Chile Pepper Seeds

It’s been quite cool here in South Florida during January, and now we’re set to get more near-freezing weather this week — it doesn’t bode well for chile peppers!  I’ve got one out in the garden already — Thai Hot — but none of my other chile seeds (except for Pretty Purple Pepper) have germinated.  My sweet peppers, on the other hand, have pretty much all germinated fine.

Hmm.

The Need for Heat

Thinking that warmth may be the issue (it’s been awfully cool inside the house as well), I decided to spring for a new seed germination heating pad.  If you’re not familiar with them, they provide a gentle heat to the bottom of the seed tray.  Think of these as heating pads for seeds!

Note:  you cannot use a regular “people” heating pad to warm your seeds — they are not designed to operate 24/7 and the seed germination pads are.  If you use a regular heating pad, you risk starting a fire (or at the very least developing hot spots and give too much heat to the little seeds).

Now my new one is about 20″ x 10″ in size, and I can put two of my 8″ x 8″ trays on it with room to spare.  I generally like only only do smaller trays, in cycles.  That way, while one tray is sprouted and enjoying the grow lights, I can be starting another set.

Today’s Chile Pepper Seeds

Some of today’s seeds are new (I just bought them recently) and some are from 10 years ago — treasured seeds that I can’t help but try and grow again.

The new seeds are:  Cambuci Hot, Jalapeno M, mustard habanero, Peter Pepper and Bhut Jolokia.

The older seeds are:  Tam Jalapeno, Jaloro, Hot-Banero and Brazilian Rainbow.  The last two especially, since they were both from saved seed in my garden.  Hot-Banero was the absolute hottest pepper I have ever grown and Brazilian Rainbow is rare.  I’d love to see how my Hot-Banero stacks up against Mustard Habanero and Bhut Jolokia!

Unfortunately, it’s going to be awhile before I really can expect any “action” from my plantings.  Chile seeds seem to take quite a bit longer than sweet peppers, so I’m thinking it will be around Valentine’s Day before I see the first of the chiles popping their heads above ground.

Germinating pepper seeds isn’t really hard, except for the waiting part.  But given my weather of late, I’d have to wait to plant them even if they were already sprouted and grown enough.