I have seen a few ppl advocating a 36 hr dark period at the start of flowering. Supposedly this shocks the plant into instantly recognizing that something major has happened (12/12) instead of just thinking its a cloudy day.
Does this thinking sound logical to you or have you tried this?
Heard it myself, my pal does it and says "it is like it resets the plants clock, it makes mine show flowers in a week". He likes it but to be honest my plants seem to show flowers at around day 8 pretty much like clockwork so i've never bothered. Also heard about it increasing reasim at end of flowering cuz it makes plant think it's all over so put on a resin spurt in last attempt to trap pollen. never tried that either.:thinking
ok thanks guys. I can see the dark period at the end to maybe leach out a little chorophyl. Weird but hey if it works or at least doesn't hurt, maybe I will give it a go
What it does or is suppose to do is speed up the time it takes for the plant to produce florigen the hormone that triggers flowering. Normally it takes place over a month or so and the hormones gradually build, doing the extended dark cycles in the beginning are suppose to build florigen quicker and trigger flowering faster. Doing an extended dark cycle at the end mimic's the end of summer when the days get very short so in a last ditch effort it will throw out more resin or somthin, but mainly its because plants dont use water when its dark so having a long dark period at the end will draw most of the excess moisture from the plant and make drying it faster.
I recomend 24-36 hours before flowering, this will shock and trigger the plant to show its sex faster. It's done at the end of flowering day before the chop to stress the plant into producing more resin.
once i accidentally left the light timer off for 48 hours when i changed rooms & seeing the consequences now i do it every time. & i turn the lights off a full week before harvest. seems to frost up the bud quite nicely
Have 3 BlueDynamite seed plants @ 45cm. that got a good 24 hr. dark period last week. Then into 12/12 6 days ago. Want to sex these & begin cloning the females for a run of this strain mid to late Summer. 1st time I've tried this, so we will see what the results are soon.
I am like Steely, I have never heard of this either. It would be cool to see some pics of the buds that had this done. Be even better to get to smoke some of those buds :sun
I keep learning everyday so thanks very much to all who teach.