i was interested in if anyone here growing autos, do you guys grow on 24 hours of light 20/4 or 18/6? I been doing 24 hours of light for the last 4 days, im hearing mixd things and looking for some good suggestions here

We did ours in 24/0 until budding well- then moved her in with the regs in 12/12-- If you have only ONE room-- Stay in 24/0 or 18/6 if you can...
actually hearing from breeders that they flower bigger/better with less dark time... more like 20/4 and anything else vegging wouldn't mind it a bit.

hey LZ thanks for the reply i always believed that in dark they have there lil time and use the energy during the light hours then, so im gonna cut back to 20 hours of light and 4 off... im on 24 hours a day right now but it just dont feel right lol

YEah- they tend not to stretch as much if given a few hours a day of dark... Only time I do my plants in 24/0 is with Floro's.... and even then, not with the T5's!

You can choose any of those light cycles but the best would be to use 20/4 or 18/6 cycle for maximum growth. In the dark period plant can relax and gather strength to bloom all day long!

thanks i been on 20/4 since i posted this and got a responce, welcome midowo nice to see a new face around

and how are they growing? are they better with 20/4 than 24/0 that was before?

i only did 24/0 from germing, to the first few days, been 20/4 since then seems to be growing great so far

I wonder if there has been a side by side grow with multiple light schedules so we could judge the yield and height of those plants.

Hi there

Its complex, if you want to maximize yield.....

Autos tend to be a squat plant by their make up. To get an auto to yield its best to have a taller plant structure, hit them with too much light early on and they remain too short and little light gets though to where its needed.

I find the easiest way to do this is to stretch the plants during the rapid growth stage at 3 to 5 weeks. To do this raise the lights and run them at 18/6. When you have the stature you can then put them up to 20/4 and lower the lights and give them all you have got. If you have 2 lighting circuits then you can switch one off and leave the other on constantly.

I run on an 18/6 schedule with everything running then switch off the main lights and run LED only during the 6 hours, so really its 24/0 but with reduced lighting for 6 hours, I hope that makes sense.

This means you can encourage the autos to grow a decent size and give room and space for great bud development, then when you have things right you can give them everything they need to fill out.

The plant in these pictures is a lowryder 2, which was grown following this schedule in one of my CF/LED boxes.

B0f