Lights off for the final 2 weeks

This is what it says on the label.......Try to turn the lights off altogether the final 2 weeks of the flowering cycle

Now a few questions on this:

Does anyone do this? because I mentioned it to a mate who has grown gange before and he had never heard of it

What are the benefits apart from saving electricity?

Do you still feed it?

Trichromes when half cloudy white and half purple are supposed to be perfect, so would I turn the lights off before they get to this stage or during?

2 weeks !!!!!

umm I do 2 or 3 days. i have heard of up to a week but idk.

The reason behind it is that light degrades THC, or at least we think it does while growing. So thru the season (flowering) the plant makes thc constantly and every day (light period) a portion of it is destroyed to protect the plant from harmful rays. by providing a period of dark b4 you cut, many feel, you are giving your plant a few days to ramp up the THC content without having to use any.

most of this would be considered opinion rather than fact, but there is some evidence to support the idea.

Justin00 said:

2 weeks !!!!!

umm I do 2 or 3 days.

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Says it right here https://www.cannabis-seeds-bank.co.uk/ceres-seeds-white-widow/prod_308.html

Two weeks without light and your plant will die. Simple as that. I'd ignore what the breeder says in this one.

Red hair33 said:

Says it right here https://www.cannabis-seeds-bank.co.uk/ceres-seeds-white-widow/prod_308.html

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oddly enough the specific strain white widow is one that i have heard discussed with this idea before. however im not sure what seed company you are using and the plant pictured does not really look like any white widow i have seen,... but idk.

and yeah i agree 2 weeks will be very harmful to any weed plant.

by reading there instructions my guess would be the strain is prone to foxtailing in late flower, typically a sign of weak genetics but not necessary bad, except appearance, to avoid the foxtailing on some high yield plants of questionable genetics (bag seed) i have used reduced light periods with good success in the past.

Justin00 said:

by reading there instructions my guess would be the strain is prone to foxtailing in late flower, typically a sign of weak genetics but not necessary bad, except appearance, to avoid the foxtailing on some high yield plants of questionable genetics (bag seed) i have used reduced light periods with good success in the past.

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Sorry mate but what is foxtailing mean?

and would you just kill the light for 2-3 days?

Red hair33 said:

Sorry mate but what is foxtailing mean?

and would you just kill the light for 2-3 days?

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it may require you to grow the strain a time or 2 to see how it reacts to different things in order to really understand what will be best for it.

that being said i would under no circumstances leave the light off for more than 5 days. and even then you must realize that there is no coming back from that, if you were to decide it needed a little longer in flower or something.

also you will need to take extra care to avoid mold and bud rot during the dark period and drying. Prolonged dark and humidity are the main causes of mold and rot in plants and will be even more so in yours dew to the accelerated decomposition of plant material in those conditions.

I did leave a plant in the dark for 7 days once, for hiding purposes, i had company that i could not avoid and required the disassembly of the small grow i was using at the time and stashing the plant in a closet for a week untill they left. The effects were.... disappointing...... bad smell, no final growth spurt, yellowing and drying of leaves, ect.

Foxtailing is when a bud is almost ready but a bunch of white hairs starts to come out, so you get a little bid of immature bud with your mature one.

dc4 said:

Foxtailing is when a bud is almost ready but a bunch of white hairs starts to come out, so you get a little bid of immature bud with your mature one.

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you may be right but the effect i was referring to is when your bud pushes out long buds that stretch out of the sides or top of the bud and grow out of it like tentacles or something. ill find a pic of what im talking about.

View attachment 2218906

as you can see the effect is not terribly bad, but it results in loose airy buds with lower visual appeal and higher stem content. I also seem to have more trouble curing it (it wants to dry very fast)

again don't take the stuff i am saying as fact, I am just trying to offer you a educated guess as to their reasoning and my personal deduction of what i would do.



can you see the similarities in the tendencies of the plant your are growing and the plants i posted above. The bud pictured here looks fantastic but may have required special care to achieve the growth shown in the picture. and there is no way to know what that special care might be, unless it is in fact 2 weeks of darkness, but i doubt it.

Ye I can see the similarities, thanks for the feedback

Looks pretty cool