RJS said:
Hi, I am an avid pepper grower, and hate the fact that my potentially perennial Habaneros and Jolokia gets to die after the first couple frosts.
Any ideas, links, resources on growing indoors? What about varieties? Some better than others? Lighting, heat, etc? I don't wanna build a full blown greenhouse indoors if at all possible, anything that would do all right with just a grow light?
A pepper bush in my bedroom is the Holy Grail of pepper growing to me. I'd even give it a name and talk to it.
I'm growing most of my Habaneros inside, in a little section of a storage closet I have sectioned off with Thermal Blankets (Reflective Mylar) and I have hung an array of 23 Watt (100 Watt Eq) CFLs and reflectors connected to a typical timer set to 18/6 (hours on/off) with two Box Fans, one is for the plants (lower) one is for the lights (upper) and these run 24/7.
They do REALLY great inside except for Fruit Set... Only the Orange Habaners seem to fruit inside and the Caribbean Reds need to be outside for a week or two to reach fruit load.
I rotate mine, I let them reach fruit load outside in east or west facing windows (I live in an apartment so I cant stick them outside on the ground and have no south side facing windows) then I move them inside my little light room, and the plants that are budding go outside to fruit and so on.
Since you are over wintering, you dont have to worry about fruiting...
You can choose any sort of lighting you want, I used CFL because I wanted a broad coverage since I had MANY plants. I use at least three CFLs hanging overhead each plant and I have 3 CFLs total spread evenly below the canopy of all the plants since CFLs dont penetrate the leaves very well.
All my plants are sitting on an old unused dining room table covered with heavy duty foil and protected with clear plastic.
Whatever you do, just make sure you have a fan in there (during warm days) and a space heater you can use on really cold days, depending on the heating in your home.
Also, potted plants tend to lose Magnesium from frequent watering, so I spray them and add some Epsom salt to the soil every two weeks or so. On top of that I spray them at least once a day with distilled water.
You might want to prune them back a bit, but I dont think it's really necessary with a decent lighting setup.
Heres what mine looked like on June 6th.