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Total darkness, an odd topic.

Badchoice 43 Replies 4,817 Views
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Badchoice

Badchoice

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#1
So a random thought came across me today, a general rule of thumb for indoor growing is in the dark cycle complete darkness, but now it made me wonder what happens to such plants when small of light is shown? Is total darkness needed, as in nature what happens when a week of a full moon and clear sky’s comes, is the plant not getting some form of light during the “darkness”? So really how much is needed is their a set lux amount or ? Just confused a little and thought this could could make a good topic for input
 
#2
I watched a video about this a while back but I don't remember exact numbers. A full moon is just under the max amount of light it can take without the plant thinking it's day (re vegging). I know people who's plants in their back yard didn't flower properly because there was a street light near them.
 
#4
MIMedGrower said:
the full moon on a clear night is reflective and still only 1 candlepower i believe i have read. The plants cant likely see it. We have very sensitive eyes.
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Okay how about very high elevations? Would that change anything and I shall guess this only applies to photo period not autoflower or am I wrong on that?
 
#5
Badchoice said:
Okay how about very high elevations? Would that change anything and I shall guess this only applies to photo period not autoflower or am I wrong on that?
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I dont see why that would change much. The point to me when i read this stuff is the moon doesn't affect flowering but a streetlamp can.


The Jorje Cervantes book i read has a pic of the streetlight side of a plant in veg and the other side flowering.


Are you really asking if a certain amount of light leak is ok during flowering?
 
#6
MIMedGrower said:
I dont see why that would change much. The point to me when i read this stuff is the moon doesn't affect flowering but a streetlamp can.


The Jorje Cervantes book i read has a pic of the streetlight side of a plant in veg and the other side flowering.


Are you really asking if a certain amount of light leak is ok during flowering?
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That sounds like an interesting study would like read and see it, can only imagine what that bud turned out like. And I was just making a chat topic on something my high mind thought be a interesting topic which turned out not to be lol.
 
#7
MIMedGrower said:
I dont see why that would change much. The point to me when i read this stuff is the moon doesn't affect flowering but a streetlamp can.


The Jorje Cervantes book i read has a pic of the streetlight side of a plant in veg and the other side flowering.


Are you really asking if a certain amount of light leak is ok during flowering?
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And most street lights at least used to be HPS bulbs 💡Oh the irony 🤷‍♂️
 
#8
Go outside with the free lux meter on your phone on a full moonlit night, it will read zero.
 
#9
MIMedGrower said:
I dont see why that would change much. The point to me when i read this stuff is the moon doesn't affect flowering but a streetlamp can.


The Jorje Cervantes book i read has a pic of the streetlight side of a plant in veg and the other side flowering.


Are you really asking if a certain amount of light leak is ok during flowering?
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Grownsince95 said:
Go outside with the free lux meter on your phone on a full moonlit night, it will read zero.
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How accurate is a phone lux meter?
 
#11
Badchoice said:
Well I know on my iPhone 7 it’s not very accurate due to the light sensor I thinking android base phones work a lot better for lux apps.
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I downloaded it on iphone 8 and seems surprisingly accurate (nowhere near actual meters though) I checked my blurple and it said 400 from around 8 inches away which I'd say is probably close 🤣
 
#12
gorillaglueaaron said:
I downloaded it on iphone 8 and seems surprisingly accurate (nowhere near actual meters though) I checked my blurple and it said 400 from around 8 inches away which I'd say is probably close 🤣
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Doesn't work on blurple. Well it does "work" but its not accurate
 
#14
lux measures visible light as humans see it. Blurple lights emit very little of that. Unfortunately to measure a blurple you need a PAR meter
 
#16
gorillaglueaaron said:
I downloaded it on iphone 8 and seems surprisingly accurate (nowhere near actual meters though) I checked my blurple and it said 400 from around 8 inches away which I'd say is probably close 🤣
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Was that front or back camera? When I tried it with mine on a marz 600 18” away the front was like 1400 and the back was 2300 it was weird
 
#18
I just checked and it said 600 ppfd from 8 inches and 30,000 lux (front camera)
 
#19
Smart phone light meters have been, in my experience, not very reliable. One reason is they typically cap at a pretty low measurement (sub 50k for sure) and are really meant for much lower indoor light situations, especially the front camera meter. Further, any measurement of "par" is almost certainly just a conversion from lux for some standard light spectrum. I would not trust it for much if you are outside of a "standard" spectrum.

Oh you don't know what "Standard Spectrum" means? Yeah me either lol. Hence why I don't put much faith in them.

If you care, you can chase down papers from this on the subject: https://www.waveformlighting.com/horticulture/convert-lux-to-ppfd-online-calculator I think. Maybe it was a black dog whitepaper. Whatever, it's find-able.

If you want a good primer on cannabis and light, then I recommend Dr. Bruce Bugbee on YouTube. He is a researcher at Utah State, a great Ag school, who is one of the leaders in the field of indoor grow lighting (which is of growing [ha] interest to many entities, including NASA....so they are putting money behind him and other researchers and so....things are happening in the field).

 
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#20
The app has a mode specifically for blurples but is $7
 
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