Flower Forcing in a Hydroponic Garden
by Kevin
(Yorkshire, UK)
I'd like to say a HUGE thank you to you for your sterling efforts on this website - I have to say it's by far the most accurate and informative hydroponic garden website I've come across in the last 5 or so years. Thank you, indeed.
I try to copy nature as close as I can. After all, plants have been around far longer than I have! I'm a little worried about switching from 18/6 to 12/12 light-on/light-off photo-periods. My gut feeling tells me a plant will respond better to my gradually reducing the light by 30 mins each day until 18 hours of light becomes 12 hours of light, as opposed to a sharp, abrupt change of light. What are your thoughts, Jason, please, on this?
Answer: Kevin- Flowering plants have developed a way to keep track of the growing season in nature....it is called a "chemical clock". When a plant finds itself in complete darkness, it begins to accumulate a particular light-sensitive hormone. Each morning, the sun comes out and begins to destroy the hormone that had accumulated the previous night. To mimic this as closely as possible, you will want to follow the photo-period chart above for your location....however, you may not want to.
As long as these hormone levels remain below a certain point, the plant continues to spend it's energy on vegetative growth. However, as the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer, the amount of hormone found in the plant each morning becomes larger and larger. At some point a critical level is reached. At this point, the plant wakes up one morning and has abruptly decided to put all of it's energy into flowering.
So, even though the photo period outdoors decreases very slowly over many days, the ONSET of flowering within the plant is triggered rather abruptly by very natural means. In my opinion, the onset of flowering triggered by going from an 18/6 light cycle one day to a 12/12 light cycle the next day is not as un-natural for the plant as you might initially suspect.
In all my years of gardening, I have never noticed my outdoor plants begin to change physiologically in preparation for flowering. Instead, outdoor plants remain growing vegetatively without any sign of the approaching flowering period (even in the face of shortening days) until a particular point is reached....a point that forces flowering just as suddenly as if you cut the light cycle all in one day.
Furthermore, whether grown indoors or out my plants always display the same 10 to 14 day transition period once flowering has been triggered. This reinforces my idea that no physiological changes take place outdoors in advance of the flowering trigger, and also supports my assertion that flowering is triggered just as suddenly outdoors as it would be indoors (or very nearly so).
There is at least one reason I can think of why the sudden change from 18/6 to 12/12 would be a benefit to the grow cycle. Outdoors, a plant receiving only 13 hours of light may still be in a vegetative state. Indoors, your vegetative plants always have the benefit of 18 hours of light (or more) till the very day they are put into flowering. This means there will be more energy stored up in the plant tissue to be used in the first few days of flowering.
In short, there is no benefit for a "slow transition" to the 12/12 light cycle in a hydroponic garden. As I have shown, plants are naturally switched into flowering rather suddenly due to hormones, in spite of the fact that the light cycle outdoors decreases very slowly. A slow transition will not prevent stress, it will not reduce shock, and it will not facilitate the onset of flowering in any way (in my opinion). I hope this sheds some light on your question....Happy Growing!
Comments for Flower Forcing in a Hydroponic Garden
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AffordableGarden Design&Setup
Hi everyone, Jason from Jason's Indoor Guide here. When I got started with hydroponic gardening more than 24 years ago, my first garden used rockwool cubes and B.C. Nutrients....and I remember thinking to myself yeah, sure, there may be a lot of advantages to gardening with hydroponics, for example there are very few pest problems, therefore very little pest control, no weeding, no plowing or tilling the soil, no soil testing or having to add things into the garden soil, no watering the garden....but for someone who just wants to grow their own vegetables and have more control over their food supply and the quality of the food that they eat, the cost of constantly having to buy grow media and hydroponic nutrients makes this an expensive hobby for most people...
Epic Nutrient Change
I suppose when you take into consideration how much money you save NOT
having to buy food at the grocery store, it is surely cheaper to grow
your own food hydroponically even with the cost of high quality
nutrients. Nevertheless, I didn't have a whole lot of money to work with
and I needed to make my efforts as affordable and effective as
possible....and in the last 24 years I HAVE learned a thing or two!
As you browse through Jason's Indoor Guide, you will notice all of the
systems that I use personally are homemade systems. As I got 3 or 4
years of experience under my belt, I quickly adopted a preference to
standing water systems and systems that use expanded clay pellets or
lava rock, because the media is re-usable and it eliminates a huge
operating expense. So once a hydroponic system is built, garden
maintenance is minimal- check and adjust the nutrient solution daily,
and to change it completely every 2 weeks....and the biggest operating
cost is the hydroponic nutrients. (and the electric bill, lol)...
Homemade Cloner
And, regarding the cost of the nutrients....I experimented for about 3 years with making different compost teas and nutrient teas, but there is still a lot of expense $$$ associated with making high quality nutrient teas....like kelp meal, liquid seaweed, rock dust, bat guano, un-Sulfured molasses, worm castings. You can eliminate a lot of this expense by becoming an expert at making high-quality colloidal humus compost, and use your properly made compost as the basis of your hydroponic nutrient solution.
Unfortunately, I have been gardening for over 24 years and I have only
just recently mastered this difficult skill....and even then, only
because I happened to find a very easy to follow, high quality technique
and decided to follow the instructions to the letter. I produced more
high quality compost in just one week than I was able to use in a whole
year! If you can master the technique, I highly recommend it. It is one of the top 3 things you can do to
increase the productivity of your food production efforts, while at the
same time decreasing the amount of effort required to grow all of your
own food, and decreasing the total cost of operating your food
production system.
And when I say decrease operating costs, I mean decrease them to almost
ZERO, especially if you are producing your own nutrients...
High Efficiency
Hydroponics
The ultimate solution to eliminate the cost of your hydroponic nutrients: Imagine a hydroponic system that does not require you to buy any nutrients, does not require you to make your own compost, and does not require you to brew your own nutrient tea. Seriously! No cost and no effort as far as providing nutrients to your plants! Plus, at the end of the gardening cycle you harvest all of your garden vegetables, PLUS YOU HARVEST FISH from the system--->
Aquaponics
This solution is aquaponics. If you are serious about producing all of your own food and being self-sufficient, this is the ultimate solution for reducing expenses (as much as possible), reducing the total amount of work required, and maximizing the productivity of your gardening efforts. I have been gardening for over 24 years, and it is the perfect food production solution in my opinion.
Besides mastering how to make high quality compost, learning aquaponics is one of the top 3 things you can do to increase your garden productivity, reduce your total costs, and reduce your total work. The product that I learned from is called Aquaponics4you. With all of my hydroponic gardening experience, the first time I came across the Aquaponics4you product I knew immediately that it was something very special! Place an aquaponics system outdoors and use the sun instead of grow lights, and you have reduced every garden expense to nearly ZERO!
The Same System/ 10 Weeks Later!
