[Market-farming] starting pepper plants

Chris Reid chriscreid at yahoo.com
Thu May 7 08:57:56 EDT 2009


Agreed on heat being the key to quick germination with peppers.  After getting no germination on some peppers planted earlier in cooler conditions, at the last possible moment for pepper planting I presprouted mine  -- presoaked and then downloaded into a coffee filter.  I write the seed name and date on the filter before adding the seeds.  Folded the moist coffee filter and seeds, and put them into a ziplock.

Now not everyone will be able to be as high tech as I am.  I then placed the seeds in a cabinet on top of the blueray disc player, under the TIVO unit and closed the cabinet door.  The seeds were sprouted in no more than 4-5 days  I planted shallowly and the green parts came up within about 3 or less days, 100%.

To quantify what I had just done, I placed a thermometer in the cabinet with the door closed and it hit 100 degrees. Open, it was only about 70.  

I also tried to presprout some old candlelight peppers that had not been stored properly.  I presoaked, heated,  soaked again  in 1 tsp fish hydrolysate and 1 cup water (they got white as if about to sprout), TIVO'd some more, and finally  put the baggie on a heating mat that I knew was "hot".  Well,  came back the next day and the water in the bag with the seeds was steaming.  Uh Oh.  Got out the thermometer.  I can't tell you how hot it was -- the thermometer pegged at 120 degrees.  

Not willing to assume they'd been steamed or parboiled, I put the seeds into a container of moist seedling mix, lightly covered, and left them to their own devices.  Several have now sprouted, in spite of the hot water treatment.  It is not recommended to emulate this second method - It's not a high germination rate - maybe 25 per cent - but it was an experiment anyhow (and then some...).  

I would definitely presprout again -- it is space efficient to presprout the peppers and uses less energy to sprout the seeds and plant than to heat dozens of trays.

Chris Reid
Stamford, CT





      
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