Yeah I mean once you do a full 12/12 flip then your all in. Really no going back it will likely fuck shit up. Now at the very end after you have harvested your flowers then you can try to do a re-veg in order to try to save the strain. But that can take months and is hit or miss a lot of the time but it can be done.
That's not exactly what I'm asking :-) thank you that's a lot of info but what I'm asking is flipping it to 12/12 initiates the flower cycle. But my question is once it's in flower why would it matter to go to 18-hour light?
Yes you are correct. Regular photoperiod strains need 12 hours of light or less in order to finish flowering. Once a plant has entered its flowering stage if you start increasing your light hours it will risk sending the plant into re-veg. Re-vegging during flower is bad because new growth shoots will start growing out of your flowers and they will get all loose and spindly. Ve-vegging will turn your weed into swag it will fuck everything up. Auto-flowers on the other hand will finish their flower cycle regardless of the light hours. However with auto-flowers the same type of issues can occur but in reverse. What I mean by this is auto-flowers require a lot more light. The recommended light cycle for autos is 18/6 and it is not recommended to go much lower than this. For autos not enough hours of light can cause fox-tailing and your nugs will lack density and once again be all spindly.
Yes a regular photo needs at least 12 hours of darkness per day to initiate flowering. Anything less and they will start reverting back to veg
If once you went to 12 then went back to 18/6 then your going back to veg cycle.
Does this also apply to auto flowers that need to be forced into flower for some reason?
Yes, I have an autoflower that didn’t auto. Some don’t auto flower, hence are actually a photo, I have one right now actually the one to the right side, never flowered so I just topped it and I’ll bush it out for a scrog, also autos can run any light schedule from 12/12 to 24/0 i flowered under 24/0 on my last run with autos
Damn it man, you got me thinking about 14-10 from seed.
Won’t hurt to try
Actually many plants will flower at 14 hrs light/10 hrs dark. When growing outside, people see their plants start flowering in early/mid August. In Michigan that is approximately 14 hrs of light +/- a few minutes. Indoors, a few runs back I ran 13 hrs light/11 hrs dark. Plants flowered just fine. I was hoping the extra hour of light would boost my yield slightly. In my not so scientific study it didn't seem to make much of a difference. However, the real flowering cusp for most plants is closer to 14 hrs. Some strains like equatorial sativas are not likely to flower until light cycle is close to 12/12 though.
Yes many of my gals started flowering in early to mid August, when there's slightly more than 13 hours of light. This pic was taken August 19, and it had started showing signs of preflower a week or more before this. It's really dependent on genetics, they're all different, so doing any kind of random light schedule is always a bit of a gamble.
