Your plants can tell time

We dont often think about plants having a sense of time, but in fact they do. Granted they aren't as concerned over a few minutes as we humans are, but they are surprisingly aware of what time it is.

Humans have been looking up and judging the time of day based on the position of the sun for eons. Plants aren't so concerned with the time of day, they have no busses to catch or parties to attend. But plants do determine what time of year it is based on the duration of daylight and other tell tales signs of the season.

Besides the length of the day, sunlight itself is slightly different depending on the season. Another clue is the temprature, and range between high and low temps throughout the day and of course humidity levels fluxuate too. Plants evolved to notice all these things and respond accordingly.

As the days get gradually longer during Spring, the overall average temp and humidity also increase, and the amount of blue light from the sun's spectrum starts to decrease slightly. Plants respond accordingly by focusing on vegative growth.

Then of course the opposite happens as Fall approaches, days get shorter and cooler however the sunlight still has less blue spectrum than it did in the Spring.

This is all someting to consider when gardening indoors. With just a couple timers you can easily recreate the light cycles, for a vegative grow area and a flowering fruiting area, but to fully recreate these seasonal enviroments you also need to consider temps, humidity and the lights spectrum.

To trigger Spring like vegatative growth, you will want lights with more blue spectrum, generally higher humidity , and ideally, allow temps to flucuate by around 10 degrees farenheit between "day" and "night".

To trigger Fall like reproductive growth you will want lights with more red spectrum, lower humidity, slightly lower average temps, and a smaller temprature range between daytime highs and lows. With daylight cycles of 10 - 12 hours, your plants will be thoroughly convinced it is time to focus on reproduction and produce the fruit, flowers and seed they do in nature.