Harvest & Curing Shock Ripening?

[JEMman]

I was reading up on another site that if you turn your lights off for the final 2-5 days of the plants life that it would trick it into thinking that it was dying, thus causing it to give a final push in size, stickiness, density, and flavor! Anyone on here heard about this? I thought it kinda made sense

 

[surffreak23]

I have heard about and seen this technique but have never tried it myself although a buddy swears by it. The theory is the same as a long rainstorm or overcast period in fall for outside growing, thereby mimicking the seasons changing to quickly. Personally I would never go more than 2 full days in absolute dark, rather let some light leak in but not much, just enough to let the plant know it's going through day and night cycles but not profiting off of it. When this happens the buds don't seem to swell much more than usual but the plant will start producing more resin in an attempt to grab any pollen it can... Again I am going off a buddy's grow but it seems to work this way...

 

[JM]

I tried one over the winter that I paper bagged for the last 2 days in the grow room... definetly seemed to size up well in the last 2 days... but I had nothing of same time to compare it to.... definetly worth looking deeper into.. especially if you consider what plants do at night in the absence of light....

http://autoflower.net/forums/content.php/247-Photosynthesis-and-what-do-plants-do-at-night

 

[NC420]

I've done this with some success and plenty of error...

What I found to work is a double or triple layer of clothe or paper bags over the plant but if these are autos I think all you can really do is give them 48 hours of dark before you cut it...
Since the autoflowering plants aren't photosensitive the cut back ligh doesn't trigger any maturing hormones like it would with a photo strain...

 

[JM]

good point NC... however I think the starch / sugars conversion processes still do apply for resin and THC production... but we need to live experiment to find out for real huh?

 

[NC420]

I may have misunderstood what the topic was about...lol
I agree with the last 2-5 days of darkness method, I thought he was trying to rush flowering by cutting the light....

I was to fast to post brother, I'm bad for that...

 

[DIRT]

I've done it with photo strains and af's, I can't say that I've seen any major difference in size but I have noticed an increase in trichome production..But from my experience I would say it's definitley strain dependant as some plants didn't seem to have any benefit at all form the dark period.

 

[AutoMan]

I recently compared same strain plants with darkness 3 days vrs continued light vrs flushing and not....with this one af strain, no idffernece noted in size, potency or resin levels....went back to kiss....something I have noted makes a diff is complete watering 2 hours before chop....now that's something that was fairly easy to note an improvement...

 

[JEMman]

Really..? And what did it improve watering 2 hours before?

 

[canute]

'bump'

Really..? And what did it improve watering 2 hours before?

Yeah, what does that do?