Pepper and Tomato plants unhappy

[Little Nicky]

Hello all, I'm growing indoors in a 2x2 grow tent I made, with an LED grow light. I'm questioning my setup. It gets about 88F in there and I have no fan. Should I add one? My Habanero plant started off great, but now the upper leaves are much smaller than the leaves at the base. It's flowering, but they bloom and fall off. It also drops lower leaves here and there. The upper leaves are a much lighter green. Is it too hot/stagnant air or would there seem to be a nutrient deficiency?

 

[DirtMechanic]

You may need a meter that measures light to bring yourself up to speed on the light issue. They like full sun all day, but translating that into the output of your light is a challenge. ALSO they are too hot. Keep a thermometer in the soil if nothing else. 70-75 is good. The tomato will not pollinate at high temps. I assume you are pollinating them manually?

 

[Little Nicky]

Thanks for the reply, I'll add a fan for better circulation. I have access to a PAR meter, I'll probably borrow it and see what I actually have for output. The light is The Viparspectra 300W, bought from amazon. The light is roughly 4 feet above The pots. The cherry tomato plant actually seems to be doing it's thing, there are two little tomatoes starting so far and I haven't touched the flowers. The pepper plants are what I'm more concerned about. They syarted off really string but now they're growing strange and mostly have leaves only at the top third. I can post a few pictures tomorrow evening if it helps at all.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Do you have a source of ph nuetral water with which to run a soil ph? There is some other detail that is rather important here:

https://hydroponic.co.za/hydroponics-quickstart/plant-phecppm/

The ppm thing is parts per million. In a swimming pool, it would give an indication of say how many ounces or gallons of sulphuric acid to lower ph .5 but in soil the measure come back in numbers like 50 lbs of sulphur per 1000 square feet. It is quantity, so some refer to it as the ability to absorb or not absorb your efforts at change and it is also called the buffering capacity.

Here is another link. Sorry to put you on the dopers hydroponics channel but they are quite active about discussing these indoor situations.

http://www.kindgreenbuds.com/marijuana-grow-guide/difference-between-ppm-and-ec/

 

[Little Nicky]

I'm not sure, I can test my tap water if that will work? I have aquariums and can easily test that.

 

[Little Nicky]

Thanks, I'll check it out. No worries, most of my searching puts me in the forums for the other green stuff. Definitely an active topic and a lot of knowledge in that community.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Tap water is most likely neutral because it saves the pipes. This would only be good for the ph test. The additives will blow up the NPK tests and you need distilled water for that but it will usually come in 10 times more acidic around 6 ph. Go figure- why it is specified on the tests? Maybe to sell more tests?

 

[CanadianLori]

@Little Nicky I have two grow tents. I keep fans going all the time. I also leave a large opening for air to enter the one, then get pulled through to the second which has a vent to the outside. This keeps the air exchanged.

I agree that 88f is too high. Outside they can become acclimatised, well sorta, but inside, i've never had success with this.

These are my hot peppers from a few days ago..

In the other tent are lots of tomato seedlings, more peppers, lettuce, aspargus, onions, nicotiana, and lots more...

I get the odd death here and there but not a full on "crop" failure.

 

[DirtMechanic]

@Little Nicky Those pots seem small? Hard to tell without a banana for scale.

 

[Little Nicky]

Thank you both. I'll get a fan figured out. The pots may be a bit on the small side. I did move the larger habanero because it outgrew the last pot. The roots were all balled up at the bottom. It was larger than the smaller habanero before I moved it. I'm hoping the hot temps are what stunted everything because they were vigorous growers until I moved them into the box, and I used the same light.

 

[DirtMechanic]

I think 5 gallon buckets for the tomato is what I see most of. No idea about the peppers, mine get pretty big outside so I would think 3 gallon would be a minimum.