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indoor Indoor plant's flowers falling off

H

Harunobu

I sowed too late and I acquired a grow light for growing other plants, which are still germinating. So I figured I put two of my small chile plants under it.

On one of the plant approx. 10 flowers have already dropped. The plants both developed fruit from their first few flowers. But after I put them indoors not a single flower seems to have turned into fruit. Now I know there's a long list of things that can affect this. But I'd like to figure out which one it is.
No.1 of course is hand pollinating. I use a brush once a day. I can see pollen gush from the flower. Some of it must hit the stamen. Now there may be a small window for stamen fertility around noon that I am not hitting.

The lights are on 15 hours a day. That's not really late summer or autumn weather. Maybe I am tricking the plants into thinking it is too early in spring for fruit?
Day and night temperature also differ little. While at night my outdoor plants already had down to 6 degrees C at night.

The plants are growing quickly and keep forming new flowers. The fruits on the indoor plants even caught up and overtook the ones on the bigger outdoor plants.

Tomorrow and throughout the weekend there will be many days that have predicted a lot of hours of sun. So I will move them outside again. When I moved them inside we had the heaviest rain in 25 years.

Not sure if I am just failing in 'plant sex' because of bad technique. But I think I will just leave them outside even when there's 3 or less hours of sunlight until they have dozen of fruits. But I kind of want to solve the mystery too.
 
What kind of light are you using, and how close is it to the plants? I have had a few "overheat" and drop flowers. Could be any number of things. Not a professional, but Im sure everybody can help you come to find the culprit. Might be the food too. What nutrients are you using?
 
I wondered if it was fertilizer as I gave all plants some water containing tomato fertilizer. I used 2.5 ml of the liquid stuff on roughly 1 to 1.5 liters of water. But as the plants outside don't drop any flowers fertilizer doesn't seem to be the issue.

It is a CFL 125w light and the plants are quite close to the lamp. I had one leaf get scorched a bit as it was almost touching the lamp. So I rotated the pot. But further away from the lights I don't think it is that hot. Maybe it is indeed still too hot. But one plant is really short and has two flowers in total and one of them dropped. Surely that one isn't going to be too hot.
 
Could possibly be the heat. It may not be too hot, but over 15 hours of exposure, it can dry em up. Do you have a fan, or any circulation of the air around the plants? Is the bulb in a cooled socket assembly?

Also, I dont know if this could cause dropped flowers, but does the soil drain well? How often do you water?
 
It could be lack of moisture. It is really dry indoors, of course. And I don't want to mist so near a light bulb. There's no fans but I am planing to buy one for the seedlings I am going to grow in the future so they will harden a bit.

There's no fan or cooling in the reflector/socket.

The soil is normal potting soil. It doesn't drain well. But it can't be too much water as the plants outside got a lot more rain and wetness. I often let the soil dry up a little bit before I water.

I have perlite now so when I am going to repot I will use that. It is really superb for drainage.
 
A certain amount of flower drop is normal. As long as your plant is producing I wouldn't be too concerned.
 
I counted 17 dropped flowers in a row. The plants outside showed different behavior. But they are all outside now and it seems that one of the plants inside did produce a fertilized pod.
 
I think you would have done good if you had a HPS light that generates light in the 2200k spectrum range required for reproductive or fruiting phase. Since you where only using a CFL light it probably didn't get enough specific light it needed and just dropped the flowers. Your better off putting it outside where it will get a full spectrum of light.
 
The lamp is 6400K so blue-ish and for growing phase. There's a more reddish version at 2700K for flowering. That may also be the issue. Night temperature is 20 degrees. It barely cools down. I guess the lamp makes it 25 during the day or so.

But I don't ever really need to go through flower phase in the future. This is the only time. I sowed in April which is kind of late. They will be outside for now. Not sure if I am going to operate the light again when the weather gets really cloudy again. I could put them under the lights during day and move them outside during nights. It should be around 10 degrees at night the next few weeks. That way I can at least count out too high night temperatures, just for the sake of it.
 
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