I planted 2 varieties of peppers a few months ago, then 3 varieties of tomatoes a few weeks later, then some more bell peppers, and finally some cherry tomatoes that I couldn’t walk past in the seed store. It feels a little crazy to start so many plants but there are so many seeds in a pack and this is so simple it’s easy to get carried away.

Right now the tomatoes are doing really well and growing into the lights. Normally you would just raise the lights a bit and move on. The problem is that the peppers and other younger plants want the light really close to improve light intensity. The intensity for light decreases exponentially based on distance so you want things really tight so the plants dont stretch and get “leggy”.

So here’s what the problem looks like:

The solution is simple. All I have to do is transplant the big plants into another tub. Then I can lower the lights to about an inch above the smaller plants. In dirt farming you can relate effort, mess, and stress to the plant with the word transplant. In hydro, you just lift out the net pot and tuck the roots into a new hole. If the nutes and ph are the same in both tubs, the plants dont really stress at all.

Tags: Common problem, Peppers, Seedlings, Tomato