Indoor Habeneros, my experience so far & A request for advice

14 years ago

Hello there, my first post!

Anyways, I recently started growing indoor pepper plants for the first time, I have two Habenero plants and a red chile plant at the moment, with jalepeno and texas slims germinating as we speak.

My method for growing them is to germinate about 20% more seeds than I wish to plant in a wet paper towel, after the desired ammount germinated, I planted them in starter cups of about 5 in. diameter.

I give them constant, 24 hour light using gardening bulbs in small fluorescent fixtures, similar to aquarium light fixtures. (walmart sells them for about 10-15 bucks w/ a bulb included, and I used two for 3 plants, although im certain one would have worked almost as well). I simply hung the lights about 3 inches above the soil, and continued moving the lights as the grew, keeping between 3-6 inches above the plants.

I noticed at about 6-7 inches tall that they began slowing growth with only about 6 branches, and my largest plant had begun drooping. As they had recently been watered, I knew that root limitation was the likely culprit. I cut away the starter cups and planted them in their own 10 inch. pots, using miracle-gro moisture lock potting soil (I've heard the ph is just a tad high, but I've never had any issues with burning, in fact I used regular miracle-gro in the starter cups).

The difference was astounding, in the first day alone I saw the plants have a marked increase in size as well as branch development. I attribute it to the depletion level of the soil in the starting cups, as well as the root limitation. It's amazing how depleted old soil looks next to fresh potting mix, I honestly hadn't realized how drastically I needed to re-pot.

After moving my plants into the new pots, i bought the larger, 40 inch "shop light" hooded light fixture from walmart, again at about 10 bucks, as well as two long plant bulbs, which were about 6 bucks apiece. (Getting spendy for a few plants, but this has turned into more of an experiment by this point, and I'll be able to use it for many more plantings to come).

Anyways, that has been my experience so far, and they are now doing quite well (although less branchy than I'd like, which i assume is due to my late re-potting), and budding as we speak. If theres any tips you want to give me I would certainly welcome them, remember I am a novice and this is my first indoor growing of a crop plant, I have never grown from seed before...

A couple more things, I have heard that if you want an indoor plant, keep it indoors during all stages of development and do not introduce it to plants that have been outdoors, to limit infestations; how likely is an infestation if I keep them inside constantly? Secondly, I have still been using 24 hour light and the plants seem to love it, is there a specific cycle that may promote growth/vegetation? Or is it pretty much the more light the better?

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to being a part of the community!

P.S.: My current girlfriend is due for afghanistan in about 8 months, and when I was in Iraq I heard of a few guys growing various fruit producing plants inside their air conditioned housing units, how much odor does a habenero plant produce? The units are fairly small and although I don't notice much odor now, I don't want to tell her it'll work if its going to cause odor issues.