Hi,

I just wanted to stop in and share my experience on the (imagine darth vader's breathing sound in the background) DARK phase

Plants, of course, gain their power during the light cycle hence the sun (or the lamps in a indoor system) and use up this power to "grow" in the dark cycle. That's why for some people a 24/0 setup doesn't seem to make much sense, because the plant itself doesn't have time to fully regenerate and "relax" (one reason, why i always vegged on 18/6, next to the power bill )

Same, of course, can be translated into the blooming phase: 12/12 is not only important to trick the plants into flowering, but the power that is gained during the light cycle will be processed in the dark cycle, making the buds/resin to grow (instead of the whole plant using it's power to "stretch" for the light, at least that's the theory, even with blueish lights with 6500 kelvin colortemperature during the vegging phase to make them grow "bushy" instead of "stretchy").

So leaving the plants in complete darkness before they're harvested makes the plants use all their power for the resin production (that's why you also should harvest shortly before a new light cycle.. or at the end of a dark cycle)

unfortunately i don't have any comparison pictures on my pc anymore, but we once tested this by growing white widow and leaving half of the plants in complete darkness for 5 days prior to harvest, and the difference was like night and day..
the plants that have been harvested regularly were (of course) nice with a lot of resin, but those that have been into 5 days of darkness prior to harvest were COMPLETELY white, and fully explained the name "white widow".. resin EVERYWHERE.. i have been growing myself for a lot of years and i haven NEVER seen such plants before and if someone would have told me, that this makes such a difference i would have NEVER believed this person, but i saw this with my own eyes.. after this experience i never missed out on the dark phase anymore

the watering during this period was simple, since you shouldn't add any nutrients within the last weeks anymore anyhow (you don't want your buds to taste chemical, so two weeks prior to harvest we always flushed them and used plain water afterwards) so you don't need to open the door to the chamber/closet/whereever you're growin in at all (if you have an external rez as we used to have)