Light Cycles And When To Use Them

Light Cycles And When To Use Them

So there are a few light cycles out there and each has their reason to exist. Of course when i talk about light cycles i refer to indoor growing because outdoor growers have a set light cycle.

The first one I would like to talk about is the 24/0 light cycle. Plants unlike humans do not need to rest in order to function properly. Because of this when the plant is under 24 hours of light they will have much larger yields.

You may be asking if that’s the case why would you do anything else? Well to be honest the cost of electricity would be the major factor in that. It costs a pretty penny to keep lights running 24 hours a day and because of this some growers opt into the 18/6. This will decrease your yield but can save you quite a bit of money on electricity. Since you eliminate ¼ of the light the plant will receive the plant will have less branches and nodes but this is still plenty of light for your cannabis plants.

Both of these are in reference to when the plant is in its vegetative state. Since cannabis will take pretty much as much light as you can give it the 24/0 is a very strong option but there are some studies that show that it can hermaphrodite your plants but this probably was due to bad genetics of the plant coupled with other stressing of the plant.

I do not believe this to be true but I can’t say without a doubt that under the right conditions this is not a factor in hermaphroditing plants. With the 18/6  you can give your bulbs a cooldown period which would extend the lives of the bulbs which obviously saves you money. The next thing I would like to talk about is that the 24/0 cycle will need to be monitored for temperature.

To produce light you will produce heat in conjunction. Under a typical house light you would only feel it if you felt the bulb but when you have an entire room filled with intense lights you will definitely feel the heat from them fill the room.

Literally feels like you under a hot sun if not maintained well which can hurt your plants and make conditions uncomfortable to work in. My last point I would like to talk about in reference to light cycles is that you need to pick one. Plants are really adaptable but the one thing they tend to be finicky on is when they get their food. Once you start a light cycle that is the light cycle you should stick with until you finish the crop.

This won’t kill you plants if you switch but they will definitely decrease in performance.  Some like the 12/12 but as i previously stated plants do not like changing their eating times so this is where I find problems with hermaphroditing and even some abnormal bud growth can come into play.