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RE: DIY CO2
> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 12:46:52 -0800
> From: Michael Rubin
> I suspect Tom Barr would know what 6-hour cycles
> would do to your plants, but again, the pH swing
> is negligible and there really is no need to go
> to that extreme.
If I'm not mistaken, plants use the daylight hours chiefly for energy
production and storage, as well as nutrient gathering, while the dark hours
are used for actual growth and tissue generation. There's nothing to this
that would be counterintuitive to six-hour cycles, but as you might suspect
things don't always boil down to common denominators.
Several of the enzymes that control functions within the plant's life cycle
are light sensitive. Although the plant pretty much generates them
continually, their concentrations can only build up during the hours of
darkness. This means that concentrations are tied directly to the shifting
length of the daylight/night portions during the seasonal shifts. A
temperate zone plant, for example, would "sense" it was time to shift into
reproductive generation during the shortening days of Autumn once the nights
were long enough that the enzyme could reach "triggering" levels.
This would infer that plants under a six-hour regimen might not reach their
full potential - especially where flowering's concerned.
I would also think that, like us, there might be some minimal amount of time
to each stage of the diurnal cycle that makes certain potentials even
possible. I can tell you from personal experience what essentially the same
thing - two jobs on split shifts - did for _my_ energy levels and stamina...
-Y-
David A. Youngker
nestor10 at mindspring_com