Poor germination
 

sigh. Ive tried several methods to start peppers over a few years. All poor results.

What has worked for you ?

Not a chile head but I've had better luck with the media, heat and watering pepper growing tips at [url]www.ecoseeds.com[/url]


Reduced peat media, 80-85 temps, reduced watering than is intuitive. I also like to pretreat the media with peroxide
the day before sowing seed

heat mats. very seldom do I have seeds germinate off the heat mat. I have a tray thats been sitting all winter in the greenhouse and I see a few more have popped just sitting on the bench. which just shocked me. but over watering white they are seeds often kills them from fungus or mold growing on the seed shells.

I'll put the pepper seeds in a cotton cloth and soak that one. I put it in a closed box and put it in the heat, 24 ° C for sweet peppers, 28 ° C for hot. I watch it and when most are sprouted, I drop them in cups.
Vladimír

I was the same, until I decided to germinate them on my heater (so intermittent upto 40-50C I guess) in wet paper towels. Ideally you would put it on a heat mat but this also seems to work fine, I get germination in about 5-8 days now, and then I put them in the soil, where it takes like 3 days to emerge.
You just need to keep them wet, and that's it, now germination is clearly faster and also better rates.

So far I see two factors to change.

Treat seed with hydrogen peroxide for one minute. And..
Use distilled water, not well water.

Will try again.

Thank you everyone!!

You are using a sterile seed starting mix I hope? don't use soil. whatever medium you use it must be sterile.

best, and fastest results i have had was starting seeds on top of a cast iron steam radiator we had in the upstairs bedroom. there was a wood shelf on top of the radiator that i put a towel on top of before putting the cell pack with planted seeds. peppers were
usually up within 7 days.

second best is placing planted seeds on a tray over in floor heat vent elevated on each end with some books, so the room would still be heated.
variation is placing seeds in front of heat vent if the vent is at the base of a wall. i usually had the seed tray in a plastic bag to prevent drying out or would put a sheet of plastic wrap over the top of the seed tray.

what i do now, is start seeds underneath our wood stove that we heat with during the winter. its warm enough without cooking the seeds. germination is slower, but most everything sprouts thats going to sprout.
i use sterile seed mix kept moist, but not soaking wet.
lightly cover the seeds with seed starter.
on top of the hot water heater is often a good place to provide bottom heat.
our basement isn't heated however, and temps are only in the mid 40s during the winter
and early spring down there, so i am not confident in starting seeds downstairs.


every year i seem to have mixed results. some varieties, every seed will sprout, other varieties nothing, fresh seeds to boot. germination rates tend to decrease once pepper seeds are 4 to 5 yrs old.

oh, we have well water. thats all we use.



keith

question.

What to use for watering ?? The pepper experts mention do not use tap water because of chlorine and not use well water due to high minerals.....my well water is highly mineralized. Seems like some well water might work.

Its raining....is rain water best ??

I dont think getting to a store to buy a soiless mix is an option right now given the obvious. Have this:

Collected very aged compost, added perlite. Plan to cook it in oven to sterilize.

Anyone see a problem with this?

I've started tomato and peppers in a paper towell placed in a baggie and in a warm dark spot (behind wine bottles on the kitchen counter) in the kitchen. they seem to like 70-80 deg f.

My seeds get soggy and rot using papertowel method.

Use freshest seeds possible? Older seeds do not germinate as well.

/Given all the great sugestions, will try the following.

Well aged compost from my horses ( manure and shavings), add perlite about 25%by volume. Heat in oven and cool. Actually, soil and half of perlite heat treated. About 50% perlite for good drainage.

36 cell tray. new. Yes, used new tray and new inserts.

peroxide seed. Forgot this step.

soak seed in dilute miracle grow plant fertilizer. forgot this step.

put on cover

heating pad.....cooler nite temp??maybe too difficult to manage with current supplies and my personal time

allow longer time for germination.

find distilled water. Got a gallon. The
--Miracle-Gro® "Bloom Booster" 15-30-15 not available. Got Schultz Bloom Plus 10-54-10

Followed old methods and wetted soil with tap water. swutching to obe tabkespoon Schultz to one fal distilled water. Watering in the seed.

Planted about 1/4 inch with 50% perlite compost mix.

put on incubator.

I use little salad dressing containers with a coffee filter, water, heating mat and a snap top.

