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Forcing flower

Tipunch

Member
In A greenhouse, What would you advise, forcing flower indoor style with 3 days full darkness or A more progressive method like 1 or 2 hours extra in dark every day for 15 days?

Anyone tried indoor method in A greenhouse? I might try 3 days full darkness in greenhouse starting on august 14th! If it works indoor why wouldn't it work in A greenhouse, from A plant responsiveness perspective?

Thanks:tiphat:
 

CrushnYuba

Well-known member
What do you mean? Isn't indoor style just switching light schedule to 12/12?
I guess more dark hours can cut out a day or 2 of transition time
 

airplane

Active member
just do the 2-3 days of darkness before flower or just use a "blue" spectrum in the last 3 days for terpene and essential oils - this really increase them
 

CrushnYuba

Well-known member
Anything you do inside with light cycles can be done in a greenhouse.
I'm not sure what the point of 2 days of dark is. To initiate flowering faster them just flipping with 12/12? If you really wanted to, you could. But besides eliminating a day or 2 of stretch, I'm not sure the point. Most greenhouse growers want the stretch. You would lose 2 days of sun and growth to initiate flowering a little faster. Why not just flip a little sooner? Seems like that sort of thing would be more helpful when space is an issue.

I have started trimming hours of light out at the end of flowering to try to push greenhouse plants to finish a little earlier. Like 9/15
 

Tipunch

Member
Thanks for comments. Reason I want to do this is to make sure that all my plants switch to flower on same time, which is not the case for all my strains. I had some strains that took much more time to switch and hence had A less favorable weather to finish than those who switched as planned. A good example is 2 different Maple Leaf Indica phenos I had this year who were very late to flower compared to 5 other strains I grew alongside who had same environment and grow conditions (3 months veg, same soil, water etc).

Doing 2 days darkness, if done on august 14th shouldn't hinder my yield nor stretch as stretch happens mainly in september. Note that I'd rather do this on 2 days then having to shorthen days progressively on A much longer timeframe as this would need me to operates in greenhouse every day. I need minimal work for maximum results :biggrin:
 

Tipunch

Member
Your problem is in your chosen varietals, not triggering flower sooner.
most probably but as we say you don't know what you don't know. So when I added MLI in my lineup, never did I think this Afghani would be so late to flower.

So next year, should I decide to keep MLI in lineup, I'll need to change something So it's on same pace, on the normal outdoor pace of normal flowering. I've been doing outdoor for 15 years from guerilla to greenhouse So I do have some elements for comparison from previous years.
 

CrushnYuba

Well-known member
I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying 2 days of darkness on a light depp greenhouse. Not 2 days of dark on full season plants. I wouldn't recommend doing that. I do know people that depp for a couple weeks to start initiating flower earlier.
But increasing daylight hours might give you some nutz. All variaties start flowering on different days. Even once flowering is initiated, full term outdoor plants usually flower longer then they would indoors or in a depp with 12/12. I have plants that finish in 60 days in a light depp, go 3 months outside after flowering starts. The long stretch period on full season plants is also when they get huge. I wouldn't want to miss that.
 

Tipunch

Member
Day light is going downwards in august already in my area and august 15th marks the less than 12 Hours day light on calendar. So forcing flower on august 14th for 2 days, once august 16th day light Will be less than 12 hours, like indoor once flowering mode is on.

I don't see how I would miss the stretch as it lasts for weeks and should happen regardless of any force flowering imo. On the contrary, I Hope that plant Will shift full speed in flower rather than sitting there wondering if its veg or flower. Looking at my plants every year I constantly see that plants stall A few days when They switch before showing first signs of flower mode.

But thats theory for now. Have A few months to think about it. I strongly believe that what is done indoor can be applied outdoor, just needs to be tested, fine-tuned & dialed-in.
 

CrushnYuba

Well-known member
Like i said. Outdoor plants stretch longer then inside because they are starting to flower slow. Its a longer stretch then u get in a depp.
Give the theory a shot. I would use one of those cheap 10$ light meters instead of counting on a daylight table.
How were your N levels? I have seen plants start flowering earlier in gardens that has lower n levels. But it's weird. Even though they start flowering weeks earlier, they finish on the same day.

Keep in mind in the spring time most plants will flower with only 14.5 hours of light. Not sure exactly why my plants don't start flowering till mid august.
 

Tipunch

Member
I use rain water and 1/4 of prescribed dosage of nutes. This year has been the first year that all leafs from all plants looked great from start to end. I usually get some cal/mag defficiency spots but not this year. So N was not too high.
 

Tipunch

Member
Thx Crush!
Well my greenhouse is close to neighbour's field, like 10 meters away. He can see my greenhouse So if I add lights he Will know that I'm not growing peppers like he thinks So. Greenhouse is A few feet away from 25 tomato plants and other stuff. Call it greenhouse guerilla :biggrin:
 

redlaser

Active member
Veteran
I would think at 10 meters it would be hard to conceal smell, Cat may be out of the bag on that issue.

If you could get away with just 5-10 minutes of light during night times as a way to keep plants in veg from 7/15 -8/15, once you stopped night light they would flower.

Possibly cover house while lit or simply have light come on at different times.

Or what would probably be more low key would be to put solar powered night lights that people put along walkways in the greenhouse from 7/15 - 8/15. Put a few on a path to the greenhouse as well for show.

I agree with CrushnYuba on plants taking longer to finish outdoors versus in. I do what I described above and plants take easily 3-4 weeks longer to get any amber trichomes to show.

As far as choosing between more progressive days of dark or three full dark before flowering, I have no experience trying that but it sounds not worthwhile. Or at least hard to verify/quantify any benefit.
 

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