Growing peppers under lamps

What you need to know

Sunlight is best.
No matter how many lamps you set up and how bright the light may look to us, it's still nothing compared to the light of the sun on a hot summer day.

But if you live in a northern climate, you can give your peppers a little headstart in the winter, and prolong the season.
It is definitely possible to grow peps under artificial lights inside a closet or indoors mini-greenhouse.

But first you need to know a few things about light and how plants respond to it, so watch and learn :

Now that you learned what lightcolor you need, let's have a look at some different lamps.

Remember : More is more. You'll want to get a good ratio on light output and energy consumption. The more lumens per watt, the better.

In this section I am not discussing professional growing systems with high pressure sodium lamps. Only your regular basic bulbs available at any hardware store for the novice homegrower or average ham and egger chili pepper enthusiast.

incandescent lights (regular lightbulbs)

Forget it.
These obsolete bulbs are unsuitable for growing chilies (or any other plants for that matter) indoors and are about to be banned in Europe anyways.

The only thing these bulbs are good for is smoking crack !!!

The reason why they suck so much ass is the astronomic electricity bill you'll ramp up using them, and their pitiful performance :
Incandescent bulbs emit no less than 90% of the consumed energy in the form of heat, and only 10% in light. Talk about some inefficient bullshit !
Incandescent bulbs are basically little heaters that give off some light as a by-product. And the light they emit is the wrong kind of light ! Sure, it may well be visibible to the human eye, but a plant can't do much with it.

compact fluorescent lamps (CFL's)

The modern, regular energy saving lamp is basically a folded up neon light tube.
While not ideal, the CFL performs much better ! Consuming only a fraction of the electricity an incandescent bulb uses, the CFL has a lifetime of about 10 years, and it also emits the kind of light that plants can use to grow. You'll want to shoot for color temperatures of 2700K up to 6500k, (I found 4000K to work fine), and highest lumen output per watt.

neon tubes

With minimal investment you should be able to get decent results using a couple of neon tubes, which are available from any hardware store. Especially is you use the 'cool white' bright ones. Their low energy consumption is a plus. The 4 x 32 watt combo I'm using consumes about as much energy as a computer monitor.

LED (light emitting diodes)

LEDs are relatively new on the market, and still pricey.
Some of the advantages of LED panels are their minute energy consumption, even lower than energy savers. LED's have another advantage :
It is possible to make color combinations that empasize the high blue and the low red ranges of the light spectrum that plants need to grow.

Some people boast incredible results growing peppers under LED units.