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Faster Harvest (low light and reduced daytime) Is less more?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JaySin420
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Faster Harvest (low light and reduced daytime) Is less more?

JaySin420 36 Replies 8,201 Views
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JaySin420

JaySin420

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#1
I have been running a trial grow with transitional low light between "on" and "off" set at 1 hour before daylight and one hour after lights off. I use blue compact floro's to simulate twilight to keep stress low as possible. Also this time (twilight) is reduced to 45 mins after flowering is started. All in addition to below times. This is very low light, in the blue spectrum just like outside before nightfall. It helps the stress each day as lights "pop" on and off.

Lights are set at 13/11 on/off times, two weeks into flower its set to 11/13 and stays for 4 weeks then goes to 8/16 for one week. Then total darkness for 1 week (last week). 8 weeks total

Running 74 degrees day and 64 night during flower and 70 day and night during last dark week.
Veg temps are 70 degrees daytime, close as possible at night.

BC nutes following plan included with sample kit. Ph is always near 6.4, Promix bx soil mix with large perlite and sand added.

This has been a slow long project with five grows under closer and closer times to the above, i am now harvesting 12 week sativa dominate strains fully developed at 8 weeks flower with 6 to 8 weeks veg time including time for clones to finish and mature. Indica dominate plants seem to be ready near 6 weeks when i go to the 8 hour daylight week so i have been skipping the whole last two weeks and going to all dark for one week ending at 7 weeks on a 9 to 10 week indica.

I wanna hear if anyone else has any ideas to further compress total flower time without regard to grams per watt, just fully finished flowers.
 
#2
I'd love to hear if more people are doing this, congrats on all this! Took alot of prep time on ur part to get the schedules dialed I'm sure
 
#3
Im interested in why you implement a full week of straight dark, as this is not condusive of a natural setting...yet the mimicking of the twilight hours are...

How does the shortened cycle affect yield?
 
#4
Capulator said:
Im interested in why you implement a full week of straight dark, as this is not condusive of a natural setting...yet the mimicking of the twilight hours are...

How does the shortened cycle affect yield?
Click to expand...

It only effects potency, the dark makes the plant panic, some strains seem to grow stems if in the dark too long (molting to stretch out more). found out the strain im working with can handle almost 9 days in the dark before any adverse effects. 5 to 7 days boost potency the most and lose some closer and past 9 days. 5th year same strain has many benefits lol.
 
#5
Next you should try stabbing a screwdriver through the trunk a week before harvest. I heard that also can cause a plant to increase trich production. Not sarcastic.. Supposedly Afghani people do this.
 
#6
I to a heavy trim on the lower branches right in middle of flower cycle to clean up any extra shoots since first trim at start of flower. This trim i break many branches by hand and have seen it help with how much weight they pack on near the end. i think this may be close to same thing as they cause healing during flower. Im at 40% loss on weight for a gain of 1 month. I also need to state its all perpetual flower in two week blocks, some go 8 some go 12 or even 16 weeks in same area. 1600 watts mixed spectrum, light mover as well.
 
#8
what would happen if you did the blue light thing to ease from lite to dark n back but grow for the usual length of time? Would there be more usuable bud volume & weight or would it just be a more couchlock stone cuz of more amber trichomes?,,, easier this way, if i used the blue spectrum to ease indoor twilight ,what would i gain on a normal length harvest? weight, volume, higher thc? all of that i guess? thx
 
#9
Hi Jaysin, this is very interesting. What strains are you running for sat/ind for this test? for the last 5 years?
 
#10
Aerojoe said:
Hi Jaysin, this is very interesting. What strains are you running for sat/ind for this test? for the last 5 years?
Click to expand...

New York City Diesel (soma), G-13 Haze, NL#12, NL#1. The phenotype of NYCD i have is more sativa dominate then most cuts around, picked outta 100 females for the potentcy first then flavor 2nd. very very sour cut has so many trichromes its almost white most of flower. The two Northern lights i grow are almost pure indica, one is old as dirt been in the family for ever, and #12 is a cup winner from the early 90's, grows buds in fan leaves sometimes as big as the main colas and both taste spicy sweet sour-ish. The original NL#1 is so narcotic its dubbed Northern Lights-out by my friends lol. The G-13 Haze is from a friend who grows only that one strain, he swears its the very best on the planet of course, but i need a good indica at night sometimes. The G-13 Haze yeilds retarded amounts outside but dont finish fully, so its a med yeilder indoors but is far more potent inside cause it can fully finish 14 to 16 wks. Good trade in my eyes, its scary to smoke in the vape lol.
 
