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First Time Indoor Grow

I started my first attempt at indoor growing starting around July or August this year, starting with seeds from Sandia Seed - Tombstone Ghost Chili's, Trinidad Moruga Scorpions, and Carolina Reapers. I started all on a rack using a heated seed starter pad set to 75°F, under two sets of Ecolux T5 bulbs in generic shop light housings in some organic seed starter soil mix.

I'm using a cheap 8x4x8 tent space, with approximately half of it devoted to these peppers, and the other half devoted to super sweet 100 cherry tomato plants. The lights are generic "800W" LED lights, one per side of the tent. I have two stationary fans, one located near a fresh air intake, one located at the top of the tent. I have CO2 feeding for 1200ppm automated for fifteen minutes early in the morning, with an exhaust fan timed to run fours hours after the feed ends until it is time for the next feed, with the feeder located centrally at the top of the tent.

Seeds were transplanted directly to the tent in approximately mid-September. As a newb to indoor growing, and trying to shop locally, I ended up getting Fox Farm's Ocean Forest soil to try to be organic. I also picked up their Big Bloom organic fertilizer just in case.

After transplanting several times into bigger pots, I finally settled on the sizes that I have now, although I'd like to switch all pots up to the largest size I have, which were leftover tree pots from the local shop. Anyways, plants were growing steadily and quite happily with just the lighting and air flow. I started adding fertilizer, less frequently than directed, and figuring out how to time CO2 feeding efficiently. The plants were really picking up and taking off, tons of flowers, branches, etc. I tried topping all plants relatively early, and they all seemed to respond well. I've been pretty abusive thus far, to be honest, and keep all detritus and weak growth removed.

Frost came early, and this is a new home to me. Despite my space being insulated, it was not insulated enough to keep temperatures from staying in the 60's, and eventually into the 50's. The plants were stunted for a month.

I rushed to find a heating solution, attempting heat lamps to start with, but these proved insufficient to raise the temperature by more than 3°F. I gave up mid October and bought an electric, oil based radiator with a set temp range of 65-80 and an energy saving mode. I initially ramped the temperature up to a constant 75°F, and removed all previous flowers (which were in abundance). The plants have taken well to the temperature, and I have recently switched to 80°F during the day, 65°F during the night. Throughout the grow so far, the humidity has remained 50-70% usually, though sometimes dipping down into the 35% range.

Here are the plants as they are today, the 5th of December.
 
Carolina Reapers
 

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Tombstone Ghost
 

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A real passel of healthy looking
plants in that tent! They seem to
like your heat and lighting solutions,
alright.

Good luck going forward, Zach...
 
Just an update on my plants:
Not much has changed since my last post. They seem to have gotten bulkier and continue producing flowers, but I cannot seem to get one to pollinate. I have a small oscillating fan pointed in their direction, but I am not sure if it provides enough airflow to any plant, let alone all of them for pollination to occur. I give each plant's cage a healthy shaking just about daily, to no effect. I took three pics each of each plant, one full frontal, one from above, and one that should be indicative of the various nodes and amount of flower growth. Please let me know if they might help identify anything that I could be missing that is keeping me from getting actual peppers. I've noticed edema on the reapers. I'm questioning if perhaps it isn't patience that is the problem, as these plants were moved into the tent August 22nd, which isn't quite 150-180 days to reach maturity. I don't know, I have cherry tomato plants in the same tent, same conditions, and they are killing it now that I've quit training them and restricting their growth....

I have at least planned out next season's outdoor pepper grow:
Habanada
Santa Fe Grande
Peppadew
Hangjiao #9 - Big Bang
Brazilian Starfish Orange
Stavros Pepperoncini
Palmyra
Aji Pineapple
Bishop's Crown
Sugar Rush Peach
Pink Tiger X Peach Bhut
Primo X Lemon Drop
CGN 21500

And I will bring out the reapers, scorpions, and ghosts as well. I've attached a picture of last year's culling the day of the first frost as hope for these indoor plants, and for next year.
 

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MakeIt20 said:
 I've attached a picture of last year's culling the day of the first frost as hope for these indoor plants, and for next year.
 
That's a great haul from lasts season, am looking for to seeing this year's with all those hot varieties! I am also growing Pink Tiger X Peach Bhut as well as the thin pheno version of it! I will be checking in to check them out.
 
Good luck!
 
Well, things have been looking up, sort of. Today is day 152 since they've been moved into the tent. The first pepper stuck, and is growing quite healthily. A second and third are developing, and a fourth is now starting. The last two Saturdays I have gone out to the garage to pull all of the plants out, inspect each one, water them thoroughly (they get watered at other times in the week, but it is difficult with how dense of a canopy they form,) and tried pollinating each flower that stuck using the q-tip method. The two smallest plants, which I believe are one TMS and one ghost, have almost no real stalk growth, and instead seem to want to keep forming new leafy side shoots with thin stalks. My thinner, medium sized plants (two reapers and a TMS) have the most flower growth, and I believe it is the TMS which has the peppers setting and growing. The two largest plants, both ghosts, seem to bush out and grow very strong, but showed very little budding. They are now starting to bud.
This Saturday, I decided to prune the plants, to restrict the spread of new plant growth to a smaller area, as well to allow more light permeation past the top-most canopy of growth. Attached I have included a before and after pruning shot of each plant, as well as a pic of the two largest peppers. I also have the other side - my tomatoes, which are finally starting to put out many bunches of flowers in groups of 8-12 or so at a time. Here's hoping this can continue, as the night-time, sub-zero temperatures are making it difficult for my heater to keep up (last nights in-tent low was 68 degrees Fahrenheit.) 

From the looks of it, sometime this week I will have to start popping all of my seedlings for this upcoming season. I will probably have to do some re-arranging in the house to move our seed starter rack indoors. Although I have a heat mat for seed starting, I couldn't imagine the 30-40 degree temperature of the garage would be very conducive to new starts.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Thanks. It looks like they've all got buds forming now. I think the approach of abusing them to get them to re-focus is working. New low of 66 in the tent last night. Damned harsh winters!
 
You are doing a great job with those, Zach!
Nice glossy, healthy foliage.
Can't believe they all fit in the tent!
 
Thanks a million Paul, I appreciate it coming from a pro like yourself!

Two plants now have several peppers developing on them. The smallest stringy plants still are trying to develop buds. The rest are flowering pretty nicely, I am excited to take them all out for another round of pollination this weekend. It's going to be harrowing to see if the setup can handle the extreme cold coming. I have started the peppers previously listed for the upcoming season. I used biodegradable egg carton bottom halves as my starting tray, filling each spot with a regular commercial organic seed starting mix. Each spot has three seeds scattered evenly, and I have them sorted into columns of two. Some of the plants I have double up columns, as I anticipating selling some starts through our co-op before the actual season gets underway. Attached are a pic of them under some T-12's we inherited along with the seed-starter rack, and I have these on a heat mat set to 75 F. Here's hoping everyone dealing with this cold weather stays safe, warm, and growing!
 

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Alright, good luck with the new seeding. 
 
And escaping more horrible weather!
 
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