The Myth About Light Leaks

Up until the time when growers started focusing on growing sinsemilla back in the 70's, most all weed was seeded, landrace weed that had been stabilized by nature after many generations. Growers started mixing up everything with hybridization and they intervened on the natural pollination process. In the absence of males, some of these mixed-up, female hybrids started to switch on their secondary reproduction systems. It was something that was always there within the genetic code, but hadn't ever been needed when landrace plants were cultivated outdoors in their natural environment and allowed to do their own thing. Unfortunately, some of the hybrids were random and many turned out to have enhanced tendencies to throw 'nanners. Now that hybrids are many generations deep, there are all kinds of surprises that pop up out of nowhere like a red-headed stepchildren!

Haven't read all 5 pages, but light leaks causing herms is BS for sure. I dont even close the doors on my tent all the way, the bottom and up to about a 1/4 is unzipped , plenty of light leaks in there for sure.
A lot of times i remove a plant to finish flowering outside the tent to make room, the door will be left open up to a couple hours mostly everyday before I'm up to mostly close it.
I rarely get herms or nanners

I have this unproven hunch that it's all about what style they're introduced to when they pop through the dirt. If it's a consistent environment then the plant never goes through shock/stress. Shock/stress is what I've read will trigger it. Anyone that's grown outside knows even in BFE, the moon prevents the darkness of a tent or closed off room. Plus you got cloudy nights, days etc with wide variety of direct sunlight. I think indoor plants during lights off are more sensitive to exposure because it is one extreme to another.

I’ve had timers lose their mind and turn on during Lights Off. That really fucked things up, worse since I run Perpetual.
Outdoor Manual timers with cover, preferably Brinks, are all I use.

Little pinholes are meaningless, especially in a dimmerhost room.

Hitting some Controversy by the 3rd post. Go me.


feel free to call me non credible, but small light leaks, especially if consistent night to night are not going to cause anyone problems. Wether your plant is going to shoot some male flowers early on, or it has the potential to shoot the stress nanners later on is rooted entirely in the genetics of the plant. And no small consistent light leaks are going to affect that either way, and it's not going to stress your plants. I've had plants that tend to hermie from stresses later in flower. I've had plants that won't even if you intentionally almost kill them. Some throw bananas at such light amounts of late flower stress you'll never have a legitimate chance at understanding what variable encouraged it, and it IS very easy to wrongly blame small light leaks when this happens. But it's rooted in your genetics not your setup most likely. Perfect start to finish runs are actually quite rare. Most growers never actually have one. It's prob not light leaks causing your nanners.

Ive had to shut off lights in an emergency far days at a time before, and only some of my plants shot bananas by the end, and it was the plant i expected it to come from.

Bouncing your photoperiod around absolutely can be a stress factor triggering some nanners in a plant. Consistent small light leaks throughout a grow will do no such thing though. Not in my over 20 years of experience, both in the home and commercial, has this ever once appeared to me to be the defining variable in a stress hermie flower.

Small light leaks being a stress factor in hermaphrodite plants is 1000% a myth, but it's easily understandable how it became so perpetuated considering the many other equally misunderstood characteristics of this plant we all love. I still run into experienced growers these days who were not aware there are more then one kind of hermaphrodite and they express quite differently, and at different parts of the grow, or that Male plants can also hermaphrodite and grow small numbers of female flowers and also produce genetically male seeds. I've only seen it twice. But i've still seen it happen.


I will laso say there is a reason i mainly run with beans i made myself and i avoid modern feminized stableized genetics in lue of phenotype hunting repeated generational F1 crosses. And im very careful (usually) what plants i have made feminized plants from. And i have tended to clone propagate chosen phenotypes from Fem genetics, only if they are genuine F1's. I have high test F1 feminized beans with the columbian land race in the genetics (as female pollen donor) that wont hermie even if you turn the lights off and let them die starting at week 5. But i also have some modern fem beans with buds sometimes close to 40% thc that sometimes throw bananas in late flower if you even look at them in the wrong tone of voice