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overwintering Growing in the Winter?

Phearis

Phearis

My plants didn't really do much of anything until the end of September and then BOOM, peppers everywhere.
However, now it's now Winter, 40° and raining. I have two-dozen peppers between a quarter of an inch to an
inch and a half and they stopped growing. I have them sitting in the window in my bedroom with the heat at 80°.
I don't know what else to try. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.


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Where are you located at? If you are trying to maintain fruit production all winter your best bet is a grow light. Sunlight decreases in frequency in the winter because the light has to pass through more of our atmosphere before getting to us. Plus the shorter days = less sunlight as well. It won't hurt to have them close to the window for additional light (unless those windows are making the peppers colder) but you will definitely need lights to get the plant enough energy for fruit production. I recommend a 4 or 6 bulb 4' t5 fixture - a good quality fixture with individual reflectors. How many plants do you have?
 
I have 3 plants and I'm just trying to finish the fruit I have, not so much growing through
the winter and I don't have $200 to spend on a giant grow light.
 
If you have like $30 or so what I did is go to Home Depot and get some very cheap clamp lamps and some of the 125w equivalent flourescent bulbs with internal reflectors. The ones that I bought were 6000k I believe. I used one of these per plant and it was just enough to support minimal growth and give the plants enough energy to finish up the pods that they started. They actually worked pretty well. I was still getting new blossoms and some slow fruit growth until aphids started multiplying and I decided to kill the plants a few weeks or so ago. Some people pick the green pods and ripen them in a paper bag with some sort of fruit (apple, banana, or tomato). The fruit releases ethylene gas that helps the peppers ripen. Another method is to pull the plants out and hang them upside down. This will ripen the fruit that is still attached to the plant. However, these two methods in my experience will not ripen fruit that is still a ways from ripening. I like using these cheaper lights as while they aren't the best and you won't get a beautiful robust growth like some on here, you can get SOME results without too much of an investment. I'm a poor nursing student so this is what I'm gonna be sticking with over the winter for a while.

If you have any questions about specific lights or anything else feel free to PM as well,
 
Most of my peppers actually ripened even though a bunch were half size when I brought them in. A few did not.

From just a window in winter you'll probably get enough light to keep the plants alive, but I wouldn't count on them putting any of that energy into production.
 
This is what I came up with, we'll see if it works.

I put them in my closet next to the water heater, so it's always warm,
I got two clamp lights with plant bulbs and put them on a 16 hour timer.


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your plants look nice and your new set up looks good, if you were to keep em a bit longer they look like they need bigger pots, if all you want to do is get a few peppers then leave em be,
 
The peppers haven't grown but they're started to turn red. I think the couple weeks of cold stunted them but at least the peppers I do have are ripening and over the last week, about 3 to 5 flowers a day have sterted popping out. I think my plants think winter is over. :lol:
 
Id put them lights alot closer. Are you using CFL's? If you are they can be within a couple inches of the plants. And I'd put a fan in there too.
 
HTGSupply has 150w HPS lights with ballast and reflector for $69.75 and 250w HPS for $117.95. Pretty reasonable pricing for lights that will vastly improve your situation.
 
It's just two 60w Daylight Grow Bulbs and a simple fan. I'm not growing a certain illegal plant. What I've
got is working just fine. I've got a lot of new peppers since I put them in there. :-)



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Just my dos pesos---I would up the lights to 3 100w (eq, actually 26w) and drop them to within a foot of the plants.
Otherwise, they may bolt and get top heavy.
 
Thats a great classic gameboy you have there on the shelf :P Give those babies a bigger pot and they will be "happy happy happy" (Phil, Duck Dynasty)
 
Phearis said:
It's just two 60w Daylight Grow Bulbs and a simple fan. I'm not growing a certain illegal plant. What I've
got is working just fine. I've got a lot of new peppers since I put them in there. :-)
Click to expand...
You do know that people can use grow lights on plants that don't contain THC, right?

Now, it's good that they're doing 'fine', and if you're happy with them then that's great, but he was just giving you a suggestion on how to readjust your definition of 'fine' to 10x what it is now. There's no need to assume his dirty, dirty knowledge was gained by supporting terrorist plants (or whatever the line is nowadays).
 
If you cant get the lights closer, raise the plants by placing them on something (a stand or milk crates would work). You can get cheap buckets at a dollar store that would work for potting up. Good looking plants. It is 37 degrees here right now and your pods got me thinking of summer...
 
I raised them about a week ago and they're doing a lot better, they're about 8 inches away from the lights now.
The gimpy one didn't have any flowers or pods on it, so I pruned it back and it's sitting on my deck; waiting for Spring.

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BTW, If anyone wants to grow these, I have like 500 seeds; And these peppers tastes soooooooooo good.
 
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