If like me you don’t get round to planting your peppers early then there are a couple of ways you can speed up the germination and growth of your chilli plants in the early stages of their life.
In this post we’ll take a look at how you can speed up the germination of your chilli peppers, helping you get your chilli growing season back on track.
photo by grass-naps
Some chilli pepper varieties are renowned for being slow to germinate. While common varieties such as Cayenne or Jalapeño can germinate in just a few days, harder to grow varieties such as Naga or Bhut Jolokia can take up to a couple of months to germinate.
How I Speed Up Germination
Seeds love warm constant heat. Giving them this will help to speed up the germination process significantly. Unless you leave your central heating on all day and night it can be very hard to supply your seeds with a constant heat.
I use a heat mat designed for a reptile vivarium. These mats emit a constant warm temperature and use very little power and are intended to keep snakes and other reptiles nice and warm in their tanks. I discovered a while ago that they also make great heat mats for chillies and other plants!
I simply use standard 24 cell seed trays and regular potting compost (sieved) to plant my seeds. On each heat mat i can place two seed trays. I simply plug the mat in and bingo, my seeds have a steady stream of heat at the perfect temperature required for germination.
I have found that using these heat maps can speed up germination by as much as four times. In addition I believe that they also increase germination rates.
One word of caution – be sure to check your seed trays moisture levels more often as the extra heat will mean they are more likely to dry out quicker and need more watering.
Have you got any tips to help speed up the germination of your plants? If so please let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Hi there,
I purchased 4 types of chillis this year including the Ghost Chilli! All of those germinated and have grown vigorously. I have been having a problem with the leaves dying off and going yellow from the deep green they were. I have 90% of them outside in Lincolnshire England. Will they survive or is the yellowing a sign of it been too cold or are they suffering from something else?
Andy Mahoney
Andy – I suspect the yellowing is almost certainly a sign of the plants being too cold. Hopefully they should survive (frosts should be over) and flourish once summer finally sets. If you can bring them inside until the weather improves I would do as it will only help your plants.
Good luck and let us know how they get on!
It’s too cold for the to be outside at the moment. Bring them in until at dusk and put them out again only when it’s warm. Hopefully summer should be here soon but until then keep em in.
Hi andy,
More likely the yellowing is being caused by too much water.
A quick germination tip is to keep them in the boiler cupboard, or an airing cupboard. If space is limited in there and you don’t have any propagator trays, then clean plastic (or foil, better still for conducting heat) takeaway trays with sieved moist compost and covered with clingfilm. I stack them up and check on them daily and make sure the compost is kept moist.
Once they sprout move them to a sunny spot.
Propagator trays work the best as you don’t get the roots tangled up, but maybe if you have an empty box of chocolates with plastic trays for each chocolate they could work – costs around the same as a propagator…