I don't grow many chillies, but always have one or two plants every year, milder varieties like Early Green Jalapeno, Fish Peppers, Wax Peppers, etc...I've never had any issue just putting the seed straight into the media 0.5cm deep (usually John Innes soil or wormcasts) and germinating in plastic cups on the windowsill, with a wee bit of cling-film loosely draped over the top just to stop the top of the soil drying out as fast. I [I]pretty sure [/I]I've always had 100% germination using seeds that are 1-4 years old:surprised:. I actually get worse germinataion rates with my older tomato seeds lol, but the chillis do germinate more slowly.

I have a friend who likes to grow the super-hot varites like Komodo Dragon, Dragon's Breath and Moruga Scorpion - he seemed top have issues with the germination rate of these and went to the length of trying to get fresh chillis from the shops to remove seeds. I'd always check if my local Tescos had any of the super-hot chillis in stock lol (they sell out very fast!).


Makes me wonder if I've just been lucky with my seed sources, or if some chilli varieties are much harder to germinate?


Edit to add: I do sometimes spray seaweed extract om the surface of the soil of any seeds I'm waiting to germinate if I'm feeding any of my other plants at the same time, but I doubt this would make much difference and don't always do it.

I have never had much trouble starting most pepper seeds but sometimes had problems with damping off or mold with some seed starters. Since I have been using DE as a seed starting medium and watering from the bottom up the only issue I ever have is when I try to start them when the temperatures are far too low. Of course with DE as a medium as soon as they start popping up they will need a bit of dilute fertilizer and I just use a little Miracle Grow about 1/4 strength and increase the dose when they get larger. I transfer them into a potting soil mix in individual cups when they get 5 to 6 inches tall.

Bill

I use heat mats on the pepper seeds. With the exception of the heat mats, my pepper seeds are germinated right beside my tomato plants with all other conditions being identical. My pepper seeds may get a little more water than my tomato seeds. The heat mats cause the pepper seed cells to lose moisture faster through evaporation.


I've found over the years that different pepper varieties germinate at different rates. Some germinate fast and some slow. I always heard that Carolina Reaper is hard to germinate. They germinated quickly for me this year and I got seven plants from seven seeds.


I don't pay much attention to how sterile my germination trays are. I use the same trays year after without washing them. I'm planning on washing them this summer as I pull some old identification stickers off them. I use potting soil but nothing special so long as it doesn't get hard when dry. I usually start the year by purchasing ten, one gallon jugs of distilled water to prevent minerals from building up in the soil as the moisture evaporates. I usually need to buy a couple more jugs of water before plant out. I start watering my seed by adding 1/8th teaspoon of miracle grow fertilizer to the first three gallons of water used. My plants get no more nutrition before plant out. I germinate and grow on a table I built under T8 fluorescent lights starting with the trays about six inches below the lights. My lights are on a timer with sixteen hours on and eight hours off each day. I lower the deck as the plants grow until the deck is about twenty four inches below the lights. When the plants have grown to almost touching the lights, it is usually warm enough outside to put them in the garden. I stopped up potting a few years ago. They do seem to grow faster when up potted, but I don.t need my plants to grow faster.

Looks like everyone has reasonably good sucess with germination and grow out.
The last tray seeded only germinated the sweet peppers, no hots. ( A friend gave me 4 hot peppers to transplant.)

Will buy fresh seed for next year, and try again.

Pepper and eggplant seeds have much shorter life spans than tomatoes (so it seems). I save a lot of pepper seed and when fresh, it can be close to 100%, but that drops off after a few years. I've purchased seed from some companies and have great results when fresh - other companies not at all (Reimer's peppers do not typically germinate well for me). Sweet Bells seem to germinate the best, the super hots not only take longer, but are very small seedlings until it gets warm.

I don't do anything different from all of my other seed starting - inexpensive heat mat, sterile soil less mix (Sun Grow Metro Mix 360 has been my go-to for decades) - seed onto dampened mix, barely cover, mist - then cover loosely with Saran Wrap. Where tomatoes will take 3-4 days, eggplants and peppers are in the 6-8 day range, often longer. Peppers can also tend to helmet head.

very interesting subject. My take is
-- unlike tomato, pepper seeds have very short
viable life.
▪︎▪︎ They need higher temperatures to germinate,
85 to 90f perhaps is optimum
--No matter what, they take much longer than tomatoes
to germinate ...hots, super hots take longer than sweet
and mild ones.
-- finally, patients is a virtue ...can you wait for 3 weeks ??

Pepper germination varies wildly for me, the fact that there are more species certainly makes a difference. Padron or Jalapeno germinate really quick, while rocoto are almost impossible.
Also I think the way seeds are saved makes a much bigger difference in seed quality for eggplant and pepper, I have had very different results from different sources. There's more parameters compared to tomato seed saving, like do you leave the pepper to dry with the seeds in, or how yellow exactly should the eggplant be.

