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Is a 300w LED enough to grow two pepper plants into fruiting?

obeychase

obeychase

My 300w GalaxyHydro LED is in my grow tent about 16-18 inches away from two of my plants that are in 1 gallon containers each. Since LED's typically put out 100 lumens per watt, the light puts out a total of 30,000 lumens. Since my grow tent is 2ft x 2.5ft, the total square footage of the grow space is 5 feet. That means that the light puts out a total of 6,000 lumens per square foot. The recommended BARE MINIMUM growing conditions are 3,000 lumens per plant. If you divide 6,000 lumens into two plants, they are each only receiving 3,000 lumens of light.
 
Will this be enough to take two plants all the way to maturity and set fruit?
 
I have had peppers put on fruit in solo cups under a shop light.  Not the greatest things in the world, but edible.  So yes, I do believe they will fruit.  Here is the problem I see with most indoor grows.  They seem modeled after cannabis grows.  You can manipulate the light cycle to force cannabis into fruiting at any point.  So you can grow plants that finish at a foot or two tall.  Peppers fruit based on the maturity of the plant.  Often that means much taller than the typical sea of green cannabis set up.  Grow lights hung above your plants don't tend to penetrate the canopy well.  So tall plants wind up with lots of leaves that don't get much light.

If you really want to grow peppers indoors and under lights, I would suggest the shortest possible peppers.  Question is, why on earth would you want to?  There is all that free light outdoors.
 
ajdrew said:
I have had peppers put on fruit in solo cups under a shop light.  Not the greatest things in the world, but edible.  So yes, I do believe they will fruit.  Here is the problem I see with most indoor grows.  They seem modeled after cannabis grows.  You can manipulate the light cycle to force cannabis into fruiting at any point.  So you can grow plants that finish at a foot or two tall.  Peppers fruit based on the maturity of the plant.  Often that means much taller than the typical sea of green cannabis set up.  Grow lights hung above your plants don't tend to penetrate the canopy well.  So tall plants wind up with lots of leaves that don't get much light.

If you really want to grow peppers indoors and under lights, I would suggest the shortest possible peppers.  Question is, why on earth would you want to?  There is all that free light outdoors.
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I'm studying to become a plant scientist and love to experiment with indoor grows. Plus, I love having full size pepper plants producing inside my house when there is 2 feet of snow on the ground outside. During the summer, peppers and plants go outdoors but I always run some experiments inside, always.
 
I tend to see grows modeled after cannabis too, and I guess I don't fully understand the life cycle that is a pepper plant. I knew that they were autoflowering plants and are light neutral, I was just wondering if the peppers would become a decent size over the course of the next few months indoors.
 
My grow tent is 5'7" and I can easily grow a plant 3 foot in size if I wanted to
 
The ones left in the solo cups were pathetic and small.  I am thinking there are much better indoor food producing plants than peppers.  I know someone who did potato in a five gallon bucket.
 
obeychase said:
My 300w GalaxyHydro LED is in my grow tent about 16-18 inches away from two of my plants that are in 1 gallon containers each. Since LED's typically put out 100 lumens per watt, the light puts out a total of 30,000 lumens. Since my grow tent is 2ft x 2.5ft, the total square footage of the grow space is 5 feet. That means that the light puts out a total of 6,000 lumens per square foot. The recommended BARE MINIMUM growing conditions are 3,000 lumens per plant. If you divide 6,000 lumens into two plants, they are each only receiving 3,000 lumens of light.
 
Will this be enough to take two plants all the way to maturity and set fruit?
Click to expand...
 
Are you sure about your figures ?? Most LED units are sold as Watt equivelency based on the wattage of older light bulbs and not actual wattage the unit pulls from the wall. (IIRC the GalaxyHydro is called a 300W unit because it has 100 3W leds but they are never run at the full 3W or they would burn out quickly.
 
From a review thread that listed the actual wattage usage :
 
 
Wattage of the LED ( actual power draw if poss):100x3w epileds at 135w actual power draw
 
Click to expand...
 
SO it is actually a 135W unit which would change your calculations !!
 
Also in your calculation of the amount each of the 2 plants get you are forgetting that they do not both occupy the same space (ie. your calculation is lumens per sq. foot - so whether 1 or 20 plants use that square footage they will get that much light minus of course any that is not reaching the space they occupy due to shading by other plants.)
 
Also where did you get the 3,000 lumens minimum (was it from a cannibus site ? ) seems a bit high for peppers and also with LED you are getting more lumens of useable light so does the 3,000 lumen minimum include the enyire light spectrum including the wasted spectrum that other lights output that plants can not use or specific spectrums that the LED puts out in those quantities)
 
I think it should be enough, but like ajdrew mentioned already, peppers tend to grow quite large. I think you can improve it a lot by constantly pruning the peppers into african lookin' tree kind of hairstyle. I think it would be interesting to have two large and low growing plants growing inside. And you can always give them some natural light inside if you have large south facing window. 
 
Honestly as big as pepper plants do get, even when trimmed back. The area of coverage gets smaller when it starts flowering. I'd get a "300w" for each plant unless you're buying some higher end leds. Really just experiment with them and buy more if need be. It can be an expensive hobby lol

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This should be posted in "Greow Tech" where:  Discuss lights, heaters, irrigation systems, greenhouses, and DIY solutions. Show off your inventions!
 
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