My apologies to Pam, I sent my answer via private email -
that was a mistake, I'd meant it to go to the newsgroup.

Pat


I'm always curious about new pepper varieties, are the
pepper seeds they sent you bred to be smaller, or are
they from a variety that is already smallish? I can think of
several that would do well in small pots, Prairie Fire or
Bird's Eye Peppers come to mind, as well as any of the
ornamental types. I grow the Bird's Eye Peppers and
Fish peppers in pots, although I wouldn't call a Fish
pepper a dwarf. I do have one in my front flower
bed because they're awfully pretty.

Sorry to be unclear - they only sent me tomato seeds, not
pepper seeds. I bought the pepper seeds from
http://www.seedman.com - they are 'Mini-Bell'.
I selected the Mini-Bell variety because I don't like hot
peppers, and this was one of the few sweet peppers I found
that is said to be 'mini'.


I'm fortunate enough to have a very large bay window that
gets sun from three directions - the whole affair sticks out
from the house. It's almost like a mini-greenhouse. The
window ledge is 2' x 8' - so I have 16 sf of growing space
all winter.

What will you do about the photo period? I visited a cough
friend up that way last spring, and the days were still so much
shorter than ours down South. He said it's dark by around 4:00
in December.

This is true. I'm going to - at first - happily assume it's
not a problem, that peppers and tomatoes aren't very
sensitive to it. You know, if it ain't broke....

But if it turns out to be a problem, we could hang
fluorescent lights from the top of the bay window area -
from its 'ceiling' if you will - to extend the hours of
light.

Alternatively - each afternoon I could just move the plants
over from the bay window ledge to the shelves with
fluorescent lights that we already have in the living room
(that's where I start my seeds - I have four 4'x1' shelves
for seed-starting). These shelves are right next to the
bay window: it wouldn't be difficult to do, especially if I
group the plant pots in larger containers.

I will probably feel that I need to move the plants out of
the bay window area at night when the weather is really cold
anyway - we draw lined draperies across the area at night,
to conserve heat in the house, and it gets pretty cold there
at night. Especially when it's below zero weather
outside...

Pat