I've just realized that my simple germinating procedure - seeds on tissue in a propagator and adding the mix when they shoot - doesn't work well with pepper seeds. As they take much longer, the tissue tends to get mouldy and infect the seeds. Either I'll use the mix from the beginning or I'll transplant the seeds the moment they put out the root.

Milan HP

What Carolyn K said. Heat is essential. My peppers like around 85 degrees. I use a laser thermometer to check the heat every day.

I used to have a hot pepper plant called Guam Boonies, native to the island of Guam. It was a woody bush plant, unlike other pepper plants. It had to live indoors under a plant light and in front of a south facing window. Long story short, it died after a year and I had no time to start a new one.

So now those peppers are 10 years old. I remember when I planted that one, it took 4 to 6 weeks for germination. I figured the seeds would be dead by now, being kept in a baggie in the cabinet. But I wanted to grow them again, so I broke up one of the dried peppers and put it in a wet paper towel and baggie on a heat mat, in front of a south facing window. I included the dried pepper skins with them. After 5 days, nothing. Then I got some GBA (gibberellic acid) and put a small amount of it on the wet paper towel. Six days later, I have sprouted seeds. I do believe the GBA made the difference, based on the age of the seeds, and how long it took to germinate the original plant seed. So a total of 11 days was all it took to get several 10 yr old seeds germinated.

"Hormonal Regulations During Seed Dormancy:
(i) Gibberellins:
The germination of both dormant and non-dormant seeds has been shown to be stimulated by applied GAs. The stimulatory effect of GAs has been widely reported in seeds where dormancy or quiescence is imposed by different mechanisms like incomplete embryo development, mechanically resistant seed coats and presence of germination inhibitors."

What is GBA and where do you get it

[QUOTE=Hillbillygardner;762326]What is GBA and where do you get it[/QUOTE]

Gibberellic Acid is a natural plant hormone. It is used to break dormancy in seeds to induce germination. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibberellic_acid[/url]

I ordered it off Ebay. [url]https://www.ebay.com/itm/GA3-5g-GIBBERELLIC-ACID-99-BR-Biological-Grade-USA-CAS-77-06-5/183853853242[/url]

Sad to say, my 10 yr old pepper seeds that I got to germinate all fried on the heat mat. For some reason the heat mat thermostat let it shoot up to 104 degrees the day after they started putting out radicles. There appeared to be plenty of moisture in the bag due to heavy condensation on the top of the bag, but the paper towel and seeds were dried up when I went to plant them. So I'm starting over with another pepper's worth, 12 seeds. This time I am trying another method. I soaked them for 10 minutes in bleach and rinsed well. Then I put them in water with a little gibberellic acid, and put them under a red light for 12 hours. These are germination tips I have read about, but have no experience with other than the red light. Going to put them in a paper towel today. Fingers crossed!!!

[QUOTE=Shapshftr;762361]Sad to say, my 10 yr old pepper seeds that I got to germinate all fried on the heat mat. For some reason the heat mat thermostat let it shoot up to 104 degrees the day after they started putting out radicles. There appeared to be plenty of moisture in the bag due to heavy condensation on the top of the bag, but the paper towel and seeds were dried up when I went to plant them. So I'm starting over with another pepper's worth, 12 seeds. This time I am trying another method. I soaked them for 10 minutes in bleach and rinsed well. Then I put them in water with a little gibberellic acid, and put them under a red light for 12 hours. These are germination tips I have read about, but have no experience with other than the red light. Going to put them in a paper towel today. Fingers crossed!!![/QUOTE]
I've heard of using bleach to trigger germination, especially when the seeds are old. Somehow I am afraid of it. What strength of the solution did you use? And for how long?

Thank you.
Milan HP

[QUOTE=decherdt;754465]Not a chile head but I've had better luck with the media, heat and watering pepper growing tips at [url]www.ecoseeds.com[/url]


Reduced peat media, 80-85 temps, reduced watering than is intuitive. I also like to pretreat the media with peroxide
the day before sowing seed[/QUOTE]


Try a seed starting mix that has some heft to it. I used Miracle Grow which was my only choice to have shipped locally. It contains bark/compost and does not appear as peaty as Jiffy.

One of my potting mixes is suspect of being a fungus gnat source. Not fun hosting them inside the home. I've seen the larvae squirm around thru a lens and did a root wash when the plants were small. Something to consider monitoring if you notice gnats. They just went into the up-potted final containers and are doing well , especially since they were able to go outside for a few days when the weather was unusually warm. Still have fungus gnats that come and go though.
- Lisa