#11
jyip said:
what would happen if you did the blue light thing to ease from lite to dark n back but grow for the usual length of time? Would there be more usuable bud volume & weight or would it just be a more couchlock stone cuz of more amber trichomes?,,, easier this way, if i used the blue spectrum to ease indoor twilight ,what would i gain on a normal length harvest? weight, volume, higher thc? all of that i guess? thx
Click to expand...

I have ran many different grows many ways, best results seem to be from simple setups. I wouldn't mess with my money grow, this is simply a side grow to help fine tune my main flower methods.

In this experiment I am looking to reduce stress overall and slam them at the end with as much stress as i can without hurting potency or yield to much. I am testing the limits of stress on my strains and trying to compress the whole flower/veg period into 16 weeks total time from cut to hanging up to dry.

One thing I have noticed is genetics are what they are, need couch-lock smoke get a potent indica, wanna trip out and not be able to sit still - pure as possible sativa. Harvest window times can effect the up - down effect somewhat but its not too severe of a change over all. I know older cured buds are more narcotic because most of the thc is breaking down into the other chemicals in the ratio.

Keeping the twilight helps reduce over-all stress during the flower. I started the twilight to reduce hermies from forming on one of my own mixed hybreds and it worked great. Since then I have always used the transitional lighting and decreasing daylight during flower and veg to help with stress from growing indoors.
Simply making it more like outside!
 
#12
Capulator said:
Next you should try stabbing a screwdriver through the trunk a week before harvest. I heard that also can cause a plant to increase trich production. Not sarcastic.. Supposedly Afghani people do this.
Click to expand...


I think mostly what we're after is increased terpene production. Increased terpene production may translate to more trichomes--but that is an effect which will be much more difficult to quantify. Correcting for variation and those types of measurements which could be done on oil production are already confounding enough without measuring some transient byproduct of its effect (increase trich production).

As for the injuring part--there may be something to this actually. I've recently read a study which showed increased terpene production after a fungal innoculation in the stem of a plant (can't remember which). Further suggesting these are definitely part of plants natural defense systems.

I imagine injuring the plant in any way could produce such an effect, and it's also worth considering that opening the stem may expose it to pathogens (something I'm sure you're all too familiar with, cap) which could again set off this defense system.

Either way, moving forward I think we should all try to get the lingo in line with the science. We're looking to boost oil production and so we'll talk about (and now we can measure!) oils--rather than assuming that trichs are valuable. Trichs with no oil are quite useless :)

I'd, personally, defer to the convention many of the scientific papers have put forth in these studies which is to discuss the effects on terpene production.

Edit:

Just want to clarify I'm not trying to "correct" anyone--I know that we all know what we're talking about. I'm just simply trying to smooth over the edges from science to our side-by-sides.

If we focus in on trich production, the best data we're going to get is "this looked this" or "that looked that".

If we start doing the tiniest amount of data collection as it pertains to oil production--we could maybe start to say some definitive things about all of these various methodologies :)
 
#13
I don't grow it, but many breeders of white widow recommend giving around 2 weeks of complete darkness to fully capitalize on the frostiness. I've found raising the lights can shorten the finishing period on 11 week strains. I run a perpetual op too, but all in the same room so I can't really comment on messing with photoperiod. I used to run a sulphur burner, and I coulda swore that it made the bud taste sweeter, but never got scientific enough to test it out.
 
#14
This reminds me of what I used to do over 20 years ago- I ran a northern lights cross, very strong indica dominant characteristics- and due to the need to keep the light bill under strict control, I ran the flower room light only 10 hours a day. Before the plants made it into the flower room, they did a last veg stage under a 400W MH on a 16 hours on/ 8 hours off schedule. Both of these parameters contributed to the shortened flowering cycle, Im sure of it.

