Shorten any strains flower time by 25-50% Seriously!!!

Now that I have your attention Ill let you in on something I learned many moons ago when I was faced with a really shitty situation and was about to loose my indoor crop. It was the late 90's and I was a senior in high school, my parents had moved a state away and I chose to ride it out and graduate from the high school I had attended the past 3 years. I worked at a local shop as a mechanic and lived in a two bedroom apartment. I made enough money to pay the bills, but my herb account was always less than full, so I made the decision to grow my own. Well I had grown a couple crops and things were going really well. I always had plenty of herb for myself and any friend that needed to get medicated, and that was always nice. I think it was somewhere around my third or fourth crop that I was 2 weeks into flower when I received a notice that my appartment complex was going to be remodled and that I would have to move to another one in the complex. Well I was faced with chopping the garden down then, try moving them at night without being noticed (Ive got 30 3 1/2 footer), or figure something else out. Well I didn't want to harvest a few weeks early, nor did I want to abandon ship, but the chances of getting busted didn't seem worth it either. So I contaced my mentor at the time and asked him what he would do. He laughed and that's when I learned how to speed up my harvest by 25-50%. Cannabis doesn't need 12 hours of light to flower, but it does need 12 hours of un-interupted darkness (yes there are strains that flower under different schedules). So I simply turned my timers to 8 hours of light a day and 12 hours of darkness, making for a 20 hour day. That leaves me with 4 hours to log into the next day. Get where I am going with this? If you had to you could go as low as lets say 6 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness for 18 hours total. This certainly isn't ideal for yield, but it does allow for a mature, good quality harvest, and that beats a pre mature chop any day! So next time you are faced with 30 days to get out and you need 40 days before you can harvest you have a tool that will allow you to harvest as usual, just take hit in the end weight. But again I would take mature good quality meds over pre mature meds that weighed double, and the chances of pre mature meds outweighing meds from a harvest described above is not likely. Anyways hope this helps someone, as I know it helped me greatly!

West Coast Cultivation

makes sense, shorter light hrs in a plants eyes means winters comin, so it doesnt seem impossible for them to try to give that extra push to finish after a dramatic light decrease

Unlucky, very true, but a shitty harvest is still better than no harvest at all in my opinion. I can see it now, I probably just planted the seed in a bunch of growers heads on how to speed up their harvest and get meds sooner. That's not what I was trying to accomplish, I wouldn't reccomend anything less than 12 hours of light unless you are in a situation such as mine was back then. My yield was only about 30% less than what it would have been had I ran the whole flowering period 12/12 instead of 8/12, so I was alright with that. I think I yielded 3 oz per plant as an average and normally would have pulled close to five. This was back in the soil, Alaskan nutrients, and safety blankets for mylar days, so I was very happy with my yields for back then. Then I learned how to SOG and would run two 4'8' tables with 4 plants per square foot. I would easily pull 7-8lbs every two months from this set up, but that was with a lot of small single cola'd plants about 18" tall. Now-a-days it's all about low plant numbers, training like crazy, and high yields per plant. It's funny how times change...

West Coast Cultivation

This would be interesting to play with when flowering from seed if you knew you where gana take a hit on weight maybe just grow a lot more plants if you where in a place with out plant count limitations. I also wonder if this could be bread in to the genetics, I wonder what the ancestry light cycle of the AK47 genetics was.

See here:

https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/472461-crazy-idea-anyone-try-less.html

Incidentally, reducing your overall flowering time by 50% is more drastic than the above posts suggest.

Even if you were able to push your plants from 24 hour (12-12) days to 16 hour (8 - "days", you'd still only be reducing overall calendar flowering time by 1/3.

I think in practice, many plant strains won't remain in flowering if they are only getting 8 hours of consecutive darkness.

The only way you could cut total flowering time is half is if you were to cut the total day cycle in half.

With a minimum of 9 hours of darkness necessary to maintain most strains in flowering mode, that would lead to 3 hour light/9 hour dark cycles.

Assuming the plant responded properly (and I've never tried it), that would cut total calendar flowering time exactly in half. EG, you could pull off 70 day/night cycles in only 35 actual calendar days.

