Best way to shift light cycle times during flowering.

I've been doing some monitoring of my flowering room's min/max temperature and humidity. With summer rapidly approaching I'm going to need to run my lights at night. They are currently on day 3 of 12/12 flowering from 11am - 11pm but were staggered into that by increasing the dark period nightly by 2 hours starting from their 24/7 veg. So these plants are a little bit ahead of 3 days in with the buds they are already sprouting. Thanks to the bud blood flowering was triggered after they were only getting 8 hours of darkness.

I see a few ways to shift my light cycle to the desired 7pm - 7am.

1 really long dark period from 11pm - 7pm the next day.
1 really long light period from 11am - 7am the next day.
8 staggered 25 hour days with a 13 hour dark period and 12 hour light period.
8 staggered 25 hour days with a 13 hour light period and 12 hour dark period.

(8 because getting from a 11am start to a 7pm start is a difference of 8 hours)

I'm thinking to maximize my yield 13 hours of light with 12 hours of darkness for 8 days would give the plants the most light while maintaining a solid 12 hours of dark for flowering. Has anyone tried this method? Will it cause stress? My fear with increasing the dark cycle is that would also increase stretching and my vertical space is limited.

Thoughts anyone?

I think you should switch it to night time.

I went from 10AM-6AM for my 18/6 veg schedule and simply cut the lights and set them to come on at 12/12 from 5PM-5AM the next day.

No shock and no re-veg just happy little trees flowering away.

In short just flip you're being way too complicated.

Cyrus420 said:

I think you should switch it to night time.

I went from 10AM-6AM for my 18/6 veg schedule and simply cut the lights and set them to come on at 12/12 from 5PM-5AM the next day.

No shock and no re-veg just happy little trees flowering away.

In short just flip you're being way too complicated.

Click to expand...

Thanks Cyrus but I've already done the complicated part and have them on 12/12. I staggered the initial drop from to flower out of experience. I have some Dutch Passion Blueberry in my crop and they are fickle beasts that can hermie from an instant drop to 12/12. I lost 6 beautiful Blueberry plants once from doing an immediate drop to 12/12. Everything but the Blueberries were fine on that grow so you are right in most cases with most strains.

My problem now is shifting it from my 11am - 11pm cycle to 7pm -7am for temperature, humidity and hydro cost reasons. To get from where I am to where I want to be there really are only the 4 options I've listed.

I decided to go with an extended night cycle tonight starting at 11pm the lights won't come on again until 7pm the next day for a total of 20 hours of darkness rather than 12. I decided on this method after reading about people that do a 36 hour initial dark period for flowering. Hopefully they don't stretch too much during that extended darkness.