Dark period, how important?

Hi everyone,

so my brain started to turn this past weekend while chilling outside with some friends. The moon was so bright our discussion kinda turned towards how it effected a plants dark period.
In nature, outside plants are always going to get some sort of light at night. Mainly by the moon.

So now I'm almost kinda confused on what is actually optimal for a plant? Would simulating that moon light with say a night light be beneficial? Or is pitch black optimal?

Dark period greatly important. Uninterrupted. Light during the dark period causes Hermaphroditus. Dark period has been said to be the measurement in which the plants use to flower. 12 hours of darkness for indica, 13 hours of darkness or more for sativa to flower, any amount of darkness for ruderalis to flower.

Post Post: Often growers have proven their ability to flower with something like 36 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness; thus, be more like 12 hour dark periods every other day. Or 35 hours of light followed by 13 hours of darkness for sativas. It's an interesting experiment to say the least.

I have questioned the moons influence on growing. Possibly analyzing the times it passes and scheduling in harmony with it.

Well if that is so why don't we see more herimies all around us in the summer. In the city it is never realy dark, grass grows and everything else. Makes one wonder... science does not make it any easyer

http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/e30/30c.htm

Peace

dark period is important but it doesnt have to be total darkness.. in the wild they have a small amount of light ... but indoors the type of light that it would get wouldnt compare to the moon light at all ..

what i mean is black is probably best for plants indoors as any light you try and use to mimmic the moonlight will be wrong and you will probably get hermies..

indoors plants are more sensitive. It has been said that indoor plants are more susceptible to light poisoning than outdoor plants. Such as a street light would not likely hurt a plant outdoors, but a foreign light indoors such as through a crack or window would have a greater chance of causing Hermaphroditus.

Twentythree said:

Dark period greatly important. Uninterrupted. Light during the dark period causes Hermaphroditus. Dark period has been said to be the measurement in which the plants use to flower. 12 hours of darkness for indica, 13 hours of darkness or more for sativa to flower, any amount of darkness for ruderalis to flower.

Post Post: Often growers have proven their ability to flower with something like 36 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness; thus, be more like 12 hour dark periods every other day. Or 35 hours of light followed by 13 hours of darkness for sativas. It's an interesting experiment to say the least.

I have questioned the moons influence on growing. Possibly analyzing the times it passes and scheduling in harmony with it.

Click to expand...

23: you have a very good point and not every night is pitch dark, yet we usually put our plants in a black void for twelve hours. I sat through a seminar on lighting and the instructor brought up a lot of interesting things I'd never thought of. He suggested varying the parts of the spectrum to the various stages of plant development and he also suggested the changing of the direction of the light a little. He stressed that making it as natural as possible would improve our harvests. I'd never thought about it but he pointed out that the autumn light the plants get out doors is not only shorter in duration but it has a lot of orange in it. It's coming from about a four degree different angle because of the earth's axis. There's obviously a lot more to this than we realize.

Moonlight is deceiving to the naked eye. Sunlight of course reflects off the surface of the moon but that causes the sunlight to look more 'white' than sunlight, so it appears to the human eye to be more bright than it actually is. The human eye is used to the more yellow light, daytime light, but the moonlight is nearer to the blue end of the visible spectrum. Moonlight is highly diffused by the atmosphere and light at night can appear to be bright when it is actually only slightly lighter than pitch black and as diffuse as the light is it does not cause problems.

If it did how did cannabis plants survive for thousands of years without all becoming all hermis because each crop would hermi and the trait would become dominant over time. That did not happen. Do not worry about moonlight, but for some in areas that are built up and there are street lights and security lights on poles and garages and houses and yard lights etc., etc. etc. the additional light mixed in with the moonlight will not seem all that much brighter in some cases but it can be enough to cause a problem .. which is usually enough to cause someone to claim their plant(s) hermied under nothing more than moonlight.

I'm pretty sure OP is concerned about replicating "moonlight" indoors. What a grower is trying most to replicate indoors is "sunlight". If you aren't quite replicating "sunlight" indoors, on what scale would you want to be replicating "moonlight"? Try this, if your light indoors doesn't match the raw intensity of the sun, then why would you spend resources replicating the lack luster light of the moon? Outside, plants won't "hermie" from light poisoning, even unnatural light from street lights will barely have an effect on a plant thats main source of light is the actual sun. Plants indoors just tend to be more sensitive.


One of the listed ways to create organic feminized seeds is to turn the lights on for about an hour during the middle of the dark period to stress the plant into "hermie". Another is to let the plant flower another 2 weeks past the "harvest time" and collect female pollen from the male bananas to use for pollinating a separate plant.