Light schedule

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If you have no concern about saving electricity, vegging plants don't Need a dark period. I'm not so sure there is a marked difference in growth but its worth a try.
 
I've ran both and saw no real difference - Especially not enough to justify running the lights an extra 6 hours a day !
When I revegg the base of a plant that I just harvested which I do sometimes- I'll switch to 24 /7 light for a couple weeks !
 
I have grown both ways and I prefer 18/6 for veg. In nature, plants need a dark time or rest time so we are trying to copy that outdoors. Plants will grow 24 hours, but why if not done in nature?
 
24 hr camp....i get fast explosive vegetation. I tend to flower 2 weeks earlier than i used to.
 
I too am in the 24 hr camp. I find that I have lush plants with less stretch with a 24/7 light schedule. I have, occasionally run my lights 18/6 because of summer heat and always see more stretch. Though sometimes I laugh at this as outdoors in the summer, my plants are exposed to temps over 100 with some frequency and they make it through that just fine. I'd say it is kind of a matter of personal preference.
 
18/6 here. Lights turn off at 7am till 1pm which are peek hydro hours on weekdays where we pay more money. Flowering on 12/12 my daytime is my plants night time. (7pm till 7am lights turn on) Again because hydro is cheapest at night. Three different hydro rates here on weekdays in my province. CHEERS!
 
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20/4. Always what I've done. I'd not heard of 18/6 light schedule until a few years back. I'd always used a 20/4 or 24/0 lighting schedule. A lot of folks I know use a 18/6 schedule and swear by it. Prob not much different than 20/4, but I'm still leary about leaving them under 24hrs of light. Unless it's a seedling.
 
18/6 here. Lights turn off at 7am till 1pm which are peek hydro hours on weekdays where we pay more money. Flowering on 12/12 my daytime is my plants night time. (7pm till 7am lights turn on) Again because hydro is cheapest at night. Three different hydro rates here on weekdays in my province. CHEERS!
I agree 100%, you must be on Ontario Hydro also lol.

Plants need a rest period, yes they will grow with 24/7 but how would you feel staying awake that long? Tired and stressed out. Less stress on the plant, and time to recover leads to better overall results.
 
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Not a direct analogy. Humans are animals...plants dont require rest in this way. They have evolved under a day night cycle, but that doesnt mean that this is the optimal way to grow them. We are not trying to replicate nature here, we are trying to optimize the plant to its fullest potential....then set it on fire. If we wanted natural conditions, we could let deer come and graze in our tent once in a while, or release a swarm of locust, etc. Natural conditions would be horrible in our little gardens. Checkout a few side by side experiments to see if 24 hrs schedule has more actual produced biomass over time. Plenty of info out there. Plus i have grown both ways....24hrs is what i have found to get a bigger plant in the least amount of time.
 
Sorry, but no, we are not trying to mimic outdoors. We are trying to optimize our grow space to force our plants to grow as large and fruitful as they can--inside lighting cannot compete with the sun. If we were mimicking nature, we would be changing to flowering by lowering the lights a minute or 2 a day every few days, we would have wind, not just ventilation and sometimes our grow space would be over 100 degrees or below 50 and it would take 6 months to finish a plant.
 
I get no stretch but i have good LED's. You just described my grow THG. lol I finish in 4 months. And it gets to the 60s at night in there with the window open. I try to mimic my outdoors as it rocks.
 

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