Extending outdoor veg with 6,000 watt MH stadium lights

Hey there!

I'm a licensed cultivator in Oklahoma and have appx 4800 plants in a 4 acre field. It's early August and I am currently getting around 13 hours and 45 minutes of daylight per day (and going down daily). I am wanting to keep the girls in veg for at least another 3 weeks so they can get bigger before flowering, so I rented two stadiums lights (6,000 watts, metal halide) and have been turning them on over the plants for ~2 hours each night.

My business partner thought it would be better to wait until it's been dark for a bit (so like 10:30 or 11 pm) and then turn them on for ~2 hours before turning them off for the rest of the night. I think he said something like interrupting their night will confuse the plants and keep them from flowering. My idea was just to turn on the lights right before sunset (around 8:30 pm) and essentially just extend their day, and then turn off the lights at around 10:30 or 11.

Do you guys have any suggestions as to the lighting schedule? Whether we should interrupt their night and turn on lights or if we should just add more light to the daytime?

I'm also wondering if anybody knows how many lumens/the PAR we should be aiming for over the plants in order to prevent them from flowering.

Any information in general about this topic is warmly welcomed.

Thank you!
 
4800 plants under lights in a field?
Hello rippers...OVER HERE !
we're super secluded.... living in the BFE of BFE's. not to say that we're not in the slightest bit concerned about security, once flower starts we're getting security guards, but for now it's not the most pressing matter.
 

doublejj

Well-Known Member
we always run the lights in the evening for a few hrs to extend the day. You actually don't need a lot of light to keep them from flowering. I'm using cheap Home Depot shop lights and they work very well....
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