Fortunately, because you're running 12 hour "days" you could do this with a regular timer, and wouldn't need to buy a sophisticated programmable one, or fabricate a special one. .

Unfortunately, with plants only getting literally 1/4 of the normal total light input during their entire flowering cycle, I think yields would be absolutely lousy, roughly on the order of 1/4 of normal.

This also assumes the plants don't totally wig out from light stress and actually maintain flowering, don't go hermie, etc. It also assumes that the plants don't "compensate" for the super short days by extending their normal flowering time.

yes actually with the harvest master pro controller you can change your light cycle to 6 light, 12 dark. you basically change your day from 24 to 18 hours. normal timers can't do this because they're based on a 24 hour day. this explains how it works http://www.harvest-master.com/casestudies.html

a friend of mine has the controller and is soon going to test it out with cannabis. im replacing my sentinel controller and doing the harvest master pro if it works and actually speeds up time. we're keeping it secret around here cause a lot of people are too stupid to know to look this kind of stuff up on the net and they're all too greedy with their prices. maybe now we can go even cheaper! fuck these greedy asshole so called caregivers.

jogro,
I think you've got my post wrong. Cannabis requires roughly 12 hours of non interupted darkness in order to flower, not 12 hours of light. I know of strains that flower under different light regimes but I am talking about the 99%. By reducing the length of daytime you are simply putting them to bed early, they still receive the same length of sleep (12hrs.). Going from 24 hour light (veg) or even 18 hours to 8 hours is going to shock your plants, but again they will flower. I shortened my daylight schedule by four hours, this went on for the last 5 1/2 weeks, which was reduced to just 4 weeks. The plants shocked, but continued to flower. A few of them hermied, and I had to pluck some nanners, but the cycle went on like scheduled. I harvested about 30% less than what that strain usually yields with a full cycle. It may have just been my luck, but worked for me and I am sure it would work again, maybe not with every strain and maybe not every situation but that doesn't mean my post is mis leading by any means. If a person can avoid having to flower this way then by all means DO IT! This is anything but ideal, but it has worked in a pinch and I guarantee it will again. Take it or leave it...

West Coast Cultivation

This also could possibley go the other way too. I can see someone having too much time on their hands and running a flowering schedule of 24 hours on and 12 hours off and I would imagine the yield would be dramatically increased but I'm not sure if the increase is justified by the length/costs of the extended day light period. It would be interesting to see this done, and maybe it has, I've just never heard of it being done. Has anyone else ever put any work towards this or heard of any research behind it?

West Coast Cultivation

West Coast Cultivation said:

This also could possibley go the other way too. I can see someone having too much time on their hands and running a flowering schedule of 24 hours on and 12 hours off and I would imagine the yield would be dramatically increased but I'm not sure if the increase is justified by the length/costs of the extended day light period. It would be interesting to see this done, and maybe it has, I've just never heard of it being done. Has anyone else ever put any work towards this or heard of any research behind it?

West Coast Cultivation

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would be very interesting to try. actually could do it for fairly cheap with just a small tent and a 400w hps. fuck i'd test it out myself if i had the room at my grow.

Well, I'd say that your mentor has not read Marijuana Botany by Rob Clarke. Yes, the 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness is required to maintain flowering, but the maximum hours of light are what are required to produce THC.

I go by what Rob Clarke says in MJ Botany:

Research has shown (Valle et al. 1979 ) that twice as much THC is produced under a 12-hour photoperiod than under a 10-hour photoperiod.

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(emphasis added)

So that tells me that I want to give my plants as many hours of light in each day while still giving them enough hours of dark to keep them flowering.

Cannabis will be induced to flower, and will continue flowering, if the "critical daylength" is maintained. We know that is actually the hours of darkness that is required. And it's different for different strains of cannabis.

We know that 12 hours of darkness will maintain flowering in all strains, so we give them 12 hours of darkness. And now we know from our reading in Marijuana Botany that giving them less than 12 hours of light will cause much less THC to be produced.

Thks OP...I will try this on an isolated flowering clone.

