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.
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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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Now that the New Year is upon us it is time to start thinking about the 2010 chillie growing season. Last year I made the mistake of planting my seeds too late, a mistake I am not going to make again this year.
Firstly I have been overwintering some of my plants in order to get a head start on the season. It will be interesting to see how much more fruit I get from these plants compared to ones I intend to grow from seed (assuming they do make it through the winter!).
Planting Chillies Early Requires Extra Lighting
Growing chillies in the Northern Hemisphere is a bit of a battle against the weather. Ideally you should plant your chilli seeds as early as possible in order to get the most fruit from the plants. By planting my seeds this early i will definitely be using some artificial lighting to help their growth.
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I’ll go into more details about lighting at the time but once the seeds germinate i’ll be using ordinary fluorescent tube lights initially. Once the plants get a bit bigger i’ll switch over to a Compact Fluorescent Gro Lights. As i found out last year this is a great light to give the plants a strong burst of growth until the weather is warm and light enough to move the plants outside here in the UK.
The Varieties I’ll Grow
I have got far too many chilli seeds for my own good. While they store pretty well if kept in a dark airtight container in cool conditions germination rates do fall the older the seeds get. As a result this year i intend not to buy any new seed but instead to try and use up as much of the seed i have already.
On my grow list for sure are habaneros, scotch bonnets (you can’t not grow these varieties!), fatali, tepin, tabasco, cherry bombs as well as several mystery packets that have somehow gone unlabelled.
Disaster has struck my efforts to overwinter a number of chilli plants.
Before going away for a 3 week holiday in the new year I entrusted my overwintering plants top my fathers care as I didn’t want to leave them unwatered for about 3 and a half weeks. At my dads they were moved to a workshop window where there was minimal heating compared to my warm living room.
Well upon my return I received news that the plants had not taken well to the sudden change in temperature. They had dropped all of their leaves and looked decidedly unhappy with life.
I brought them back home and kept them watered in the hope that they would survive however i’ve now come to accept that they have not made it through the winter.
While obviously disappointed that all of my plants failed to make it through the winter I have learned a valuable lesson for next year. Overwintering chilli plants require a warm consistent temperature. It was most likely the sudden shock of moving from my warm flat to a cold workshop that killed them.
I know they are dead because when I snipped the stems of a few of them the inside was completely dried out and hollow.
Oh well, onwards and upwards…best i get on and plant some seeds to make up the loss!
Does anyone have any success stories with overwintering this year? If so do leave a comment below.
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