indoor Setting up large-ish indoor space to germinate and grow - would love advice!

BDP

BDP

I’ve always started a couple dozen peppers and tomatoes and random greens and veggies indoors. I just had a 4’ fluorescent grow light on a 6’ long folding table in my basement and it met my needs.

Now though… Now I have this all-consuming desire to grow like 500 kinds of peppers and cross-breed and fill my whole world with chili plants.

I bought more lights and trays and heat mats… and then after spending a bunch of money I spoke with a friend who used to grow tons of pot and he said he has absolutely no use for his lights, fans, assorted heaters, hydroponic stuff anymore but still has it and I’m welcome to it. I haven’t seen the gear but I’m under the impression there’s more than enough to fill all the space I have available. I believe I can clear around 150-200sq ft of space. And have some shelves and tables I could use to create multiple levels within this space.

I’m hoping to learn from those of you who’ve germinated chinense or baccatum and also to get insight on how some of you guys structure space for multiple stages of growth… like germination station, seedling station, bigger plants, clone-rooting space, overwintering space and which sections need more/less heat/light/whatever. (Overwintering plants along the cooler exterior wall for example)

I’m quite experienced with the generic, common annuums and tabasco, but have never tried to germinate chinense or baccatum… have never tried cloning either but intend to give that a go here in a few weeks as well.

Any/all advice is appreciated!
 
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I can't help much with multiple stages, especially later stages indoor, but it sounds like you're off to a good start especially for the initial germination and grow. I started over 2100 last December.

For that kind of quantity I found going vertical worked best. Only 2 stages for me - germination/early growth in a mycorrhizae starter medium, 72-pack trays, then plant out directly in spring. Check out my glog for pics of the initial setup.

For chinenses, I have found that an overnight soak in a potassium nitrate solution helps speed up germination. Coupled with heat mats, I had an average of 7 days from planting to first sprouts with Reapers and Ghosts.

Hope that helps a bit!
 
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HellfireFarm said:
I can't help much with multiple stages, especially later stages indoor, but it sounds like you're off to a good start especially for the initial germination and grow. I started over 2100 last December.

For that kind of quantity I found going vertical worked best. Only 2 stages for me - germination/early growth in a mycorrhizae starter medium, 72-pack trays, then plant out directly in spring. Check out my glog for pics of the initial setup.

For chinenses, I have found that an overnight soak in a potassium nitrate solution helps speed up germination. Coupled with heat mats, I had an average of 7 days from planting to first sprouts with Reapers and Ghosts.

Hope that helps a bit!
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This is incredibly helpful! Especially the seed-soak tip! I have room outdoors for thousands of plants, but a relatively short grow season for chilis. (Zone 5b) - I will dig into the glogs and soak up whatever I can!
 
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Hey BDP.

I use multiple tables/fixtures and keep plants of similar stages/heights under fixtures with one another so everyone can stay close to the bulb. If necessary, I'll elevate shorter plants grouped with taller plants to make them the same effective height - using boxes, upside down pots, etc. under the shorter plants to lift them. Sometimes I'll conserve space by germinating on top of light fixtures (T5HO's work well for this), in which case I may or may not use a heat mat depending on what types I'm germinating. Having several lights in the same room will heat the room pretty well. Synchronizing or creating complimentary light schedules among the fixtures can help get temps where you want them.

I tent to use light fixtures with deeper effective penetration, e.g., good LED bulbs, for older, taller plants, and lights with less deep effective penetration, e.g., T5HO, for younger/shorter plants. I usually keep Chinense plants short, perhaps around 15" - 18" because they'll usually canopy well and produce okay. I don't often grow baccatum to production inside - though I plan to grow a couple/few this offseason. They can be more difficult to control than most Chinense as many like to grow tall, quickly. Sometimes I'll top plants to influence the growth pattern toward one that's more cooperative, but not all pepper plants will conform well to topping.

One huge key point. Be sure not to bring plants that have been outside back inside where you're growing indoor plants. Your very likely to hatch out an aphid infestation and, with no predators indoors to suppress their numbers and many plants to deal with (especially young ones), it will probably ruin your grow.
 
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CaneDog said:
Hey BDP.

I use multiple tables/fixtures and keep plants of similar stages/heights under fixtures with one another so everyone can stay close to the bulb. If necessary, I'll elevate shorter plants grouped with taller plants to make them the same effective height - using boxes, upside down pots, etc. under the shorter plants to lift them. Sometimes I'll conserve space by germinating on top of light fixtures (T5HO's work well for this), in which case I may or may not use a heat mat depending on what types I'm germinating. Having several lights in the same room will heat the room pretty well. Synchronizing or creating complimentary light schedules among the fixtures can help get temps where you want them.

