Quote Originally Posted by Dogznova
Ya mother you got some good questions there.. Natural darkness might be the fastest. But the question is, Faster at what? Red and far red Martin nights seem to be faster in producing buds or flower sites IMO. The internal clock of the plant I'm not so sure about.
Hmm, Dog, I think you and I are after very different types of answers. When you ask "faster at what?", I can't help but point out that my list was titled, "From slowest to fastest, this is how I understand the phytochrome conversion rates of Pfr to Pr under differing "night" conditions:"

When you're asking "faster at what?" I think you mean effects, like plant height, growth rate, maturation rate, etc., but what I mean is nothing more than phytochrome conversion rates. I'm not trying to get directly at "if you do X, Y will happen" results just yet because I want to understand WHY and HOW the underlying machinery works before I start to care that technique X will give me result Y. I feel that once I understand the process, I'll be able to figure out on my own which methods will produce which effects.

Quote Originally Posted by Dogznova
Red Martin night work. You just got to get your plants night clock right. lower you blue light time until you start seeing good flowers with the martin nights going at the same time. I wouldn't worry about clock speed at this point.
But you see, clock speed is EXACTLY what I'm concerned with. I really don't care if the three particular plants I'm working with give me anything besides information. I want to know WHY the process works. WHY does more or less of Red or Far Red light cause the plant's clock rate to change? Is it based on phytochrome conversion? Is it based on metabolism? A combination? Some other factor(s)?

Quote Originally Posted by Dogznova
I would start at 10 hours on and go from there. We are on 11 hours with a hps (witch is not as blue as what you are using) and the plant we use is also an early ripening plant. I think you have a bluer spectrum on time then we do so you might need your blue on time less. LOL:thumbsup:
I trimmed my blue time back to 10 hours, opened a two hour natural darkness gap at the end of the night period, and added back in the second RedInc light because I believe that will speed up the night clock rate. All that should kick them back into flowering. I've satisfied myself with the demonstration that more Red light during the night does significantly limit plant height, and that's one more piece of the puzzle.
I'm telling you ahead of time, however, that as soon as I see them flowering fully again I'm going to mess with the light again to the point that they will probably stop or become very confused. :-) The only way I can figure out WHY this all works is manipulating the HOW to see how it reacts and build a conceptual model (in my head) of WHY that would be, then re-test that model with some new guesses, over and over. That's my plan, so if I seem crazy in the future that I keep doing things that will "harm" my plants, you'll understand why. :-)

Quote Originally Posted by Dogznova
This is not correct...Sorry. It's not the amount of red and far red light that allows the plant to flower. It's the amount of blue light missing from the full days light spectrum. The reason it's missing this blue light at this time of the season is the earth is tilted away from the sun AND the moon. Yes the moon contributes to the full days light spectrum. In the fall time the plants receive less blue light from the moon and the sun for that matter.
Mmm, that's not actually the point I was making... the whole section that I wrote was this:
Quote Originally Posted by Mother
Indoors, under current standard conditions, we need a solid 12 hours of complete darkness for the phytochrome conversion to take place to the extent that flowering occurs. Outdoors, (in the Northern hemisphere) the Autumnal Equinox doesn't occur until Sept. 22, which means the days are longer than 12 hours for most of the flowering period outside. And that only counts the sun being above the horizon, which means there's light before and after that still. I think the reason that outdoor plants can flower like this is the high levels of Far Red in both day and night, with the ratio of Red:Far Red decreasing over time until harvest.
Let me clarify what I was trying to say. :-)

The plant needs to sense both "day" and "night" periods of certain length in order to flower, and there seem to be two different ways to change these for the plant. One is to change the real time periods (e.g. outdoor days getting shorter after June 22nd or indoor switching from 24/0 to 12/12) and the other is to change the quality of light in order to manipulate the plant's perceived sense of time (e.g. outdoor shifting of solar spectrum due to seasonal change or indoor Martian Nights). I believe our confusion arises from you talking about real time and me talking about plant perceived time. :-)

Flowering of outdoor plants clearly begins before Sept. 22 in all varieties, correct? And including pre-dawn and post-dusk light, Blue light is significantly longer than 12 hours when the plants begin to flower. However, indoors, we need a longer night and shorter day than this to achieve flowering. My question is not whether it's the blue light or not, but what makes the difference? Why do we need a longer dark period indoors to achieve the same effect (flowering) as we can with shorter dark periods outdoors? I think the difference is the plant's perceptual night clock is running faster outdoors than it does in natural indoor darkness (but again WHY would this be true?), so the plant perceives a longer night outdoors than it is actually getting. So to be clear, I wasn't claiming that Red or Far Red controls flowering, only that the ratio might be responsible for altering the rate of the plant's night clock sufficiently enough to flower given those day/night conditions. The difference is between what the plant is actually receiving vs. what it perceives that it is receiving... and what makes that difference? I think the difference has something to do with comparatively higher Far Red light levels outdoors.

I think we should also be more clear on what we mean by "amount of blue light missing from the full days light spectrum". By that I would mean the length of time of sufficient amounts of blue light are reaching the plant, and by "sufficient amounts of blue light" I mean a high enough quantity in order for the plant to perceive daylight.

Explained another way, I think blue light sensing on the plant is probably a threshold question in terms of quantity and a time question in terms of duration. Meaning once the plant has enough blue light to sense daytime, I do not think increasing the intensity of blue light for the same duration will make much (if any) time clock or flowering difference to the plant. I think it would simply mean a higher rate of photosynthesis (due to a higher quantity of light) but I don't think intensity blue light directly affects the rate of the day time clock, only whether or not it's running. What do you think about this? From your comments I can't tell if you mean duration or intensity of blue light, or if you mean both.

As you can see from my ramblings, my guesses are a work in progress. Gotta start somewhere. :-)


Thanks, as always Dog, for you input and your information! I feel like we are already making good progress toward figuring this all out!