More specifically, do they require a cycle of light and darkness each day? MrMaisy is currently starting some plants from seed, and once they’ve germinated in the little greenhouse trays, he puts them under a high-intensity light during the night, and they get regular daylight during they day.
The seedlings (New Mexico Hatch chiles) are really doing well right now, but I wonder if they will eventually become somehow fatigued, and stop growing as quickly.
Since he was getting such good results, I put a few other mature plants around his seed-starting trays, thinking that the older plants would benefit from more or less continuous light. Nope! They started turning brown and crispy, instead of growing lush and darker green like MrMaisy’s chiles.
Do commercial nurseries provide extra light for their seedlings? Does it make a difference that the seedlings are responding well, but the full-grown plants are not? Can plants get “tired” of growing so quickly?
Maisy
Most plants will simply stay in a vegetative growth state if given continuous light, and never bloom.
How close are your mature plants to the light? They may simply be getting burned. Even at a good distance, those lights can be quite dehydrating.
I know at least some plants respond well to additional light. I grew up in Alaska and you can grow gigantic cabbages and zuchinni due to the almost 24 hour sunlight in the summer.
Cabbages, yes; but corn won’t produce ears in Alaska, at least not in Fairbanks. Corn requires a dark-light cycle that is unavailable in the Alaskan summer. I had a friend who figured that out, and manage to coax a few small ears out of his corn by building a lightweight plywood hut that could be move over the plants to simulate night. Without that, no corn.
If I remember my high school biology correctly, the plant growth hormone, auxin, only works in the absence of light. In effect, plants “grow” in the dark, after having photosynthesized during daylight hours. Will one of our resident botanists care to give a yea or nay on this?