Grow Room NATURAL grow light time cycle?

[rusty shanty☆]

Not a science guy.
But I'm proposing something scientific so I apologize if I use incorrect terminology.

When growing indoors people use x/x for light cycle for veg for ex 16/8 or whatever. For flower [speaking of photos] they use 12/12.

This seems/feels so unnatural to me because that is not the light cycle naturally speaking. It's not 12/12 for 60 days while it flowers. The day/night also isnt the same at all while vegging. Has anyone done a light cycle where it mimics the light more naturally?

My thinking is that there are transitions and things a plant does outside to prepare it for each step in the growth cycle. For example, are we hurting yields and potency by suddenly telling the plant OMG ITS 12/12 TIME TO DO THIS? Would a plant that has a more natural light cycle be less prone to disease and growing issues? Would a plant have more time to set everything up internally and thus be able to produce more potent and higher yielding plants?

Just a thought......
Love yall!

 

[Death The Cultivator]

Not a science guy.
But I'm proposing something scientific so I apologize if I use incorrect terminology.

When growing indoors people use x/x for light cycle for veg for ex 16/8 or whatever. For flower [speaking of photos] they use 12/12.

This seems/feels so unnatural to me because that is not the light cycle naturally speaking. It's not 12/12 for 60 days while it flowers. The day/night also isnt the same at all while vegging. Has anyone done a light cycle where it mimics the light more naturally?

My thinking is that there are transitions and things a plant does outside to prepare it for each step in the growth cycle. For example, are we hurting yields and potency by suddenly telling the plant OMG ITS 12/12 TIME TO DO THIS? Would a plant that has a more natural light cycle be less prone to disease and growing issues? Would a plant have more time to set everything up internally and thus be able to produce more potent and higher yielding plants?

Just a thought......
Love yall!

Light signals hormones in cannabis. Light pollution at night causes hermies and stress because it signals different hormones.

A human sleeping with excessive light will have lower levels of melatonin produced by the pineal gland. Night time lux, for ease, is only 200 or like .0002ppfd so the moon doesn't cause light issues.

So many want to imitate nature but nature isn't perfect or necessarily efficient. I've given away clones to several people and smoked the buds, I don't notice a significant difference in yield or quality per se whether indoors or out.

Imo, I want to provide the full spectrum of useable light within in that 12 hours. 350-800nm with a 2700-3000k spectrum because it has been shown that red enhances yields whereas blues and greens provide their own benefit from UV to shade avoidance reduction.

The sun averages a 4600k spectrum but the Sun isn't tuned to grow cannabis, it grows everything. Plants get what they can and develop to be productive in their respective environments, in cannabis' specific situation it wants to reproduce.

I don't believe our goals align with what nature intends so the whole process is wholly 'unnatural'. You want yield and potency, they want to reproduce seeds.

 

[rusty shanty☆]

Excellent point

 

[pop22]

This has been tested and the "natural" cycle is less productive. however, the 12/12 cycle is arbitrary and was chosen because most strains will flower at that timing. If you run the same strains constantly or often, you can experiment, some strains will flower on 14/10, some tropical Sativas will flower even on 18 hours of light!

though not natural, lighting cycles have been chosen because they are productive. Plants in nature are merely captive to the light cycles dictated by the Earth's rotation, as proven by the fact that they will grow even in 24/0 or 8/16. They adapt to the environment they are given, as proven by the Indica/Sativa adaptions.