this is probably in the category of “dumb shit stoners think about” but with all of these processes on my mind constantly, about how things grow and work and all…i wonder if anyone has ever tried to speed up cycles?
for example:
normally for veg is 18hours on 6hours off.
and for bloom is 12hours on 12hours off.
what if those hours…were minutes!? i am curious how/if plant would respond.
from sprout, set timer to 18 minutes on and 6 off, repeat over and over lol.
then if they actually grow, change to 12 minutes on 12 minutes off.
How would you feel, sleep 8 minutes, wake for 16 minutes, sleep 8, you know…pretty unhappy.
I’m imagining a plant…The sun rises and all these chlorophyll Mr Green Jeans march out. Just as they get in position to work, you turn out the lights. They march back to sleep, but no, lights on again…an unhappy plant, imo, that nutes would not help.
It takes time for the hormones to build up to induce flowering. It requires the full 10 hours or more, and increasing darkness daily, minimum with most strains, to get them to even begin to show signs of flowering. And of course we generally use 12 hours or more of dark, to keep your plant healthy in flower, as often under a stable indoor light schedule, even 13 hours of light and 11 hours of dark can often keep a plant in veg indefinitely.
And so it isn’t the ratio of light, as much as the duration of darkness during a 24 hour period.
There is a technique called the Gas Lantern Routine, that can guarantee a short day plant will stay in veg, even with as much as 11 hours of darkness during a 24 hour period. And it is quite common in general horticulture teachings, most college level horticultural books will mention it, for short day plants, to be able to keep a plant in veg. And the technique is to interrupt the middle of the dark period with an hour of light.
12 hours of light, then a 5.5 hour dark period, then a hour of light, and then 5.5 hours of dark again before the light comes back on for the regular 12 hour day period.
This technique is often used in greenhouses to keep a plant in veg, even when the outdoors conditions do not give it enough light to stay in veg.
And as you can see, if you kept your plants on either the 18 minutes on and 6 off, or 12 minutes on 12 minutes off, the plant will likely maintain a veg light cycle hormone level and therefor never flower under such a schedule.
This light schedule would still provide too much light per 24 hour period. The plants themselves will still maintain an internal clock of about 24 hours and the veg hormone would stay high, the same as with the gas lantern, or even a 24 hours of light per day schedule, you’d get aggressive vegetative growth. I don’t see this bizarre light schedule being helpful or advantageous in any way.