I finally grew tired of buying nursery starts of boring 'ol mild chile's and Jalapeño plants as well as wasting money on mediocre habanero pods from grocery stores. And since I've been gardening most of my life, I figured it was time to try my hand at a pepper garden from seed. Thankfully I found this forum awhile ago and tried out one of the vendors; Refining Fire Chile's (Original post: http://thehotpepper.com/topic/69512-refining-fire-chiles/?view=findpost&p=1617287).
With a small budget, I purchased two Sansi 40W full spectrum grow lights, two light sockets, seedling starting trays, a Vivosun 20" x 20" heat mat, and an Ohuhu heat mat thermostat. I built an adjustable wood rack to hold the lights from some scrap pine, made an oak plywood base to put the heat mat on and began my seeds using two methods.
For the first batch I softened the seeds and planted them in the seed trays with FoxFarm Ocean Forest potting soil. I chose this because of the ground shells, worm casings and bat poo. Plus a local nursery sold the 1.5y bags for $10 and some change.
For the second batch I used the damp paper towel method inside zip-lock bags. I like this method because I can monitor the seed germination more easily. However the soil produced quicker growth. Far better than soils I've used for garden veggies over the years. I might stick with this FoxFarm blend for awhile since I'm happy with it so far.
As mentioned in my vendor post, I purchased:
-Aji Pineapple (I love citrus flavors)
-MOA Scotch Bonnet (Because they rock)
-Bahamian Goat
-Orange Pepperoncini (To pickle for my wife)
-Trinidad Perfume (Gotta have a mild pepper once in awhile)
Freebies in my order included:
-Aji Guyana (Really excited about these)
-El Rito (New to me)
-Alba Regia (Should be a nice, mild pepper to snack on)
Additionally, I harvested seeds last year from:
-Orange Habanero
-Golden Ghost Pepper (These were fantastic and about as hot as I prefer to go on a regular basis)
-Red Bhut Jolokia (This should be interesting since it grew all season up against Cherry Bomb, Habanero and Jalepeno plants so cross pollination was very high)
The Aji Guyana all germinated overnight in the damp paper towel.. I was blown away by how quick they sprouted. The rest took 4-8 days to start emerging from the soil. Two problem growers were the Bahamian Goat, which I've had to pull the seed off the leaves on most of them, and the Trinidad Perfume, which took 10+ days to start germinating and have had a 20% success rate of becoming seedlings. I currently have 2 of these growing very slowly from 15 seeds.Hopefully at least one plant matures.
So as of now, in less than 3 weeks I have pepper seedlings growing out my ears with the El Rito and Orange Pepperoncini growing the quickest and healthiest, both Aji's and the MOA are right behind them. I think there are nearly 50 seedlings growing on the heat mat maintaining 76-81 degrees with both lights about 15" above them running 14-16 hours a day. About 10 of these have grown 4 leaves now.
I will post updates periodically as I learn my way through growing a pepper garden under grow lights. It'll be nice using this to track my progress for future reference as well.
Images include:
Lights & thermostat
A tray of seedlings
Aji Guyana seeds after 36 hours
All the seedlings crammed on the heat mat
Orange Pepperoncini and El Rito plants starting their second set of leaves
A happy little MOA
With a small budget, I purchased two Sansi 40W full spectrum grow lights, two light sockets, seedling starting trays, a Vivosun 20" x 20" heat mat, and an Ohuhu heat mat thermostat. I built an adjustable wood rack to hold the lights from some scrap pine, made an oak plywood base to put the heat mat on and began my seeds using two methods.
For the first batch I softened the seeds and planted them in the seed trays with FoxFarm Ocean Forest potting soil. I chose this because of the ground shells, worm casings and bat poo. Plus a local nursery sold the 1.5y bags for $10 and some change.
For the second batch I used the damp paper towel method inside zip-lock bags. I like this method because I can monitor the seed germination more easily. However the soil produced quicker growth. Far better than soils I've used for garden veggies over the years. I might stick with this FoxFarm blend for awhile since I'm happy with it so far.
As mentioned in my vendor post, I purchased:
-Aji Pineapple (I love citrus flavors)
-MOA Scotch Bonnet (Because they rock)
-Bahamian Goat
-Orange Pepperoncini (To pickle for my wife)
-Trinidad Perfume (Gotta have a mild pepper once in awhile)
Freebies in my order included:
-Aji Guyana (Really excited about these)
-El Rito (New to me)
-Alba Regia (Should be a nice, mild pepper to snack on)
Additionally, I harvested seeds last year from:
-Orange Habanero
-Golden Ghost Pepper (These were fantastic and about as hot as I prefer to go on a regular basis)
-Red Bhut Jolokia (This should be interesting since it grew all season up against Cherry Bomb, Habanero and Jalepeno plants so cross pollination was very high)
The Aji Guyana all germinated overnight in the damp paper towel.. I was blown away by how quick they sprouted. The rest took 4-8 days to start emerging from the soil. Two problem growers were the Bahamian Goat, which I've had to pull the seed off the leaves on most of them, and the Trinidad Perfume, which took 10+ days to start germinating and have had a 20% success rate of becoming seedlings. I currently have 2 of these growing very slowly from 15 seeds.Hopefully at least one plant matures.
So as of now, in less than 3 weeks I have pepper seedlings growing out my ears with the El Rito and Orange Pepperoncini growing the quickest and healthiest, both Aji's and the MOA are right behind them. I think there are nearly 50 seedlings growing on the heat mat maintaining 76-81 degrees with both lights about 15" above them running 14-16 hours a day. About 10 of these have grown 4 leaves now.
I will post updates periodically as I learn my way through growing a pepper garden under grow lights. It'll be nice using this to track my progress for future reference as well.
Images include:
Lights & thermostat
A tray of seedlings
Aji Guyana seeds after 36 hours
All the seedlings crammed on the heat mat
Orange Pepperoncini and El Rito plants starting their second set of leaves
A happy little MOA
