18 hour light Grows

i have seen many many wonderful posts with re to only using 20 maybe 18 hours of light to veg thus saving a shit load of money (well 3 bucks in our led case, but this post isn't about money). since i did my research on auto growing i fired up 18 hours (my first auto grow) and decided to chunk in some normal females to see how they liked it. They enjoy it loving it more than full on 24 hours which kind of makes sense - gives them a wee time out from being forced to grow.

you will always get more vigorous growth with a 18 hr cycle plants also
yes plants need both, lights and Darkness the diurnal cycle influences the metabolic and physiological processes,also On a diurnal time scale water moves out of the cells and into the extracellular region in the morning and back into the cells in the late afternoon and evening. This leads to a diurnal cycle in the extracellular water content. The magnitude of the diurnal cycle gives a measure of the cross sectional area of the extracellular region that is filled with water during the daytime period. Over a multi-day period, the minimum value of the diurnal cycle will vary in proportion to the water content of the plant as a whole. As the plant dries out, both the magnitude of the diurnal cycle and the minimum value decrease.

hope this helps

I just switched mine to 24 hours for a few days just to help them recover some strength from a move, and I have to say its actually working really well. But I think that is possibly because I'm keeping the led further away than normal meaning it won't have as much stress....if that makes sense.

Probably not the most logical idea but it brought me good results. Still i think I will revert to 18 hours again in a day or so once in happy at the recovery.

I think sometimes it's best to try different times yourself each day and see what the plants like themselves. After all a few day of tweaking might make a huge difference when you come to harvest.