Indoor growing 'rook'

20 years ago

Hello all;

Have a relatively small garden area and it receives about 7 hrs of light up until June 21, but in the critical fruiting stages late in the year I'm down to 4 hrs and I always have tons of immature fruit at first frost. In fact, several Habanero varieties I tried for the first time this year didn't produce ANY mature fruit and it was an absolute shame.

I am considering, therefore, starting them from seeds indoors in an attempt to achieve a 18-24" height and allowing them a head start before I transplant at last frost.

What I need is the following:

If you think this solutions bears ANY merit at all.

If I want to grow mature plants but don't want any blossoms do you recommend a light source over any other [metal halide vs. sodium, etc]

Any other suggestions other than taking a chain saw to the 70 yr old Pin Oak that shades the garden ;-)?

Thanks in advance, as always, look forward to your insight.

Regards,

Tom

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Comments (3)

john47_johnf
20 years ago
You don't say what zone you are in. A lot of us have trouble ripening some varieties and start them early indoors and then sometimes have to bring plants inside to finish ripening. I satrt mine inside about 8 weeks before last frost and grow them under regular fluorescents. When I harden them off they end up being outside during the day until temps get to a reasonable level. In my experience, putting them outside when it's still very cool can stunt them even though there is no frost.

john
habman
20 years ago
Wow John what a great setup you have. I'm so jealous :)
What type of fluorescent are you using?
24" 20watts cool whites? overriden or not?

thx
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john47_johnf
20 years ago
Plain old 40 watt cool white--the cheapest ones at Wal-Mart. They are in shop light fixtures and not overdriven. I have used this method for several years and the plants do fine at that stage. As you can see from the second picture I use the same method for tomatoes and eggplants.

You can see pictures of results here

Here is a link that might be useful: My pictures