Hey, so I have my indoor tent set up and light running so I planted a few pepper and tomato plants into some 12" buckets and have them under my 400W HPS. The plants are about 10" tall and still need some growth, but I am not sure how lighting works with these plants. Do they have a vegetative phase and flowering like cannabis? Because they are probably too small still. I also have a MH bulb, would that be better? and I have no idea what light cycle to run, yesterday it was only on 12 hours after I planted them in there. Would a 16 hour schedule be more ideal? I dont want to force these to start producing fruits if they dont have to yet. Also, light distance, they are about 3 ft away from the reflector hood.
Nope, they dont have a flowering or vegative stage, it's all auto. You could run 18/6, 20/4, or whatever cycle you want really. I would go with the MH instead of the HPS
Thanks for the reply, also what would you recommend on how far the light should be from the plants? With cannabis it seems that a large part of your success or failure comes from proper placement of the light. Right now its about 3ft above the plants, do you think 2 and 1/2 would burn them? There is a small fan inside the tent for air movement, but my ventilation is not set up yet, and I opened up the hole on top to exhaust the warm air. Its a rather tropical climate inside my tent right now.
3ft should be fine, but i dont think 2.5 would do any damage. Just keep the fan on 'em and you should be fine.
vegetables will fruit in any given light cycle, and metal halide is best for vegetation so that the internodes dont get too lengthy and make the plants stretch taking up too much room. keep it mind the plants will grow half to twice as much taller during flowering so once they are half as tall as you want them put them into flowering under a hps. hps gives the fall sun spectrum and will encourage big buds flowers and fruits. and as far as light cycles i keep my veggies under 18 hours a day from seed to death because they will grow more fruits the more light they get and 18 hours is a good amount of sun everyday because they still need some sleep. and with good ventilation meaning at least an exhaust fan and a circulating fan inside the room i keep my 400 watt MH 14 inches from the tops of the plants...and for hps distance you really have to play with it, buy a cheap hygrometer from a pet store and dont let the canopy get over 84 degrees or they will start to show heat stress. peace up a down