I finished those girls in 6 weeks. Every time. I still think that running the lights for a shorter overall duration made it possible. My girls averaged 4 oz each, and they weren't that big. Some that had gotten a head start had shown the way to higher yields, up to 8oz. This was all in soil, in 5 gallon nursery cans. Very basic stuff.

I think your investigations into shorter daylight/ longer nighttime cycles has real promise, possibly more in the area of resin quality than for overall yields. I ran this lighting schedule with a light rotator of my own design, and I can tell you that myself and my friends all thought it was easily the highest quality smoke we'd ever laid fire to!

Please keep us up to date on what you discover as you continue your experiments!
 
#16
#17
I think the answer to that is dependent on so many different factors. As it goes to sulfur--I'd rather give too much than too little, that's about the best advice I can give. Many of the sulfur compounds which are in the cell are self-regenerating. The sulfur that will have the most flux and will need the most regeneration from nutrients is that related to protein synthesis (cysteine, methionine, various modified amino acids). That is mainly because proteins break down and lose effectiveness over time. Cells are constantly producing more to replace those which have been lost. In some cases concentration of a given enzyme will flip on or off a given transcription factor (which then goes to activate/deactivate transcription of the gene encoding for that enzyme).

They will need more sulfur when they are bulking up. As far as actual amounts go, I think that's something that will need some testing done before I can really comment. Even then it will probably be a strain dependent figure.

I'd perhaps balance the sulfur with your nitrogen. More nitrogen, more sulfur. Less nitrogen, less sulfur.
 
#18
I add epsom/honey to every other watering, at near 1 gram epsom to 10ml honey per gallon. Nutes go every third watering, nute - water+epsom honey - water - nute - water+epsom honey. only change is last two weeks i omit just nute and increase honey to 15ml for one week and last week only water. My smoke is very tasty in comparison to most i come across, according to my patients they say would think about going without smoke over other stuff they can find around the area. Carbs and sulphur/mag are extremely important during flower for taste and resin production and growth during flush. Some carbs on the market leave tastes in the final product so after a ton of trials with different types of carbs and brands of finish carb loaders, honey wins hands down. Its expensive when compared but nothing works like it, it don't have much of a taste as much as it seems to enhance the taste already present. My S.A.G.E. is so strong flavored it stinks right thru anything you put it in. One trichrome can smell up a whole room. The next closest carb is table sugar lol, it also dont leave a taste behind, and is almost as effective as honey as far as final push for more production during last weeks. Honey seems to have a small kick nothing else has as far as I have seen.
 
#20
squiggly said:
I think the answer to that is dependent on so many different factors. As it goes to sulfur--I'd rather give too much than too little, that's about the best advice I can give. Many of the sulfur compounds which are in the cell are self-regenerating. The sulfur that will have the most flux and will need the most regeneration from nutrients is that related to protein synthesis (cysteine, methionine, various modified amino acids). That is mainly because proteins break down and lose effectiveness over time. Cells are constantly producing more to replace those which have been lost. In some cases concentration of a given enzyme will flip on or off a given transcription factor (which then goes to activate/deactivate transcription of the gene encoding for that enzyme).

They will need more sulfur when they are bulking up. As far as actual amounts go, I think that's something that will need some testing done before I can really comment. Even then it will probably be a strain dependent figure.

I'd perhaps balance the sulfur with your nitrogen. More nitrogen, more sulfur. Less nitrogen, less sulfur.
Click to expand...

...agreed- so this is why I've been supplementing the sulphur in Jacks(says 8.21% 'Combined Sulphur' on the label), because the plants really do use a lot of it for resin and essential oil production. Currently, the nute mix I'm using is;

3g/gal Jacks Pro. 5-12-26 (has micros too, including the 8.21% sulphur)
3g/gal Calcium Nitrate 15.5-0-0, 19% Calcium
2ml/gal Dyna Grow Pro-Tekt Silica 0-0-3
2g/gal Epsom Salts, up from 5.g/gal before you told me how little Mg and S epsom salts really have!

Clearly, more nitrogen means I should add more sulphur, but you didn't mention a ratio I should strive for between them. Any ideas, or where I can look for this, especially as regards to our favorite crop?


"I think what the Captain meant to say was that he would trust your guess over most people's facts." -Dr. McCoy, referring to Spock's 'educated guess', from Star Trek, The Voyage Home
 
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