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Is it Possible

patrick

patrick

to get a pepper to flower and produce pods with "normal" florescent lights?

I'd really like to try and grow a couple of plants inside this year but lack the funds to bring in the heavy duty grow lights. I currently have seven or eight 24" florescent "grow lights" that I've used to get my plants started. Some were labeled as grow lights and others as Day lights. If I were to totally surround a plant with these plus a couple of 150 equivalent CFL's overhead would that be enough to produce pods?

Thanks gang.
 
You should have no problem with it Patrick. I was getting pods from some plants before plant out this year under my fluros.
 
I have had pods w/ less light than that. I had jalapenos and orange habs put out pods under 3 100W equivalent CFLs. I was unable to get anything off of the Bhut, but I got nothing outside on the Bhut either.
 
Yeah I too have about 60 plants this year and have picked well over 100 pods off them already and hundreds of buds/flowers until they went outside.

EDIT: I should say I picked off the pods when they were just starting so the plant would focus more on foliage growth for a while
 
definitely possible. a bunch of my plants this year had quite a few pods on them before they saw the light of day. That was with regular 32 or 40watt T-5/T-8 flourescent tube lights (daylight and gro-light just like yours). There's obvious sacrifices you'll be making to overall production / heat of the pod, and you'll drop a lot of flowers but it's certainly doable.
 
Patrick, All I had for my indoor set-up was T12 40W flouros and I had flower production and the onset of pods. I pinched them off because the plant was only 7 or 8 inches tall but I am quite confident that you would be able to do so with your current set-up. I plan on trying to extend my grow season this year with a couple of whatever my best producing plants are by bringing them inside and leaving them in the grow tent. We'll see how it goes.
 
Thanks everyone.

I've gotten my plants to start growing pods under these lights but picked them like most of us do.

Last year I brought in a Red Savina at the end of the summer and it was FULL of flowers, beginning pods and green peppers. The flowers dropped, the pods failed and the peppers did turn red but didn't grow any more. That was only with a couple of lights though.

I'm thinking it would be more difficult to get the superhots to produce too.

Bah! I'm going to give it a shot, got nothing to lose.
 
I would say it's hard to get them to produce a lot of fruits under cfls, they really much prefer warm light, ie sunlight or bulbs producing light towards the red end of the spectrum.
 
After my big plant give-away last summer, I kept about 10 or so plants. They literally received about 3 hours of late afternoon/evening sunlight, and I later switched to flouros when I moved to Northern Cali. My bhut finally produced about 100 flowers, but only a dozen pods. My friend from the Yucatan said they weren't hotter than a habanero. My biggest problem was with my 7POT. Again lots of flowers, but only 1 small weak pod. I still have them and they're outside now and doing well. FWIW, My piquins and cayennes did the best inside. My Thai grew like a MF, but never even produced a single flower.
 
Thanks again everyone.

More less than brilliant questions coming.

Would red and blue light bulbs help provide the different colors necessary for pod production? Blue while the plant is growing then add a red one when it begins to flower? I doubt if they are florescent though.

Thanks.
 
hey patrick,

I think if you bring in a plant that's been growing outdoors you'll have less success keeping it growing the same indoors. Kind of like an opposite of hardening off because it has to adapt to different environment. If you start the plant indoors and keep it that way you'll get some good success out of it. I'm no light expert but I'd say you'll get better results if you balance out the spectrum with both blue and red. Full spectrum "gro" flourescents have worked for me at all stages.

Is there any chance of you having the plants by a window? That certainly would help.
 
Ballz. The plants I'm thinking about using haven't been outside yet. I do have a west facing window that I can put them in. They could get five or six hours of sun through it. Would that be enough?

So I'm thinking the lights that are labeled "Day" that supposedly emit light that resembles what the sun produces would be the best then? Maybe add a couple of the "grow" lights too.

I think I'm going to do some experimenting and see what happens.

Thanks for all the help folks, it is appreciated.
 
oh yeah, 5 - 6 hours of sunlight is great. You'll get some great plants from that won't even have to rely on flourescent lights. You could set some of the lights up that you already have as an additional source, but the sun will take care of business for you. you won't have any problems. I'm going to do the exact same thing later this summer.

best of luck. I'm sure you won't need it.
 
A lot of CFLs list their light rating. 6500k is "cool" light and generally considered best for vegetative growth. 2700k is "warm" light and generally used for flowering and fruiting. As others said, I like combinations for full spectrum coverage. And keep them close to the plants for the best growth.

And +1 on the window. Even filtered through your windows the sunlight will help a lot.
 
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