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Check out whats growing in my closet :)

TXCG

TXCG

I got bored one day so I decided to since its too cold to grow outside and my balcony faces north anyway, I was gonna just grow in my closet. I went to the feed store which was the only place that has seeds this time of year, picked up some jalapeno, tam jalapeno, and long red cayenne seeds. I also ordered some peruvian purple chiles from www.seedsofchange.com because the plant looks really cool and it said it did well as an inside plant, so I figured it would do great in my closet under bright light.

I started all my seeds in 16 oz plastic cups, and I ended up only keeping 1 of the purple chiles, and 2 of the tam jalapenos, because I wanted to save room for other things in the future. I'm probably going to throw out the gimpy looking jalapeno plant anyway and just keep the healthy one. These pics are a little old, I'll get new pics in a day or two:




The gimpy one:
 





Lookin better :lol: Should I just go ahead and pull up that little guy who sprouted next to the jalapeno? How bad is it really to have 2 plants per pot (i know its not ideal, but would it hurt a lot?) if I use some string to train them to grow away from each other?
 
Maybe i can get the little one its own pot when I go to transplant. Should be doing that in a week or so. I might just leave it, because I'm planning on moving it to a fairly big pot, and as long as having smaller roots just will make the plant smaller and not kill it, it might actually help my cause. Someone replied on a different forum saying that it would make both plants smaller, but the overal yield from the container would probably be the same. I'm gonna start several more plants soon, so I might run this as an experiment. If it gets bad I'll just chop one off and transplant again.
 
Txclosetgrower your plants look good but two in the same pot is a bad idea. They will compete for light, nutrients, and root space. I'd chop it or transplant it asap.

You asked about pro-mix on another forum, and I can tell you that I've had great success with it. Its been part of my secret formula for a few years now.

Good luck and happy growing
 
Alright, I got some new seeds from a member of another forum. I was supposed to be trading a few heirloom tomato varieties for some dorset naga seeds, but the guy decided to go ahead and send me some red savina & gold bullet seeds as well as some dorset powder :lol: So yeah, those little sprouts are gone, I'm starting new plants go along with my jalapeno and purple chiles :(
 



Well, the retard jalapeno in the cup got moved to the window sill to live out the last of its days. I couldn't bear to kill it too, since although it is dumb, it is trying damn hard to live, so I figured I'll keep watering it and see how it does lol. You can see I transplanted the other one into the big black pot to free up its 4" pot, pulled up both of the little sprouts (sry little guys :( ) and i planted 1 of those dorset naga seeds. Jalapeno is still curling its leaves down as you can see in the pic, but it doesn't look too bad other than that. May be drying out a bit, but from what I've read peppers are pretty tolerant to low water / high heat. Stay tuned :lol:
 
Those guys look fine. I've seen much worse leaf curling. I wouldn't worry one bit about that.

But...how close do you have your lights and why kind of lights are you using? Is the light in the above pictures what you are using and is that representitive of how close the light is to the plant?
 
The lights are maybe 1"-2" above the plants. I have 2 23 watt 1700 lumen CFLs. They put out a little less heat than that big 42 watt one, so I picked them up first for starting the seeds. Plus they didn't stick out of the lamp so far. I also have 1 42 watt 2700 lumen CFL. All 3 lights are warm white (2700 kelvin). I realize that the 6700K lights are better for vegetative growth, but I've found that it doesn't really matter all that much. You get slightly shorter internode spacing with the cool white CFLs but if you keep your lights within 2 inches, you'll still get dense growth with the warm white ones. See how my plants haven't stretched any? The trick is just keeping the lights really close. Its hard to burn a plant with a CFL, it has to actually touch it. The fan blowing directly on the lights helps keep it cooler though, because CFLs do still put out some heat, although not much.

Right now I'm using desk lamps to hold the CFLs cause they are the easiest to adjust when the plants are that small. Once they get bigger like that jalapeno, I put them in bigger pots and put a CFL in one of those clamp light things designed for like a work shop. I have it clipped on to a few hangers hanging from the clothes rack lol. Since I plan on getting those tube fluorescents, I'm not worrying too much about buying more clamp lights and chains just yet.
 
imaguitargod said:
Ya, switching to the fluorescent grow lights is a good idea.
Click to expand...

You mean the tubes? I was suprised when I found out some ofthe little CFLs put out more lumens than a lot of the 48" tube lights, not to mention the lumens would be spread out along the 48" instead of in one spot like with the compact fluoros. I still want the tube ones just to get more light coverage, but I think I'm still gonna use a lot of CFLs as supplemental lighting. I like how easy they are to put where you need them and their small size helps out too.

I've noticed that most things sold as "grow lights" or "plant lights" (except at a hydro shop or nursery) aren't actually all that good for growing plants, but they make your plants appear greener than they are because of the spectrum they put out making the plant appear to be healthier to the eye. You're better off using the standard fluoros in the right spectrum.

What I really really want is one of those tek light T5 fluorescent grow lights, but those are much more expensive than a T8 light system, although they do put out a lot more lumens.

I'm gonna set up some type of exhuast system for my closet, since I'm just using fluoros there isn't a whole lot of heat to get rid of, so I was thinking of simply mounting a fan where it will push air out of the closet and having another opening as a passive intake.

I've also been toying around with the idea of building an enclosed box for inside the closet, with intake/output fans an lining it with mylar or panda plastic to get the most out of my lights. Too broke for that til next semester though, I'll probably build that the first part of january.
 
Txclosetgrower said:
I've noticed that most things sold as "grow lights" or "plant lights" (except at a hydro shop or nursery) aren't actually all that good for growing plants, but they make your plants appear greener than they are because of the spectrum they put out making the plant appear to be healthier to the eye. You're better off using the standard fluoros in the right spectrum.
Click to expand...
All I know, as far as indoor plant lights go, is from the carnivorous plants that I had. I used just a standard "grow light" and they went crazy! But once again, I havn't done a light rig for peppers.
 
ross said:
my friend in college grew a sea of green in his closet.

oh wait, this is the pepper forum, sorry..
Click to expand...

Rofl. Haha, that isn't where I learned all about indoor growing:rolleyes:, at least thats my story and i'm stickin to it......But hey, there's a time and a place for everything, and its called college.
 
Well, to get better light coverage, and simply because of the way that purple one is growing, I decided to start low stress training it to get better light coverage to the new branches that are growing up at all the nodes. We'll see how this goes, I'll post pics soon.
 
If you're still buying luminaires, you should look at led's.....100-130 lumens/watt (wayyyyy beter than flour or HID), the lamps last longer than anything else and you have complete control of spectrum.
 
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