Blinded by the light or when do I turn from 18 to 12

I am lost as to when is the best time to turn the lights from 18 to 12 hours, some say at a certain height some say at a certain time and others say when it starts to bloom. I presently turn when they are about 10 inches tall, and I always end up with 2 - 4 feet high bushy plants. My mate turns his after 2 weeks and he ends up with smaller plants. I tried that and still ended up with tall bushy plants (being bushy means that they stop the light getting into lower levels and reduces my yield).
What is the answer to my problem can anyone help please?

Uhhh, I don't see what your problem is...You want bushy plants...to penetrate the canopy, you can open it up....What's your set up like and how many plants you got in there?

when growing in doors you can you can really switch when ever you want to plants can be vegged for a very very very very very long time thats how people keep their mother plants going.... thats the beauty of indoor growing you control everything.. you are mother nature in your grow room

I have a 6' x 6' room and have 12 3 gallon pots, to picture it though, I run it 4 pots by 4 pots but I keep a 2 pot x 2 pot space free so I can tend to the plants, I know that the bushier they are the better but I run 1 600w per 4 pots (I have 3 lights). Because they are so bushy they don't let the light through to the lower areas and that gives me scrawny yields. Just in case you think I am greedy there are 3 of us who tend the garden. My mate gets more yield and better heads growth, mine seem to 'bush' out more and have lots of smaller heads, which gives us less yield.

I wait till at least they are mature and have shown preflowers and started alternating nodes. If your plants are getting to tall and bushy top them or lst them. You should practice a thing called staggered harvesting as well, you harvest the plants in layers as the buds on the top get bigger and finish so the buds underneath have time to get bigger and finish while getting lighting directly since the layer above it isnt blocking the light anymore.

Top them early and keep them short...Once they show pre flowers, flip the switch....you could control some of the stretch by keeping the lights close to the plant and moving them up as they stretch...If you keep the lights all the way up, the plants will reach for the light and stretch a little more than they would if it was close. Also, look into super cropping....You could super crop the tips towards the outside of the plant...it'll give you a bush but the inside will open up....you could also open up the canopy by tying the branches to the pot and pull them apart...Something else to look into is a perpetual harvest....You say you flower 12 at a time, so next time, start flowering 6, then 30 days later throw the other 6 in there...By the time the newer ones stretch and start filling out, you will harvest the first 6 and replace it with 6 others and so on....you'll harvest 6 plants a month which would be the same as harvest 12 every 2 months like you're doing now

Okay, first darkdestruction420, what did you mean by 'top them or lst them'? I thought that if you start by harvesting the top area would be terminal as wont cutting the branches off them harm them badly, secondly OZUT, have you used the super cropping method before? It sounds radical, will I then need an extra room to keep up the supply?

topping, its where you cut the plant at the top node to slow down vertical growth and focus more on branching, lst is where you tie the plant down so its inside growth is exposed to more light and by keeping an even canopy height you eliminate those *worthless* bottom colas since their wont be any.
You can take the top off and let the rest go, even multiple times, its not too stressful your plant only needs to heal where you cut and continue on as normal with the remaining buds. Lots of people do it, I wouldnt advise it if i didnt know it was safe my friend.

I will try and see how I go, while I have been sitting here I was looking at other threads and saw one on CFL, have you tried that?

Yes, thats what i started with, they are ok and i still play with building cfl setups when im bored in addition to my hps setup, i use them for the first 3-5 days after sprouting as well sometimes. they are fun to play around with and useful for clones and young seedlings but for serious growing hps beats them to death pretty bad. lol

darkdestruction420, may I call you dark? Can you answer another question please? If I have plants on 18 - 20 hour lights vege, will they turn to flower if there is another setup nearby that is in flower? What OZUT has said has got me thinking and as we are tight for room could we set up another room inside the first, and run the month apart as he explained or have another room within 20 yards of the first? Both rooms would be outside in garages. Do you know a good site that has 'how to' guides on building CFL boxes?

You don't need another room to have a perpetual harvest going....your plants will flower when you adjust the light, so if you put 6 plants in there they'll start flowering, then when you put another 6 in there a month later, your harvests will be a month apart from each other...

You'll need a 2nd room for vegging if you don't have it, but that room doesn't have to be the size of your flowering room....you'll be more than good with a veg room that's 25% of your flower room

sure, call me whatever you like. You just need to make sure your vegging light(or any at all) doesnt leak into the flowering area. It wont effect the vegging plants at all even if you didnt have it lightproofed but for flowering that is an absolute must(the no light at all leaking into the flower area, they need absolute darkness)so no your flowering plants light will not effect your vegging plants, your veg light will effect the flowering plants however. If you dont have absolute dark w/no light leaks your flowering females will start growing bananas on you and seed themselves and each other up. Black white poly works as a good partition material. Its white on the one side which will reflect light back inside the grow and black on the other side that blocks out light from coming through.

Another question, if the ozone is left on in the room too long it causes the leaves to look and feel dried out, why is this and will they recover/

Growhardorgohome said:

Another question, if the ozone is left on in the room too long it causes the leaves to look and feel dried out, why is this and will they recover/

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You don't want ozone in the room with your plants...Instead put the ozone generator inside the exhaust ducting. So what happens is your exhaust fan sucks the stale air out which will pass the ozone and come out without the smell...

For inside, just get a small charcoal filter. You could either get the bigger ones and only run it 15 minutes every hour or so, or if you don't want to spend a lot, get a smaller one but keep it on for 6,7,8 or however many hours as you want to constantly clean and recycle the air inside. You don't need to have it exhaust out either...but remember, if your humidity goes above 60%, it'll clog it and won't be effective

you want any air that could possibley leave the area sucked through the carbon filter first. I still think thats the way to go. I hear alot of bad things about ozone generators.

darkdestruction420 said:

you want any air that could possibley leave the area sucked through the carbon filter first. I still think thats the way to go. I hear alot of bad things about ozone generators.

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I use one and it works fantastic...One of my carbon filters is inside my grow and on continuasly...and the other one is attached to a fan that sucks the air out during my air exchange and it passed the ozone and out the roof...I've seen people that stick it in the corner of a room, then wonder what happened to their plants