Very interesting
I've found that the density and weight is determined much sooner.
I can tell from roughly we're my plants are right now which ones are going to really stack and pack on the weight.
From day 35-40 on I didn't see much more swell only receding and fading.
I've watched most of your runs in your thread and I'd say you have those strains worked down to all be sub 50 days which is awesome and probably could mean an entire extra run per year.
I'd expect those same strains to go 40-45days tops under 8/16 but the plants wouldn't have time most likely to really fill out.
Sort of proves my point about finding what cycle or schedule works best for your situation/strains.
Yeah a lot of it definitely varies by strain but I think as you reduce the cycle and the overall time to finish reduces, you'd be seeing them go through their stages (bulking, density) earlier as well. Out of the 5 clone strains I have running in there, 3 of them put most of their weight and density on in the last 7-10 days, one gets fairly dense around week 6 and just gets hard as a rock in the last week. Some strains may or may not be ideal for a really short flowering period induced by light schedule or other methods.
What I noticed this round is they're all finishing faster, the maturity showed most in the curling/browning up of the hairs, and the density/bulk developed closer to their 9 week development times when I was running 12.5/11.5 and 12/12. Most of them didn't start getting dense (bulk was there, just not solid as usual) until around day 45, but then in 5 days they went from what I'd consider fluffy to the density I was expecting them to have, that kind of threw me off a bit compared to past grows.
I have another factor which could be playing into the early maturing of the hairs which was really fast compared to any other factors. I'm running 660nm initiators and this cycle they're running for the first 2 hours of the cycle, starting at 10 minutes before lights-on. I also have 730nm at the end of the cycle running for just 10 minutes after lights out. Next round I'm going to kill those initiators and see if I can get a measurement of what role the initiators had in this early finish (if any) while still running at 11.5/12.5 for the main lights. It was a significant and noticeable change from 12/12 so I think both the reduced time of 11.5 on and the extended time of the 660 initiators played a part in the hairs maturing faster, but I think the reduced cycle time had a greater role in the overall quicker finish times. Would just like to understand how much each factored into the earlier finish and maturing differences. To me those initiators weren't doing anything to reduce the flowering time, when running at 12.5/11.5 and 12/12, but they may have had a greater effect on the maturation of the hairs being so early.
Yeah after seeing the effects/difference between even 12.5/11.5 and 11.5/12.5, I'd say most of my strains would potentially finish in the 45 day range running 8/16, but I think I'd take a significant enough hit that I'd switch back to something longer.
In my case, I'd be happy with the majority of my strains finishing in the 7-8 week range without taking a big hit on yields. So if 11/13 or 11.5/12.5 can do that for me I'm good. For me, any less than that 7-8 week finish and I'd have a hard time keeping up with veggers coming up, or flower smaller plants which wouldn't be as efficient. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a hobby and not making work of it - lol
A couple could be pulled now at day 50, leaving them a few more days because I think they can still gain a bit of weight.