I tent to use light fixtures with deeper effective penetration, e.g., good LED bulbs, for older, taller plants, and lights with less deep effective penetration, e.g., T5HO, for younger/shorter plants. I usually keep Chinense plants short, perhaps around 15" - 18" because they'll usually canopy well and produce okay. I don't often grow baccatum to production inside - though I plan to grow a couple/few this offseason. They can be more difficult to control than most Chinense as many like to grow tall, quickly. Sometimes I'll top plants to influence the growth pattern toward one that's more cooperative, but not all pepper plants will conform well to topping.

One huge key point. Be sure not to bring plants that have been outside back inside where you're growing indoor plants. Your very likely to hatch out an aphid infestation and, with no predators indoors to suppress their numbers and many plants to deal with (especially young ones), it will probably ruin your grow.
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Thanks for the tips! I had hoped to have a go at overwintering a couple plants (really for practice, not necessity) and clones - is it just the soil I need to worry about bringing inside? - my plan was to wash off all the plants entirely and re-pot in fresh soil inside… and I’m assuming cuttings for clones don’t present the same danger? - all new info to me so it’s ALL helpful.

Cheers
 
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Aphids/eggs would most likely be buried in the crevices of the foliage. Cleaning and pruning them back significantly would reduce the likelihood of occurrence (though not necessarily to a level of confidence), but the damage if you have an occurrence can be the entire grow and a ton of frustration. OW's will typically do fine in a garage at 50F +/- and with a short day cycle of limited light. The cold temperature is necessary if you're overwintering (essentially forcing dormancy) versus growing the plants inside over the course of the winter.
 
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CaneDog said:
Aphids/eggs would most likely be buried in the crevices of the foliage. Cleaning and pruning them back significantly would reduce the likelihood of occurrence (though not necessarily to a level of confidence), but the damage if you have an occurrence can be the entire grow and a ton of frustration. OW's will typically do fine in a garage at 50F +/- and with a short day cycle of limited light. The cold temperature is necessary if you're overwintering (essentially forcing dormancy) versus growing the plants inside over the course of the winter.
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This is good intel... I can't use the garage. We'll probably hit lows around -5f if not -10f in jan-feb. Garage will definitely dip well below the 50s.
Would tenting the OWs and isolating them from everything else work? what about dipping the whole plant in some sort of solution (not a chemical pesticide hopefully) which would kill the eggs? - I don't really have to keep any of these plants. it just seemed like a cool thing to learn and I heard the 2nd year production is significantly increased. - if it's going to put all the fun new varieties of seedlings at risk I'll skip it.
 
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Last year I OW'd various plants mostly either because they were wild peppers I've been keeping for years or they were special varieties I wasn't able to get isolated seed from during the season and I didn't have any replacement seed source for them. If not for those circumstances, I probably wouldn't OW, despite that hate to shut down good plants at the end of the season. I kept them on separate level of my house at the opposite side of the house or in the garage depending on weather and I left them outside on the deck much of the time because we're pretty temperate here and many of the varieties were fairly cold-hardy for peppers. Regardless, I had aphids hatch on the plants and get into my upstairs active grow, including the nursery for my spring starts. It was super frustrating and totally impacted my season. With a few plants, you can manage aphids, but with a lot - and especially with young sprouts in the mix - it's close to impossible. If there weren't a lot of value to me in the plants I OW'd, I wouldn't have done it and they're all getting set up properly in the garage and not the house this OW.

Another thing to consider is that most times first-year peppers you start inside a couple/few months ahead of transplanting outside will outperform 2nd or 3rd year OW'd plants that you move outside in spring. It just seems common for OW's to get off to a slow start when the new starts grow gangbusters.
 
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Haha. I think the only cuttings I've done have been early season, not leading into winter, so I don't have any more horror stories for you. I think it's totally reasonable you could clean up cuttings well, maybe even submerse and swish them around in a safe soap mixture, etc., and not have an aphid issue; it's just that the pain if you do can be tough and I'm still feeling that pain. ;)
 
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BDP said:
have you cloned cuttings? (Are they lower risk just by math since they’re late-season fresh growth and less time to have had eggs deposited? - …kill my dreams one at a time! 🤣🤣🤣
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Well, I don't mean to rain on your parade either, but I agree with everything CD said here - we've had to learn the hard way to keep our indoor grows as sterile as possible, haha :rofl:

My horror story does involve cloned cuttings, but I was being cheap and experimented with basil. After we had some leftover basil from the supermarket, I decided to clone it and grow it hydroponically. I did this away from my main indoor grow while the cutting developed roots. This would give me time to check if there were any pests and make sure the plant was healthy.