Rollitup, I agree that twice as much light will produce more cannabinoids, tighter clusters, amongst many many other things, but that's not what this post is about. I haven't read any of Rob Clarkes work, so I'm not really going to get into that. I have however done exactly what I stated in my earlier post and I ended up with a harvest that I would prefer over a crop pulled two or three weeks early or not at all. Wouldn't you? I am sure you would have rather flowered out as normal and avoided this situation as a whole, and I am in that same ship, but again this isn't about that. I would be cautious to go on one persons advice no matter how much studying or experience he has, exspecially in a plant that so many consider a drug. Again just my opinion but I learned that it's best to take in everything you can from as many sources as you can, filter out what you want to retain, dump the rest, and then apply what you've learned to what you know and enjoy your new experience. Take it for what it's worth as Im sure every already has...

Stay Medicated,
West Coast Cultivation

I

West Coast Cultivation said:

jogro,
I think you've got my post wrong. Cannabis requires roughly 12 hours of non interupted darkness in order to flower, not 12 hours of light. I know of strains that flower under different light regimes but I am talking about the 99%. By reducing the length of daytime you are simply putting them to bed early, they still receive the same length of sleep (12hrs.). Going from 24 hour light (veg) or even 18 hours to 8 hours is going to shock your plants, but again they will flower. I shortened my daylight schedule by four hours, this went on for the last 5 1/2 weeks, which was reduced to just 4 weeks. The plants shocked, but continued to flower. A few of them hermied, and I had to pluck some nanners, but the cycle went on like scheduled. I harvested about 30% less than what that strain usually yields with a full cycle. It may have just been my luck, but worked for me and I am sure it would work again, maybe not with every strain and maybe not every situation but that doesn't mean my post is mis leading by any means. If a person can avoid having to flower this way then by all means DO IT! This is anything but ideal, but it has worked in a pinch and I guarantee it will again. Take it or leave it...

West Coast Cultivation

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This is an old thread but for those intrigued by it, this technique works.....I have been growing for over 35 yrs now and am always interested in something new....I recall following some experiments in the early ninties...It was based on 18 hr days.....12 darkness with 6 day....surprisenly enough, the yeilds did not take a 50% hit....it was only in the low teens....the data and experiment seemed credible and was based on being able to reduce your total grow cycle by 25% yet only take a maybe a 13% yield hit....Is this worth it??? And as the thread pointed out, situations could make this reduced cycle harvest a viable option.....I still find it very intriguing and think it warrants some more investigation.....what about a 4/12 cycle???? Reducing the total time by 1/3....again, some fun and interesting experiments for those who can affort to do so....regards, yankeetransplant.

You missed what Rob Clarke said. He did not say yield is less, although it could be.

He said THC is 50 percent less when flowered under 10 hours of light. Of course that can not be measured without a lab tested sample, but the potency will be lessened.

For the past 10 years, I've given my flowering plants 13 hours of light per day, and 11 hours of darkness.

Really?!?!?!

How did Mr. Clark prove this "theory" because they certainly did not have THC laboratory testing in 1979!

In just about every area marijuana is grown outdoors, harvest times occur when daylight is less than 12 hours and most times less than 11 hours and decreasing so does that mean everything harvested in late Oct. has 50% less THC than it would have if picked a month earlier? Hell NO!!!!! Are you telling us that the THC actually goes down from mid September until harvest? Sorry it is quite the opposite!

When a marijuana grow book is written by a person with a PHD from a reputable university, proven their theories and is referenced and taught in a university, than I will believe it. I have done every light experiment discussed here and tested clones/samples grown under different light conditions and the amount of light does nothing to THC levels because all THC lab testing is done by weight not volume and the decrease in THC is directly related to it's decrease in weight.

Well, I guess you know better then.

FYI the research that was done by Valle et al was in 1979, and Rob Clarke only cited it. It is concerning indoor crop lighting.

BTW he is actually DR. Robert Clarke.

I have an old Hydroflow 2000 custom programmable timer that is designed to run an accelerated flower cycle like that. For example you can set it to run 9 hours on, 12 off every day. I have long since lost the instructions for how to program it though. Does anyone know how to program one of these timers?

Florigen is generated in darkness, and once it reaches a level high enough the plant will flower. I suspect you could run your light one hour on, one hour off 24/7 and the plant will flower. I'm not buying it that this will increase your maturation rate. THC takes time to accumulate, and ripen, and I suspect this is a direct function of total light received, not the frequency of the cycle.