Here's an early 1 month update: Green Pot: YOLO Wonder (Bell Pepper) Blue Pot: CA Wonder (Bell Pepper) Off-White Pot: Contender (Green Peas) Mason Jar: Caribbean Red (Habanero) Orange Pot: Cayenne, Orange Habanero Pink Pot: Beefsteak (Tomato) Issues: Fungus Gnats: Added 1' of sand to ruin life-cycle, so far so good. Purple Leafs on Tomato: Apparently this is 'normal' as root system catches up. Also some curling/droopy leafs, either it'll grow out of it or die (oh well it's going to be to 'big' for this experiment anyway). Rolling Leaf on Cayenne: Apparently this is 'normal' also, but I 'pruned' a few of it's bigger leafs off because it was shading my Orange Habanero (which is higher priority than the Cayenne). Changes: Using melted snow for watering, our rural water is pretty nasty (for people too). Added thermometer, temps are around 80-82 during the day at dirt level, ~70 at night. Light cycle changed from 6am-10pm to 7am-9pm, saves power and didn't make a difference. Using 20oz water bottles with a 1/16 hole in the top for watering, good water placement vs the spray bottle. My 3 year old talks to my (baby) plants, (she planted most of them under strict adult supervision of course)... Lights: 4' 6-lamp T8 SO with 5000K bulbs is doing all the lighting now for the small pots, lining up some 6500K's but I think its an un-needed expense. Requests: Peas, after moving the 'runt' orange tree to a 10-gallon I had an extra pot so I planted peas. (wife's request) Now my mother wants me to start seedlings for her, this could be the best or worst of things!

I know I am a little late in this discussion but last year I began my business as a grower and work with a seller now. The entire system I put up uses 8 fixtures with 6 T5 HO bulbs in each fixture. They gave me the most compact plants I have ever seen. My pepper and tomato plants had less than 1 cm between branch nodes. I kept the plants under the lights for 7 week. Each fixture I used 4 6500k and 2 3000k t5 HO. I did not harden off any of the plants and all of them survived an instant transplant to the outdoors. The place I used to get all the fixtures and lights was businesslights.com The bulbs are extremely cheep a case of 40 was under $130. So far going into the 2nd year of full use no problems with anything. I believe the fixtures cost around 100-160 each for 4 or 6 bulb ones but the fact that each bulb comes out to a cost of under 3 dollars and lasts 2 seasons means your paying $1.50 per bulb per year. I've never used metal halide or high pressure sodium but I can definitely vouch for the fact that t5 HO can do far more than just grow seedlings. I probably grew close to 1200 plants under those lights last year and all of them were compact and dark green it was amazing. Good luck with whatever you choose if you have any questions about t5's feel free to message me.

Wow...interesting forum. Never been here before. I'm glad to see LED lightning becoming more common. I have an absolutely crazy use for it. I want to be able to grow certain high elevation Chinese rhododendrons for the point of breeding with them, crossing them with very heat resistant species like R. hyperythrum so that their look can be imparted to plants that grow well in the eastern US. However, the summer climate here is too hot and wet and the plants die of phytophthrora. My house has a small utility cellar that does not cover the whole foot print of the house. In other words, 2 of the walls are against several feet of earth, a third is exterior but mostly covered, and only 1 opens to the outside. It stays VERY cool down there as long as the door is kept shut. (the ceiling is poured concrete, too, I think they wanted it to be fire proof in case the boiler exploded!) I think it would be a perfect place to set up a long term, air-conditioned grow facility. Yes it would still have be air conditioned in summer. I'm thinking of a using a portable 2 hose computer room chiller. They are expensive but can put out a _lot_ of a cold air. Ideal temp range will be about 70 day, 55 night. HID would just heat things up too much. I'm even thinking of building my own rectifier and running heavy low voltage DC AL wiring into the space, so that the heat of the rectifier doesn't warm the space too much. FWIW Longwood Gardens has a fully air-conditioned conservatory, getting natural light, for growing other, similar alpine plants. It has to cost a future to keep cool and admittance is only to staff, not public visitors. BTW I just posted to this thread because it seemed to be an active one...let me know if you have any feedback or thoughts. Or not, whatever. I doubt many people build their own power supplies but I do electronics tinkering and have built my own audio amp and repaired a couple others so I think I could handle it. Of course, switching power supplies are so cheap and efficient, I might just use a whole bunch of them bought as ready-made boards, parallel them, and build my own improved current and voltage regulation section. Or maybe someone makes a reliable remote ballast/PS unit.

Yep. Just add up the total lumen output of your lights (each bulb in your fixture) and then measure the light footprint it puts off. It's not exact, but it's close enough for this kind of work. I'd say you've got plenty of juice there to grow what you're looking to grow. You should be very happy with the results. Definitely use the fans, though. For one thing peppers seem to like cooler temps and breezes, but mainly the airflow will promote thicker stems and bushier growth. If you get lucky and get a lot of peppers those thicker stems will be great. One of the biggest problems indoor plants have is that without that breeze they get lazy and think they don't need a strong stem. Outside they grow strong to survive storms, but there's no point wasting energy to build a stem if you're sheltered from the elements. Double check with your specific pepper types, but I know that peppers like much lower Nitrogen than most plants. A friend of mine had trouble getting any fruit set at all while he was using fertilizer that had nitrogen in it. Also, you should do fine with a drip or ebb and flow system either way. It's mainly just a matter of getting the right amount of moisture to the plant. I think some peppers vary slightly, but they like less water than say tomatoes.