So the basil took and it started growing quite well, so I took it to my grow room, and placed it next to my peppers. After a couple of weeks, the basil just died, so I didn't think much of it at the time. Then my peppers, which I had been growing for about 4 or 5 months hydroponically, started losing leaves, and getting all kinds of weird symptoms (we joked they must've caught COVID because the pandemic had just started back then). After trying new nutrients, lighting changes, Ph and Ec monitoring etc, I stumbled upon a picture online that showed a Jalapeno with the same corking pattern as mine. The article was talking about broad mites and how much damage they cause. Well, I got a handheld microscope and they were all over the place. I started spraying neem twice a week in order to break the reproductive cycle. I did make some progress and the plants showed signs of recovery, but the bugs kept coming back. It was just too much effort to be worth the potential harvest, so I decided to nuke that grow. If you want to read more about what I went through, here's the link to that year's glog. I shall always remember that grow as Broadmiteheddon 2020.

I only realized those damn mites must've hitched a ride on the basil after I tossed my grow.

Since then, I have had success growing indoors by following this one simple rule: no external plant material allowed in the grow room.

But that's just my rule :) - some other folks have had success cleaning their plants for OW and have a process to it. I just find it easier to start new seeds...
 
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HeatMiser said:
Well, I don't mean to rain on your parade either, but I agree with everything CD said here - we've had to learn the hard way to keep our indoor grows as sterile as possible, haha :rofl:

My horror story does involve cloned cuttings, but I was being cheap and experimented with basil. After we had some leftover basil from the supermarket, I decided to clone it and grow it hydroponically. I did this away from my main indoor grow while the cutting developed roots. This would give me time to check if there were any pests and make sure the plant was healthy.

So the basil took and it started growing quite well, so I took it to my grow room, and placed it next to my peppers. After a couple of weeks, the basil just died, so I didn't think much of it at the time. Then my peppers, which I had been growing for about 4 or 5 months hydroponically, started losing leaves, and getting all kinds of weird symptoms (we joked they must've caught COVID because the pandemic had just started back then). After trying new nutrients, lighting changes, Ph and Ec monitoring etc, I stumbled upon a picture online that showed a Jalapeno with the same corking pattern as mine. The article was talking about broad mites and how much damage they cause. Well, I got a handheld microscope and they were all over the place. I started spraying neem twice a week in order to break the reproductive cycle. I did make some progress and the plants showed signs of recovery, but the bugs kept coming back. It was just too much effort to be worth the potential harvest, so I decided to nuke that grow. If you want to read more about what I went through, here's the link to that year's glog. I shall always remember that grow as Broadmiteheddon 2020.

I only realized those damn mites must've hitched a ride on the basil after I tossed my grow.

Since then, I have had success growing indoors by following this one simple rule: no external plant material allowed in the grow room.

But that's just my rule :) - some other folks have had success cleaning their plants for OW and have a process to it. I just find it easier to start new seeds...
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Heartbreaking… I appreciate the story!

I’m still scheming though. I really want to try cloning. I might dump a few dollars into some sort of tent/heating for the garage… Anyone have recommendations on timed heaters? Or a good 10x10ish tent that’s short enough to be used inside? …looks like I have my friday-googling all maped!
 
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One thing I forgot to mention, although you probably saw it if you checked out my glog - go vertical. I had all those plants on shelves with a total footprint of about 16 square feet.
 
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HellfireFarm said:
One thing I forgot to mention, although you probably saw it if you checked out my glog - go vertical. I had all those plants on shelves with a total footprint of about 16 square feet.
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for sure. just makes sense! - and yes, paid very close attention to your glog! going to try to mimic much of what you've done. hopefully learn from some of your mistakes before I repeat them and have to learn them on my own.
 
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BDP said:
for sure. just makes sense! - and yes, paid very close attention to your glog! going to try to mimic much of what you've done. hopefully learn from some of your mistakes before I repeat them and have to learn them on my own.
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I've got plenty of those you can learn from. Almost certainly more to come too :)
 
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