as shit! so i went to 23/1 and there thriving and are growing twice as fast! Id like to see this 12 on 5.5 off 1 on 5.5 off
if i can save that much and get the same results itd be awesome!!

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mufastaa said:

faster growth but not more growth??? that makes no sense. if you have faster growth for the same amount of time, you end up with more growth. duh.

and 24 hours did help me with node spacing. and much faster growth.

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