I have some nice progress, as well as an apparent hurdle on the Scotch Bonnet since last post a month ago.

First, the Jalapeno and "Indian" pepper plants are doing fairly well. I think they are passed the stage I'd call them seedlings now. They've since been transplanted from their 8oz cups to large yogurt containers and I've topped them off after their 3rd or 4th pairs of true leaves. I already see some new growths below this, way more prolific on the "Indian" peppers. I've taken these away from my CFL lights, to see if they fare OK with light from the patio door. I don't need nor want them to grow too much for now, nor do I plan on having them bear fruit indoors this winter. I'll take these outdoors next summer. No pictures for now.

The Scotch Bonnet plant is doing quite well. A month ago, it was in that small 6" blue ceramic pot. I since re-potted it to a small bucket, a bit over 1 gallon. Branch and leaf growth exploded from then on and the plant is now much larger. There are tons of buds, probably 3-5 per node. The first 3 to bloom have now set fruits and I have three rather nice pods hanging on.

But for the last couple of weeks, all new flowers have failed to pollinate and have dropped, kind of a bummer. I've probably lost over 20 blossoms without a single fruit set. September had been unseasonably warm and humid, greatly helping the plant IMO, even indoors, but things have cooled down since. I figure this may be part of the problem. I built a small greenhouse style enclosure from scrap wood and clear polyten tarp, roughly cubic with 24" edges, to put in the basement workroom. I laid some aluminum foil on the three fixed walls to reflect light. I have my two 42W daylight CFLs on top of this and a small fan to circulate some air. I've only built this a few days ago and, so far, am reading ambient temperature around 28°C at day, with humidity in the high 60% range. Night time, with the CFLs off, but one 13W LED heating the bottom of the pot, it drops to 22°C and humidity goes up to the high 70% range, for I reduce fan speed a bit. This is likely an improvement to the 19°C to 21°C range and low humidity it had gotten in the last few weeks since outdoor temps cooled down. I have a seedling heat mat on the way to replace my clunky LED bulb bottom heating system.

Also, root growth seems to have been prolific, as I could see through the thin white walls of the new bucket and roots were already all over the place. Time to re-pot again. I transferred to a 12"+ pot, probably a bit over 3 gallons, where it will hopefully have room to grow for a while.

Time for a few pictures.

View of the greenhouse, Scotch Bonnet plant and its cell-mates; radishes, beetroot and Swiss chard. The blacklight CFL is there to add a bit of heat at night, until I get my heat mat, as the room this is in is not insulated and unheated.

Scotch Bonnet close-up, nice growth in the last month!

Here is shown the largest of the three pods that have set so far. It's probably close to 2" in length on that picture. No need to point out what it looks like. :)

So I mostly had it down to ambient temperature/humidity and size of pot as the main reason why flowers started dropping en masse.

Other items on the check-list I went through to try and find the cause:

- Too much nitrogen fertilizer: Not very likely. I add a few drops of 2-7-7 cactus fertilizer every few watering.

- Too much water: Not likely. The last pot did not have drain holes, but I've always watered very little at a time. No excessive wetness was noticed when I re-potted.

- Not enough water: Not likely. I wait for the top of the soil to be bone-dry before I water, yet not enough that leaves start to be wilty/droopy.

- Low light levels: Hard to say, but having two 2750 lumens CFLs at close range seems like a lot of light. This has also not changed since the initial flowers have set fruits.

- Poor conditions for flower to pollinate: Not that likely. Ok, so I don't have bumblebees in my house, but I have a small fan blowing towards the plant and I attempt to pollinate manually with a small paintbrush, daily.

- The plant simply does not want more pods at this moment: Not impossible. I would not know from experience, as I am new at this. Seems like it could handle at least a dozen fruits before calling it quits, no? :)

Anyway, I'm hoping these changes will stop, or at least slow down blossom drop. If I can get one pod to set for every 5 flowers, I'll still have a lot of fruit.

I also have this second Scotch Bonnet plant, that I trimmed down to a stick last month. It's doing well and is producing a decent amount of leaves. I don't intend to have this one produce fruits indoors this winter, at least not for the moment.