GardenBanter.co.uk - Hydroponic adventures with hot peppers

I'm fairly new to hydroponics, the learning curve for people who don't
grow pot is rather steep!

I live in eastern Ontario, Canada and frost is a nightly event now. But
let me go back to Spring.

According to my logs I started hot peppers from seed Apr 7 in the
"one-inch" cubes. May 30 I transplanted them to the greenhouse,
individually into 6 inch pots, filled with hydrocorn and ran drippers
into them.

As spring and summer progressed a number of them died off from the
heat. I added a fan to improve the air flow. The survivors remained
stunted. Then in September as the temperatures cooled they started to
grow quickly and fruit.

But no ripening.

I dawned on me a month ago that the hydroponic store sells two distinct
formulae, the Grow and the Bloom. On my last visit I finally asked and
discovered that I should have switched to Bloom once the blooms emerged
(no directions on the containers of course!).

But I'm growing a lot of herbs and lettuce from the same reservoir and
I don't want them to fruit, so I stuck with the Grow formula.

And the peppers continue to bloom and fruit and boy are they ever
green!

A few weeks ago I added a construction heater to keep everything alive.

And finally today one of the dozens of peppers is getting some colour.
I hope that I can keep the heat going long enough to get my crop
harvested.

Clearly I'm going to need an outdoor situation for them next year.
Plans afoot....