Total darkness period before flowering

[Cultivator]

No way mate, Well acyually it depends on how u grow and what u are giving. I wouldnt suggest to do it on an outdoorgrow but it absolutely helps on an indoor growm. The bottom line is u can give plant everything it needs through the rootzone or foliar spray and its better to get more light in than leave fan leaves on. More light = more bud. Im not as aggressive as some growers and usually defoliate in flower been been following with interest grows where defoliation in veg is also done. Feel free to follow my grow and ask any questions. Look through this grow, he uses very aggressive defoliation with success.....

Bassman's RDWC - High Defoliation - Master Kush Grow #2

Bassman Strips The Kosher Kush! Hi-Defoliation - DWC-RDWC - 1K Watts Of Madness!

 

[vangs]

No way mate, Well acyually it depends on how u grow and what u are giving. I wouldnt suggest to do it on an outdoorgrow but it absolutely helps on an indoor growm. The bottom line is u can give plant everything it needs through the rootzone or foliar spray and its better to get more light in than leave fan leaves on. More light = more bud. Im not as aggressive as some growers and usually defoliate in flower been been following with interest grows where defoliation in veg is also done. Feel free to follow my grow and ask any questions. Look through this grow, he uses very aggressive defoliation with success.....

Bassman's RDWC - High Defoliation - Master Kush Grow #2

Bassman Strips The Kosher Kush! Hi-Defoliation - DWC-RDWC - 1K Watts Of Madness!

so taking off fan leaves too insure light gets everywhere wont hurt my plant? i see how the grower in the links goes heavy on defoliation. im not that aggressive either. glad to know i havnt been hurting my plant.

 

[Cultivator]

its fine so long as u have a nice balanced nutrient program. I wouldnt recommend if u are using complete basics. But u wont be hurting plants, u opening up the canopy to get light to lower levels. Try it on half and not the other half then u'll have a better idea.

 

[vangs]

its fine so long as u have a nice balanced nutrient program. I wouldnt recommend if u are using complete basics. But u wont be hurting plants, u opening up the canopy to get light to lower levels. Try it on half and not the other half then u'll have a better idea.

on the next grow i will, ill have multiple plants of the same strain. do you use 1000w for your garden?

 

[Cultivator]

i usually run multiple 600w hps. just depends on the spaces i have to work with. most of my grows are large, atleast 30-40 plants but usually more. check my current journal out if u like. its a smaller grow in dwc as its my personal grow, and its prob more suited to the space the average grower has.

 

[vangs]

i usually run multiple 600w hps. just depends on the spaces i have to work with. most of my grows are large, atleast 30-40 plants but usually more. check my current journal out if u like. its a smaller grow in dwc as its my personal grow, and its prob more suited to the space the average grower has.

yeah i checked that out acouple days agoo. that bonsai mom looks sick. that 1 plant you had , with the white mylar around the black bucket, its one of the firstcouple pictures. did you flower that with a 600w? what did u get for dry weight with her>

 

[Cultivator]

yeah i checked that out acouple days agoo. that bonsai mom looks sick. that 1 plant you had , with the white mylar around the black bucket, its one of the firstcouple pictures. did you flower that with a 600w? what did u get for dry weight with her>

That was in a 2.4x1.2x2meter tent in 21litre dwc. I had 2 600w hps running and i think 25-26 plants in there. The rest was in coco. yield was 9oz 7g dry off that plant if i remember correctly and total yield was 61oz 11g dry. Averaging 2 oz per plant dry.

The coco plants were in 6.5 litre square pots and were various strains.

 

[doctor green]

Well put fuzzy

 

[doctor green]

So your saying you got 3 oz under 4 pounds so basically 4 pounds from 2 x600 HPS, good work that's around 1.5 gpw

That was in a 2.4x1.2x2meter tent in 21litre dwc. I had 2 600w hps running and i think 25-26 plants in there. The rest was in coco. yield was 9oz 7g dry off that plant if i remember correctly and total yield was 61oz 11g dry. Averaging 2 oz per plant dry.

The coco plants were in 6.5 litre square pots and were various strains.

 

[Papageno]

2 cents... (well maybe a dollar)

The most important tool in the tool box is patients.

This does not impact anything important. Especially if you have clones or feminized plants. It wont hurt so give it a try and do what you want but the chemistry is the facts.

