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12/1 light cycle

G

Guillo1

Anyone ever try the 12/1 light cycle to grow chilli plants? A friend of mine told me about the 12/1 light cycle yesterday. I did some research and it seems like many indoor pot growers are using this light cycle. During the 12/1 veg state lights can be operated for 12hrs on 5 1/2 hours off then 1hr on and 5 1/2 hours off. This light cycle seems to promote faster growth than a more common 18/6 light cycle and it reduces your power bill.

Yesterday I set up my timer to run the 12/1 light cycle. I don't have anything to compare it against but I thought I would give it a try anyways. This cycle is only used for vegetative state there is a different cycle for flowering state. Anyone want to look into it just google 12/1 light cycle.
 
Just becareful and watch your timer when it changes from on to off to make sure its working correctly. Mine went for a few days straight on the on position. cheap brinks mech timer
 
I'm not 100% sure how well this would work for chilies but it would be cool if someone would do some tests with it. You would need a control group to compare growth to and find out if the new cycle actually improves the growth, or perhaps helps power costs while maintaining a normal, optimal growth rate. I'm skeptical as to whether or not it would.

What they are doing there is assuming that the plant performs optimally at around 12 hours of light per day. I have heard that chilies perform best at 16-20 hours of light per day. In pot plants, 12 continuous hours of darkness will cause the plant to start flowering, regardless of its growth stage. Length of the light during the day doesn't matter, the plant waits until it gets 10-12 hours of DARKNESS before it flowers. This is how they begin their flowering stage in the early fall. The extra hour of light in the middle of the night will stop this flowering cycle with a 'flash of light'. In that way, you can get away with only giving 13 hours of light per day but remain in the vegetative phase.

As willard said, chilies do not work this way and operate differently to pot plants so whether or not this light cycle would be beneficial to your plants would need to be studied separately. Unfortunately it's hard to tell if something caused a change in growth rate without having a control group. If you try it out, let us know your findings!
 
I have been considering an experiment with a 16/4 light cycle, 16 hours on, 4 hours off. In theory it may just confuse the plants into a shorter growing season. The plants would be gaining a day every 5 days thus shortening the growing period by 16%. Anyone ever tried it? I know it has been done with some other more illegal crops with some success.
 
"Most actively growing plants perform at their best with 18 hours of light per day, but those from tropical regions respond well to 12 hours as they would receive in the wild." Now since most of the super hots are from tropical areas I wonder if the 12/1 light cycle would really help our chilli plants.
 
I believe optimal light for chiles is 20 hours/day after the first 10 weeks or so, before this 24 hours is said to be optimal
 
POTAWIE said:
I believe optimal light for chiles is 20 hours/day after the first 10 weeks or so, before this 24 hours is said to be optimal
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This is the schedule I used last season Derek. I was convinced by someone from another site who did an experiment side by side with the "normal" light schedule and the 24 hour schedule. It seemed to work pretty well for me, but I did not have anything to compare it to. This was with T12 lights and GE Plant and Aquarium bulbs. I do not have a timer yet and this year's starts are now on the 24 hour schedule and look quite happy.
 
this is just an observational guess, but i think that plants in general do their vegitative growth when its dark. the leaves are like solar panels and they just absorb the rays and once its dark they stop "charging" and start making more panels(leaves) soi could see how a 20/4 would be a good ratio. i wish i had an indoor area to play with. but for seedlings if i had it i would try 24 on for a week then 4 hours off, then a week on 4 off for a few months, then to a 20/4. and see how that works. i could be talking out my rear end but i think someone should try this and let me know how it wokrs! :halo:
 
So what is the recommended light cycle for chillis under HPS/MH then. Coz if chillis aren't affected by the photoperiod then the 12/1 would work in theory as this was made for plants in the vegetive stage that would normally receive 18/6 or 20/4 light cycles. But IO need to do some homework on my power rates coz my off-peak is 12c per/kwh where my peak is 26-8c per/kwh. so it might an even be cheaper for me as it would mean running my lights through peak times at certain stages. ATM I've got them at 20/4 as it gets the most growth compared to 18/6.
 
Very interesting,
Longer light periods indoors will push the plants to grow faster. A weak light source will produce taller spindely plants no matter what light cycle used. A poor window light exposure will prove that point. So if you produce a strong light source for only 12/14 hrs a day, with the plant getting some rest in between. Wouldn't that produce a healthy pepper plant?
An average day of morning thru afternoon full sun provides 12 hrs of strong light if that, and then you have the overcast and rainey days which gives you very little ambient light. The plants still grow.................ok, they're in larger containers or grounded. But this makes some sense. My current lighting is running 18/6. In March I'll drop that to be 16/8 once all my seeds are established. I don't have a dark period in the grow areas since my lighting cycles overlap each other, due to various lights used. The plants will receive either direct light or some type of reflected light 24/7.

Greg
 
Novacastrian said:
Im going to be watching this thread with much interest. :)
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Me too. It will be an issue for me in about 8 weeks.

POTAWIE said:
I believe optimal light for chiles is 20 hours/day after the first 10 weeks or so, before this 24 hours is said to be optimal
Click to expand...

I guess I'm leaning toward this type of schedule, or 18/6, as I've seen in other posts and threads, unless someone has a really great reason not to. I don't feel like experimenting with light at this point.
 
20-24 is said to be ideal but it really isn't needed. Somewhere you hit the point of diminishing returns which means plants may grow a bit better but not really worth the extra hydro
 
Honestly the proper amount of light per day probably varies with the intensity of the light you're using and what part of the grow cycle you're in. Less intense lighting such as T8s will do best with a 20/4 cycle, but HPS lighting might benefit more from a cycle around 18/6. Photosynthesis has both light and dark reactions and both need time to take place. Give your plant more light and it has a ton of time to make LOTS of ATP (energy molecules) and then use that to power the Calvin cycle at night. The Calvin cycle will give you your dark reactions that will produce the products needed for growth, and yes that happens mainly at night in the dark, although it continues during the day as well. The Calvin cycle is what uses CO2, NOT the light reactions, and the plant takes in much more CO2 at night when it is dark. This is because at night the temperatures tend to be cooler and the plant can open its stoma to draw in CO2 without having to worry about losing too much of its H2O in the dry climates that most chilies prefer.

I hope that helps. Light timing is not as clear cut as one article will claim unfortunately.
 
I use this method and have had great results with my plants. My seedlings go under a T5 setup running 18/6 until they have 2 sets of leaves. Once they reach 2 sets of leaves I move them underneath a 400W MH light that's running on a 12/1 schedule. I ran a modified version for about a month where I was giving them 12 hours of light, 4.5 hours of rest, 2 hours of light, and then 5.5 hours of rest. Both plans worked well so I went back to the 12/1 to save money on my power bill.

It could be the MH light or it could be a fluke, but my plants are growing like crazy and are very healthy. I can't tell a difference between them and my 18 hour plants. Both sets spend time under the same brand and type of MH light, so that should eliminate weird variances.

I'm no expert just giving my experience. I tried it in an attempt to reduce the "sad" look my plants often have after sitting under lights for 18+ hours a day.
 
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