Newbie Help

Hello All,
I am 17 years old and am ready to start my first grow. This was kind of a curiosity to me, and my seeds just came in. I got Trinidad Scoripan, Brain Strain, Reaper, Coco Naga Morich, Choco Hab, and Ghost Pepper. I was wondering if it is too late to start for this year (I live in Northern VA). Also a basic idea on how to do this (Keep the temp around 85F) (Keep Soil wet).... What I want to know is any tips you guys might have, such as if I should soak seeds or not, how many seeds per cup when sprouting, how deep to put seeds, what soil to use (I only have access to home depot), and how to keep the temp up (I dont have grow pads, I have fluorescent tubes and a heating pad though?

No it's not too late.  Just keep them indoors until after last frost.  Just before then on warmer days you can set them out to harden off but bring them back in before the eveneing chill.  You want them damp but not drowning.
 
1.  I don't soak but some do
2.  I do 2 seeds per cell/cup.  Once they're 3" or so I separate. 
3.  I use MG seed starting soil. 
4.  I don't use heating pads or anything.  The house stays around 75 and it's fine for germinating. Once I get one sprouting the tray goes under lights and the dome comes off

So.. When do we start to put them under lights exactly? I'm a newbie as well and i have my habanero and pumpkin pepper starting to germinate. Excited but panicking at the same time thinking about lights and spindly seedling. >.<

i hope not i started yesterday !!!! LOL
 
no not too late
 
Browning hit the nail on the head his advice is very similar to mine
 
thanks your friend Joe

Kyox89 said:

So.. When do we start to put them under lights exactly? I'm a newbie as well and i have my habanero and pumpkin pepper starting to germinate. Excited but panicking at the same time thinking about lights and spindly seedling. >.<

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as soon as the sprout, no light needed until then
i dont have my lighting system running yet saves on buld life
thanks your friend Joe

I am still starting seeds probably will for the next 2 weeks. Plant in dirt 80 temp is better but use what ever temp you have, apply light when they germinate. Not too wet peppers hate wet feet.

Thanks for the reply, joe!

Hey, Firecracker. Starting with some hot ones. Why not. eh?
 
I shop for gardening supplies with my daugther at the Leesburg HDepot when I'm visiting.
Unless you are bound to organic, I'd go with Miracle Grow Moisture Control soil. It's is very forgiving until you figure out how to not to over-water peppers.
It should have enough nutrients to get you to plant-out from this point. 
Are you going to use containers or do you have a garden plot?

Nice list.
Not too late.
use paper towel method, then you can put one per cup, no wasted space/dirt on bad sprouts.
Get some trays @ lowes / depot, to put your cups in, put hole in bottom of cups so excess water can drain out
Miracle grow is pretty newbie friendly.
enclose the seeds / light in box (cardboard is your cheap friend) that will keep the heat from light in there and warm...
yeah i don't even use heating pad. flourescent tubes could be enough how many plants?
 
 
hope this will help you..

Here is my method:
 
 
Posted 18 February 2014 - 06:21 AM
I germinate in plastic bag with paper towel wrapped inside a bath towel ontop of a seedling mat. When they germinate I move them into the rockwool cubes - just when the root barely starts coming out (about 2-5mm), this way I don't damage them. Once the roots get longer, they can bend and crack. And once you break the main tap root when it is only 1cm long, the seed is done for. I then cover the seed in the rockwool cubes by combing the rockwool material over the germinated seed with a tooth pick.
 
Rockwool cubes ph'd to 5.6
 
Once the seeds are in the cubes, I put them into a hunidity dome with a seedling matt under it and all of the vents closed. As soon as the first time I see any green at all, I either put the dome under a regular daylight CFL bulb or I put them in my bug grow area in the far back corner.
 
I generally keep them like this until the second set of leaves comes out for most, if not all. Which I start acclimating them to natural humidity by opening the vents a little, and then a lot until the whole lid comes off over the course of a few to several days (depends on how dry it is outside of the dome).
 
Usually the cubes will only need to be watered once the whole time until the vents are opened.Do not over water the baby seedlings. You can pick up the cubes at any time to see how light they are. When they are dry and need water, you can tell, trust me.
 
After that, when the cubes are out in the open and under a stronger light, I use a turkey baster to drip the nutrient solution that I mix up. Until I decide whether each cube will go into soil or hydro, I keep upping the nutrient solution. I start the nutrients when I first see a good root peek out of the bottom of the cube. I will start off with a full dose of cal-mag (I use light/full dose of cal-mag with EVERY watering I give, from clone to harvest). And then I add nutrients, starting somewhere around 200-400ppm. I gradually bring the ppms up as the plants grow. I never need to pass 800-900ppm even with full growing plants (in my DWC system). A lot of people use higher ppms, but I base it off of what the plant uses. But determining how much a plant uses is a whole other topic and I have way over done this one as is /sorry

Lets see how many pics I can put on one post at a time...
 