All that has to happen for flowering is the proper build up of the hormones used to cause flowering. Every minute the light is off after the build up has crossed the finish line is a minute we are not doing photosynthesis and not growing the plant.

It is a very basic thing and this is a classic one we over think. Once the build up is sufficient to cause flowering we need to turn the lights back on.

But ...

The most important tool in the tool box is patients.

If you want to induce flowering early start a 0-X-X fert like MOAB 1 week before flipping the lights in low dose on top of normal Veg nutes.


Also Alfalfa and Sea kelp ferts really help a lot. I sexed my current grow (shown below) in 12 hours...only one night cycle and they popped. The pistils shoot out like immediately.




12 hours and ...

 

[LEDBud]

I have heard the stories and listen to peoples theories , its time to try this out myself to wit I am hopeful.

I will report back in a few weeks with the results of 72hrs of darkness to kick off flowering.

 

[StLucifer]

It's true, nature doesn't have 3 days of darkness ever, so a 12/12 light schedule is what I do to trick my plants into sexing, but one time, I covered my plants with sacks limiting the light to trick them, and was only supposed to cover them for 12 hours on and 12 hours off, but this time I was stuck somewhere and lucky I watered them well before that, because it was three nights and near four days I had all 4 plants covered...I was worried they'd be dead from no sunlight...I take the sacks off, and there are white hairs (pistils) all over all the plants...all four were female (LUCKY!!!). So that myth is actually fact...you can speed up the initiation of flowering.,..not the speed of the flower production, but the start of the process is quickened.It's also true that once a plant starts flowering, if you give it more than 12 hours, even 15 hours per day of sunlight, it won't go back to veg...only if you put it under 18 to 24 hours lights. I know, I trick them in mid July all the time, and once they're flowering, I stop the tricking and light deprivation. You learn from practicing.

 

[PouceBlack]

For the people who use a darkness period before flowering: did you notice it also reduce the amount of stretching?
I figured if the plant starts flowering quicker, it might stretch less too?

 

[Soloman567]

I never give a dark period before flowering, like fuzzy duck said, why??? nature doesn't do this so why do it to the plants?? If someone could show me some actual scientific proof of a dark periods effectiveness I may switch my ways, but otherwise I'm sticking with what nature does.. btw I usually see flowers develop in 4-6 days.

I myself messed up, i was running 18/6 and i decided to switch the times of day I would like the 18/6 to start and stop. So the plants trigered some pistols to sprout and than a few days later they turned brown and fell off and some of the plants hermied, for this reason im thinking a 24hour dark period would help trigger them to reflower or maybe it will make them all hermie.

 

[ScottIAM]

I give a break of 36 hours complete darkness between veg an flolwer and in my experience it does speed up onset of flowering. How can i say that? Well firstly i have hundreds of indoor grows behind me and second because i have done like for like experiments. i found on average flowering begins 3-4 days sooner than not giving the dark period. Not only that but with the dark period i find the plant develops more flowering sites. These experiments involved giving plants identical nutrient schedule and clones from same mother. I did this for 6 grows and got similar results each time. In the grand scale the differences arent huge but they are there. Im not a scientist so i cant give scientific explanation but in my experience from doing it there is a diff. Its like wen people say removing fan leaves have a neg effect on plant and plaant needs them but have never tried high defoliation so they dont even know. Just because something is in a book doesnt make it gospel. Just as diff strains may react differntly to dark period before flower. These are the strains i used: White widow, Super Lemon Haze, The Church, A.M.S, Big Bang and Himalayan Gold. There was faster flower start and more flower sites on all these strains. Hope this helps.

Ditto....exactly what I experienced and observed on my indoor grows. Pulling a depo soon and will see how they go with 48 hrs at trigger.

 

[High bloomer]

yeah man, deffinetly helpful.. i just finished a 48hr dark period. know i know that i did the right thing. if you dont mind me asking, i trim offf alot of fan leaves during veg nd flower, manly because i grow lot of indicas and the leaves sometimes cover the whole plant. ive read that its bad for the plants because of stress and shock and it will slow growth and reduce yield but that was comming from people who never actually defoliated. whats your opinion on the subject?

Lollipopping is dramatic and they don't complain so I'd say go for it