Indoor Using your light cycle as a tool.

[Resinhound]

Hiya all

Just making this thread to discuss the use of the light cycle as a grow room tool.

One of the benefits of growing autos for me is the ability to utilize the light cycle as a tool to affect the growth pattern of the plant.

Ill use a 24 hour light cycle to control vertical growth of my plants,its very handy when training.When I get the desired amount of shoots and growing tops ill add in dark cycles,to shoot them up to the canopy.I prefer my plants small due to my restricted grow space.

So I guess my question is how do you utilize the light cycle,and if so what tips and tricks do you use?

 

[A-Train]

Hmm interesting. I never use light cycle to control growth. I too like to get my canopy even with training and lights but I do ot by training and keeping the lights close. Then when I get the tops where I want them I raise the lights to max height around day 30. But my light cycle stays 20/4 the entire time

 

[Resinhound]

Heya a-train thanks for stopping by,I agree with you thats the conventional wisdom of using intensity to control excessive stretch and internode length and that works very well indeed.No argument there.

With my present situation,Im finding I can kinda achieve the same thing cutting out the dark cycle and running 24/0,when I add in a 8 hour dark cycle,i seem to get a burst of verticle growth(stretch).I think the dark cycle is treated by the plant as any other low light situation and will stretch in the dark according to its genetics and current life cycle.The burst could be pent up hormones in the plant hell I dunno lol.But ive only been testing this a short while and was curious if anyone else has seen or used this in some fashion.I use an 8 hour dark cycle every 3 days currently.

 

[Hal 8999]

I use both light height and time to control autos. The closer the light is kept, the bushier they grow. This does have the down side of causing them to be too squat sometimes. The way I have found to counter this, is dropping back to a 12/12 period when I want to initiate bloom and stretch. It also seems to keep the plant on track with finishing by its recommended time period.