Flowering

[MaryLynn]

I have a question about the 12/12 schedule for flowering. So I've read a lot that it has to be absolutely dark, no exceptions, no light... period. Although when plants grow naturally outside they get all kinds of random lights be it a car light or porch light or street light. So it's not completely dark and they grow outside just fine. Why the complete darkness? For better buds?

[St.buds]

Outdoor and indoor are two different worlds the indoor growers goal is to provide the perfect environment for cannabis right amount of food and light and most indoor plant life cycle r only 3 or 4 months so we r tricking the plant into going in to flower so complete darkness for 12 hours is the best way if u have some light leaks depending on how bad ur plant can get stressed and ull end up with seeds or at worst your plant will revert to veg I am dealing with light leaks this whole year current crop look amazing but my budding process is gana take at least two more weeks cuz of the plant focusing on the seeds and I'll lose a little yield to some ppl it's heart breaking for others like me it's no biggie now I'll just have more female seeds to grow later and the process repeats

[oldjarhead100]

your right about that been finding seeds in the gg not alot but some

[Guest]

The moon also 🤔

Alltatup, good article. However i find it hard to believe a moon gives off such little light as the comparison suggested. I have done no futher reading into this so i cannot declare it false.

[alltatup]

Nor have I done any further reading. But these plants grow under the glow of the moon all the time in their natural habitat, so it seems logical to me that porch lights and other artificial light sources would be the culprits in messed-up outdoor grows.

[desertdan]

Where I grow it is so dark that sometimes the Milky Way is almost as bright as the new moon. One can read a newspaper by the full moon. No flashlight needed to walk around. Has no effect on plants.

[alltatup]

Hey MaryLynn Welcome to the forum, and it's a good question. I agree with what St. buds says: two totally different worlds. I had a plant from a feminized seed turn male on me because I cracked open the door of my grow box during the dark period. I didn't want seeds so I took him out so as not to pollinate the other plants.

I just posted an article above by Jorge Cervantes, who says that artificial lights CAN affect outdoors grows, but that moonlight can't--not strong enough.

[South Sierra Dude]

Outside grows are never completely black the light ebbs, it waxes and wains. Your inside grow is not like that.

[Sheesh]

Just a guess, but plants outside follow their natural veg, bloom, die cycle. From what I've read, an outdoors plant doesn't need 12 hours of darkness to initiate flowering. It's sometimes much earlier, as little as 9 or so. So, outdoors plants are flowering when they should be, maybe they are better prepared to fend off incidental lighting (car headlights or something). They've been hardened by an uncontrolled environment, their life cycle says flower now and strong plants do what they are supposed to do. Inside, we play with the cycle and artificially force them to flower when we want. Maybe they are more sensitive because we are messing with the natural growth cycle.

[South Sierra Dude]

My pointd are, one, outside plants nevet experience total absense of light just degress of less. Two indoor plants nevet get ambient light. I won't confuse the topic with ratios and light cycles as that is not the topic.

[oldjarhead100]

SSD yes the plants get small amounts of light outside but they are on there internal clocks so the sun is what tells them what to do and in aug. it gets down to about 14 hours gradualy this starts the bloom process ,when we put them under 12/12 we force them into bloom and any extra light will make them want to go back to there natural schedule they get confused and stress out growing seeds and or reveging . extra light outside doesn't bother them because they are on there natural schedule hope that helps

[South Sierra Dude]

No, outdoor plants get huge amounts of light that never completely give way to black. Plant have no clocks and are not capable of "liking" anything. Thier is no such thing as extra light, they either get enough or the do not.

[Sonnyhad]

Welcome to the forum MaryLynn, and good luck with your grow. There's a bunch of good people here to help you when you need. Awesome information here at GWE.

[MaryLynn]

Thank you for the input everyone. My indoor grow is coming along very nicely.