What's up everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening podcast. Today we are taking a question from Camlesch who says

If I were to grow chili peppers indoors hydroponically and give them the temperature and light that they need,

can I grow them all year round? I would like to have a steady harvest of chilies all year long if possible.

Now I can answer that question directly. The short answer is yes, but what

I'm going to answer instead is the why behind that, because I strongly believe that if you

understand the why behind some of the answers to these questions,

then eventually you'll start to build a working knowledge of how this stuff works,

how gardening works, how growing plants works, and you'll be able to answer a lot of these questions on your own.

So the question he's really asking is, does hydroponics allow you to extend the growing season?

And if you've listened to some of my other episodes on

hydroponics, you'll know that the answer is yes, partly because you get to

control your environment completely. First of all, you're not using light from the

sun, at least in most cases, especially if you're going indoors.

You are creating light via indoor grow lights.

Now that means that you're not subject to the changes in the seasons. It can be summer all year long for your plants if you want it to be.

Conversely you can also change the photo period, meaning the time that light is on versus off during the day, to

simulate a winter for some plants that may need that. Now when it comes to

chili peppers growing hydroponically indoors, sure you can grow them all year round.

Of course your plants will grow through a vegetative and flowering phase,

and you may need to keep starting new plants to keep your grow cycle going, but in general,

that is one of the major benefits of hydroponics is that you can grow year-round for most crops.

The question often is is it cost effective to do so. Some people would say

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