Growing Ghost Peppers

LBchilehead · December 29, 2012

I want to improve my growing system this year. I have two cool 48" and 2 warm 48" flour. With strip shop lights. And to start them I have 24" T-5 jump start lights I got from Home Depot. I will post pictures of them tomorrow. I want to keep that set up for my tomato plants
I can build another one for my Ghost peppers. But I was wondering if I could change my set up with HPS or CLF's? What wattage do I need and how many bulbs? To cover about 4x10 feet area.

Thanks!

Doug9345 · December 29, 2012

I've used CFLs to grow some things. Right now I have petunias growing under one. The clip on brooder lamp I have light I have is about 9" in diameter. What I've found is the more light I use the quicker my plants grow. It has more influence than fertilizer for me.

For CFLs I'm trying to decide if 16" spacing would work or is a 12" spacing what you want. With tubes. That's somewhere between 700w and a 1000 watts. 20 four foot tubes would give about the same wattage. I'm not speaking from experience, but I'm extrapolating from small setups.

Using 1000w and 12 hours per day it would cost me around $2 per day in electricity to run.

bower · December 29, 2012

HPS will cost a lot to run, and will give off a lot of heat as well.

I use the cool or daylight CFL shoplights for starting seedlings, and I have been using one warm/one cool as supplementary light over a window for fruiting indoor peppers. They did not set any fruit until natural day length was over 10 hours anyway, so it's hard to say whether the light was strong enough to make a big difference in addition to sunlight. But definitely helped to ripen fruit on plants brought indoors in the fall.

The CFL's are great for seedlings because you can put them so close to the lights. With a bigger plant, the light can't really penetrate to the lower leaves, afaik. So if your growing setup is completely free of natural light, you may do better with HPS, but the cost will be significant.

December 29, 2012	#1
LBchilehead Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2012 Location: Long Beach, CA Posts: 37	Growing Ghost Peppers I want to improve my growing system this year. I have two cool 48" and 2 warm 48" flour. With strip shop lights. And to start them I have 24" T-5 jump start lights I got from Home Depot. I will post pictures of them tomorrow. I want to keep that set up for my tomato plants I can build another one for my Ghost peppers. But I was wondering if I could change my set up with HPS or CLF's? What wattage do I need and how many bulbs? To cover about 4x10 feet area. Thanks!

December 29, 2012	#2
Doug9345 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Durhamville,NY Posts: 2,706	I've used CFLs to grow some things. Right now I have petunias growing under one. The clip on brooder lamp I have light I have is about 9" in diameter. What I've found is the more light I use the quicker my plants grow. It has more influence than fertilizer for me. For CFLs I'm trying to decide if 16" spacing would work or is a 12" spacing what you want. With tubes. That's somewhere between 700w and a 1000 watts. 20 four foot tubes would give about the same wattage. I'm not speaking from experience, but I'm extrapolating from small setups. Using 1000w and 12 hours per day it would cost me around $2 per day in electricity to run.

December 29, 2012	#3
bower Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 6,793	HPS will cost a lot to run, and will give off a lot of heat as well. I use the cool or daylight CFL shoplights for starting seedlings, and I have been using one warm/one cool as supplementary light over a window for fruiting indoor peppers. They did not set any fruit until natural day length was over 10 hours anyway, so it's hard to say whether the light was strong enough to make a big difference in addition to sunlight. But definitely helped to ripen fruit on plants brought indoors in the fall. The CFL's are great for seedlings because you can put them so close to the lights. With a bigger plant, the light can't really penetrate to the lower leaves, afaik. So if your growing setup is completely free of natural light, you may do better with HPS, but the cost will be significant.