seeds Temperature Cycles During Germination

[infiniti23]

Has anybody here experimented with temperature cycles during germination?

Any difference in the following:

1. Holding at a constant 82-87 F throughout germination
2. Cycling between 82-87 F during the day, and allowing a dropoff to ambient at night?

 

[jmj1459]

Either way should work, but option #2 might add a few days to the germination time.

 

[gnslngr]

Roger what jmj said, remember outside in the real world...they get no such coddling!Warmer, steadier is more OPTIMAL but not by any means manditory.
Have a good one-
Dave

 

[Barley-pop57]

I'm new to growing peppers from seed but I have been cycling both lite and temp from 5am to 10pm. Have 5 sprouts and 1 possible but still have 23 more to go.

Just put some bone meal in to try to speed things up. Guess patience is a virtue. Anyway that's what I'm trying. Whole lot more smarter people than me to ask. Good luck...Mike

 

[AlabamaJack]

lots and lots of research on germination temps has been done..

here is a chart of germination percent vs temperature from a study done on 5 different annuum varieties by the University of Florida Ag Extension office in Immokalee, Florida...

 

[gnslngr]

If the vert is germ %, what is the horiz value, temp in centigrade? If the vert is a function of both...Forgive the ignorance....not making sense of it.

 

[willard3]

It is a plot of temp in centigrade vs % germination.....

 

[Avon Barksdale]

Either way should work, but option #2 might add a few days to the germination time.

There are studies that found that temperature fluctuation actually improved germination, but I think they only tested wild varieties.

 

[Capsicum]

By reading the chart you can see that your temps of 82-87f will have the highest germination rate.

 

[jmj1459]

There are studies that found that temperature fluctuation actually improved germination, but I think they only tested wild varieties.

You could be right - I've had better success with constant temps, but that is just anecdotal. I'd be interested in seeing a more scientific approach to this question. I suppose the amount of varience in temps could play a role as well.

 

[Avon Barksdale]

You could be right - I've had better success with constant temps, but that is just anecdotal. I'd be interested in seeing a more scientific approach to this question. I suppose the amount of varience in temps could play a role as well.

Last year it seemed like I got a little better results with fluctuating temperatures (I did about half both ways), but I didn't keep track of times and percentages so I could be wrong. This year I did only fluctuating temperatures, mainly because I germinate in the room I sleep in so I turned the light off when I went to bed, and it seemed like germination was a little slower than either way last year. But my thermostat malfunctioned occasionally this year and temperatures got in the mid to upper 90s at times so that probably screwed things up a little. It's an interesting idea though, I would like to see some scientific studies too but I've only been able to find tests done using wild varieties. I get very good results with wild varieties though, tepin, chiltepin, and other bird types are some of my quickest and highest percentage sprouters, maybe that's why. Either way it probably doesn't make much difference for most varieties, you can get very good germination both ways, as long as the temperatures are around the mid 80s for at least the majority of the day.