Power Outage - Urgent

[cakemix]

Ok so my plants are in week 9 of flowering. Lights are on 5pm to 5am. Last night at 3:30am power went out until 10:30am. Timer obviously froze and came back on at 10:30am for the remaining hours until it thought it was 5am.

It is now 1:30pm and I'm wondering how bad this has screwed things up and what I should do?

 

[Weaselcracker]

Flowering is triggered by the dark 'night' periods longer than about 10 hours.
So- instead of a 12 hour night it had a 7 hour night followed by a 2 hour day which ended at 12:30 pm ( early afternoon).
You could try to tweak things over the next few days to make the light cycles more appropriate. In reality I don't think it will make much difference. I would just go back to the regular schedule and not worry about it. I have regular power outages and for some reason they don't seem to bother the plants in flowering. I'm not sure why. I think you'll be fine. However, digital timers help avoid a certain amount of the confusion

 

[cakemix]

Flowering is triggered by the dark 'night' periods longer than about 10 hours.
So- instead of a 12 hour night it had a 7 hour night followed by a 2 hour day which ended at 12:30 pm ( early afternoon).
You could try to tweak things over the next few days to make the light cycles more appropriate. In reality I don't think it will make much difference. I would just go back to the regular schedule and not worry about it. I have regular power outages and for some reason they don't seem to bother the plants in flowering. I'm not sure why. I think you'll be fine. However, digital timers help avoid a certain amount of the confusion

OK so now the power went out again 3 minutes before the lights were supposed to come on at 5pm. When the power comes back should I give them full 12 hours of light from that time? Or shut the lights off at 5am like normal?

 

[Dwight Monk]

I think interrupting the dark cycle more of an issue, interrupting the light cycle not so much of an issue, or least from what I have read anyway. So just let it go it's normal time.

 

[Weaselcracker]

I would just shut it off at the normal time. This is what digital timers are good for- they stick to the same schedule no matter what power outages you have. It's not perfect, but I don't see a better option really, and like I said I haven't had problems. I mean- I've had Lots of problems. Just not problems caused by the power outages, strangely.

 

[cakemix]

Thank you for all the replies guys I really appreciate it!

The power is back on now and hopefully will stay on. The lights are on now and will have a short light cycle tonight and lights will go off at regular time. Hopefully they will be ok. Like you said the dark cycle is more important. I hope the 2 or so hours of light when the power came back on won't cause hermies this late.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Another thing you can try if it continues to be a problem and you want to micromanage the situation- is put a battery powered light source substitute on during the normal lights-on hours. It doesn't need to be bright but should still work to keep that light cycle going. I haven't tried this but think it would work fine.

 

[cakemix]

Another thing you can try if it continues to be a problem and you want to micromanage the situation- is put a battery powered light source substitute on during the normal lights-on hours. It doesn't need to be bright but should still work to keep that light cycle going. I haven't tried this but think it would work fine.

Thats a really good idea and I only wish I had done it the first time the power went out. It ended up going out 5 times total yesterday averaging 1-2 hours each time. I really hope they can survive this.

 

[Weaselcracker]

At 9 weeks you're not going to have a total loss even if they react badly. In the worst case they'll either- start to reveg (look for them becoming more leafy and green - the buds changing from being increasingly sticky to getting 'drier' and leafier and maybe sending out leafy looking foxtails) -or grow a few nanners. Google nanners if you're not familiar with them. They're hard to spot sometimes- not the end of the world and shouldn't affect your crop at this point. Plus either of these reactions will take at least a week to become apparent.