Pepper seed germination

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blissful

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Last year I read that people are using the yogurt setting on the instapots to germinate seeds in 3-5 days instead of 9-11 days.
I usually just plant them in the house in pots on a heat mat and then wait for the 11 days...which is really a long time if the seeds don't germinate and we have to replant, which we often do for those that didn't germinate.


So this year, I don't have an instapot (nor want one yet), I'm germinating seeds in plastic containers w/paper towel and water, sealed, then in zip lock gallon bags, then into the dehydrator. I can set the dehydrator to 95 degrees and get just under 100 deg F for long period of time. I measured the temperature before starting.


Monday I began two kinds of bell peppers. My red peppers, and my mutant yellow peppers. I saved the seeds last year, separately. I was really pleased with our crop. This year we only plan on planting 30 in the garden and we'll give away and sell off the extras...so we'll have an abundance.



I'll check them tonight, then again hoping for germination tomorrow. We'll take a plant tweezer and put them in the prepared pots we have ready in the house, on a heated mat. It's the only transplants we'll be starting in the house, the rest are winter sown. (with more winter sown seeds needing to go out even now)
 
I did that on the yogurt/low setting, in little petri cups, with several layers of PT inside. Kept the temp about 90°, testing several older varieties I only tried once, so no waste. 95° would probably work, at least for most hot peppers - I've heard of higher temps not working as well with some bells and sweet peppers, bred in cooler climates, which made sense. As I pointed out to a fellow gardener, on another forum, who was concerned about possibly damaging seeds with 115° "heat treatment" (some seed companies will say this was done to kill some pathogens), this temperature is probably reached in many tropical areas, and the body temperature of most birds is around 106°, some higher, and the heat, and digestive juices actually helps the seeds! If only we could approximate that...:LOL:
 
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:LOL: well you could eat them then collect the......:LOL:


I checked the seeds tonight, 48 hours into it, the had lost a little moisture but not dry. I added a 1/2 teaspoon of water, repacked them, back into the dehydrator.


I'll check tomorrow. I'm really excited about this and hoping it speeds up germination.
 
This is for blissful , and anyone else that is looking into soaking peppers in a solution:
https://curiouscultivations.com/2020/04/14/priming-pepper-seeds/

I was actually looking to see if any tests were conducted comparing soaking pepper seeds in H2O2 and KNO3. None I could find, but I found this interesting article comparing 3 solutions with plain water - KNO3, K2SO4, and Na2SO4. What I found interesting was the concentration, which was about 4 times what I have always used! When I read the g/l amounts, I knew that was definitely higher, so I weighed the saltpeter on my small scale I use for those things, and 7.6 g was right about a tsp/cup of water, while I have always used the recommended (by something way back) 1/4 tsp/c. So I made up that solution, and I'm going to soak some unwanted seeds, though not too old, 12 and 24 hours, to see how they compare. I still have time to play around! :LOL:

No success with those ancient Maui Purple seeds, but I might try a few in this!

It was strange that the water had a higher germination rate (though I haven't noticed this in the past), but the soaking solutions definitely speeded things up.

As I was setting up those cups of pepper seeds, I decided to try some tomato seeds for both 12 and 24 hrs, and some eggplant seeds for 12 hrs. And finally, some diluted H2O2 - 1 tb/c of water, which some lady said she had great success with last season, so I figured I'd compare that!

If I had found this article before, I would have tried this earlier, but I still have about 3 weeks until my usual time to plant pepper seeds - maybe a little earlier for habaneros.

My next mad scientist experiment, comparing the 12 and 24 hr soaking times, using the new, more concentrated solution. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
 
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I grow peppers in my hydroponic gardens.

Here are Pot-O-Penos after 7 days planted:
IMG_6045.jpg

Here they are at 52 days planted:
IMG_6186.jpg

Here are some other Jalapenos at 85 days planted:
IMG_6007.jpg

More recently, I've started using a Seed Starter System. Here are some flowers at 3 days:
IMG_6165 (2).jpg

I really like the Seed Starter tray. I can transfer only those that germinate to a new garden.

I've never heard of Plant Tweezers!
 
Pepperhead, very cool! Now that's on my mind!

Ginny, they are what I call plant tweezers, they are longer and easier to pick up seeds. I think they are originally for stamp collectors, a philatelic tweezers, lol. I like your creature too.
 
Pepperhead, very cool! Now that's on my mind!

Ginny, they are what I call plant tweezers, they are longer and easier to pick up seeds. I think they are originally for stamp collectors, a philatelic tweezers, lol. I like your creature too.

Thanks & I'll look for the tweezers. I have some tiny tweezers, but I can see how longer ones would be nice and allow a better view!

Thanks for the creature comment too. Those are my Garden Gnomes! ;) DH teases me about them. They come in handy if anyone needs to be held back or propped up for a bit!
 
