MESSED UP FLOWERING CYCLE
The lights in my garden were supposed to be on a 12/12 light cycle for the last 40 days. Yesterday I went into the room and noticed that I had knocked off a segment on the timer so the light was on for 8 hours, off for 15 min and then back on for 3hours 45 minutes. The buds are not growing and the leaves look twisted and weird.
The buds have not gotten any larger for 3 weeks. The white hairs are dying on most of the top flowers. If I put them back under the proper light cycle now, will they be OK or should I pull them?
Plants measure the number of hours of uninterrupted darkness, not the number of hours of light. The small interruption of the light cycle was not long enough to affect the plants' flowering. All it did was stop photosynthesis because of lack of light. According to your calculations, the plants were getting a total of 12 hours uninterrupted darkness so their flowering should be quite normal. However your description of the leaves and the lack of growth leads me to believe that there were other problems with the light cycle, in which the dark period was interrupted with light early or late in the cycle each day.
I would try to salvage the harvest by making sure the timer is working correctly and the plants are getting 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness each day beginning at the same time. The buds will exhibit a little more growth, and then they ripen up within the next 30 days.
S
Soft Secrets