But, I do hydro AND soil, that is why I use the rockwool cubes

It isn't too late, but you should get it done this week. I live close to Leesburg and you probably will want to transplant outside last week of May, June 1 to be safe. 
 
When you put your seedlings under lights, Keep the light about 4" away from top of the plants, but no further. This way, the plants will not stretch for the light and be weak and spindly. A plain shop light works fine. The cheapest one I found was walmart for 20$ including bulbs. I buy t8 fixtures with a Kelvin of 5000 (daylight) for the bulbs -  but I don't know a lot about lighting. This is what works for me. 
 
In order to adjust the height you will need to buy 2 lengths of chain from Lowes, about 49 cents per foot, and 2 hooks. The chains that come in the box are a joke. 
 
This helped me when I was getting started --- http://www.ecoseeds.com/Pepper.growing.tips.html

Mallory said:

This helped me when I was getting started --- http://www.ecoseeds.com/Pepper.growing.tips.html

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Thanks, that's a very interesting read!
 
It states "Keep containers 80-85°F (30°C) during the day and 60-70°F (20°C) at night."
 
I've been leaving my heat mat on 24/7 - noob mistake?  What do you guys do?

I left my heat mat on 24/7 without issues.

thirdcoasttx said:

I left my heat mat on 24/7 without issues.

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Same here.

Definitely not too late to start, I'm likely going to try to start another round of 7 Pot whites and Brain Strain yellows this evening. 
 
Main thing is to keep the seeds warm, they should be moist, not wet, don't let them dry out...germination domes are good for this...and if you encounter mold use a few drops of hydrogen peroxide. I'd recommend browsing the forum a little for some tips.  Everyone has a different germination method and will tell you something different.
 
Good luck!

I just.. Built a low tech grow box yesterday and placed the seedlings under. Seems to show some changes but yet to determine if my growbox works. I only used an 8W t5 cfl with 6700k. I hope thats not an overkill amount of kelvins. Err.. The box didnt show the lumens though.

Also i noticed the tips of the leaves of my seedlings are abit yellowish. It could be my overimagination as i suspect it to be overwatering. Please advice.

Thanks guys!

I was planning on waiting until the second week of april to start my seeds due to an upcoming vacation. Is this too late?

BurninBob said:

I was planning on waiting until the second week of april to start my seeds due to an upcoming vacation. Is this too late?

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You might want to buy live plants if your waiting that long.....takes 1-2 weeks to germinate that will only give you 4-6 weeks they will be little. Just my 2 cents

You might want to buy live plants if your waiting that long.....takes 1-2 weeks to germinate that will only give you 4-6 weeks they will be little. Just my 2 cents


I've already bought seeds. I have an aerogarden with the seed starter kit. I'm thinking start some in there now so they can go while I'm gone (make sure water reservoir is full when I leave) and then I transplant when I get back. Then I will start some more seeds when I get back from vacation using the dome and grow under a Sunleaves Pioneer VIII to make up for lost time. Thoughts?

BurninBob said:

I've already bought seeds. I have an aerogarden with the seed starter kit. I'm thinking start some in there now so they can go while I'm gone (make sure water reservoir is full when I leave) and then I transplant when I get back. Then I will start some more seeds when I get back from vacation using the dome and grow under a Sunleaves Pioneer VIII to make up for lost time. Thoughts?

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People start them in January so we have adolescent plants by the time we transplant outdoors. 4 or 5 weeks old is only a small seedling(2 weeks germ, 2 weeks first true leaves). If we start in january our plants are already very thick/strong and close to a foot tall or more. 
 
This means we get peppers faster, we can start blooming a week or two after transplant whereas if you do seedlings just 4 weeks before you still got atleast 5+ weeks before blooms.

By sheer coincidence I stopped by my local Worm's Way on my way home from work and was delighted to find out that today's deal of the day is 45% off the Sunleaves Pioneer VIII, so I bought one!  I got it out of the box and plugged in and wow is this thing bright!  At first I wasn't too impressed, but as the bulbs warmed up it started getting insane bright!  Cant wait to get this project going, will be getting the Dark Room DR120 48" x 48" x 80" next, unless someone can convince me that the Dark Street or Homebox are just as good.