I have a bunch of tweezers I use for planting - some just plastic, black ones, which are great for picking up the seeds. And I have a number of those ultra fine tweezers (used to get them from Harbor Freight for 99¢, for removing wood splinters!), plus all those eye loupes (also from Harbor Freight!), which are great for those dust like seeds, or for peeling those seed coats off sprouts, that won't come off on their own.

Got the first batch of 12 hour seeds drained, and in the dishes in the IP, at 10 am. At 10 pm, I'll drain those last three 24 hour ones, and get them in the warmer. Then, wait!
First batch of various seeds, soaked 12 hrs, now in the Instant Pot, keeping warm. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
 
The thing that I most often use tweezers for would be removing an "extra" seedling...thinning seedlings. I have created my own method for planting...I count out the number of seeds I wish to use as I place them in one of my tiny bowls used for mise en place, then I grab a tiny funnel and place that in my sponge to be planted, dump the bowl into the funnel, presto, done! ;)
 
I just checked my seeds. I have the red bells in one container and the yellow bells in the other. I'm not seeing any germination on the red ones. I see almost half of the yellow bell seeds have started germinating! I'm 6 hours early for 72 hours since they started. Woo Hoo.

We'll plant some tonight and I sure hope the red bells start germinating too.
 
I just checked my seeds. I have the red bells in one container and the yellow bells in the other. I'm not seeing any germination on the red ones. I see almost half of the yellow bell seeds have started germinating! I'm 6 hours early for 72 hours since they started. Woo Hoo.

We'll plant some tonight and I sure hope the red bells start germinating too.

It is truly a thrill to see them come to life! Congrats! Pictures, please!
 
That's great, blissful! Hope everything sprouts this well!

Thanks for those pics, Ginny! Amazing how things grow in hydroponics!

 
Well, I'm not seeing germination on the red bells. We started another batch from a different group of bell pepper seeds.


pepperhead-I was looking at the link you provided, twice now. In the solutions....is it a typo or is it correct....that some are held for 12-15 hours, while the last two solutions hold it for 12-15 days? Hours, Days of 'priming time'? It just made no sense to hold it for 12 days in a solution (salt of some kind). What do you make of it?
 
blissful, I think those were typos, and they were supposed to say hours, like the first line - the germination time is supposedly a day or less for all of them after the soak, and I don't think anything would be soaked that long!

They also say to put the seeds in sprouters - something that I do with really old seeds, but no way I could do that with 15 or more types of peppers! And they say to leave them in the sprouter until 3" - something that I never do with a sprouter.
 
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Thanks Pepperhead, I feel better about it now just hearing you also say you think it must be a typo.



While my seeds were germinating or not, mr bliss found our phone in a snow bank that was melting--we'd thought it was stolen, it was not. It had a case on it. It is a samsung galaxy. So we washed the case and lanyard, then wiped down the phone. Then put the phone in the dehydrator overnight. It had humidity showing up in the camera area. I charged it up this morning and installed updates, lol. It works, crazy that it works! It had been missing for a few months, buried in a snow bank! So he has a phone just for playing games on, I guess. (now we know that the dehydrator at 100 deg F is good for drying out a phone)
 
Speaking of those peppers, I checked those seeds in the IP after 28 hours, and the only sprout was a pepper sprout, in the H2O2 dish! It probably sprouted a few hours earlier, as it is over ¼", and those pepper seeds are all mixed (except for the habaneros), and 3-6 years old.

 
A few more sprouts at 36 hrs - a 12 hr tomato and 12 hr pepper, and another in the H2O2 dish. No eggplants or habaneros yet.

 
We've planted 18 yellow bell peppers and 18 red bell peppers so far. Day 6 since we started the seeds in the dehydrator at 100 deg F. Hopefully more tomorrow.
 
Still no eggplant or habanero sprouts, and just a few more peppers in the other groups. Almost all of the tomatoes have sprouted, in both dishes, which is not surprising - tomatoes don't usually need special treatment to sprout! The habaneros were new last season, just not keepers, which is why I used them.

Most of my brassicas sprouted in the pots, and many of the shallots sprouted - the ones soaked in GA-3 and KNO3, but not a single one just soaked in water.

 
After 5 days, almost all of the regular peppers and tomato seeds sprouted, both 12 and 24 hr soakers. Not as many of the H2O2 soakers sprouted, but not significant. And little difference between the two groups. Still no eggplant sprouts, but last night a 24 hr habanero seed had sprouted, after 6 days, and today, after 7 days, there was one 12 hr sprout, and 4 out of 5 of the 24 hr ones have sprouted. And these were all seeds from the same packet, and only a year old. So it definitely made a difference with these, to soak longer.

In a couple of days, I'll start soaking my chinense seeds for this season - chocolate habanero, aji dulce, and red Carolina reapers. Almost everything else in 2 weeks.
 

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