Although some may think that it is a bit on the early side, I have decided to get cracking and propagate all my sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers.
With poor eyesight, I have resisted undertaking propagation in the traditional method of sowing seeds on top of moist compost and have, instead, opted to sow one seed in a coir pellet. although more expensive, it will not be necessary to handle each seedling and thus reduce damage to the young plants when potting on.
The process is quite simple and I have included photographs (sorry not the best I have taken) at each stage to illustrate how it has been done
- Each pellet contains a little dimple which forms the hole and I place one seed inside the dimple when it is dry
- The pellet is then soaked in water where it expands rapidly with the hole forming
- The pellet is then left for a few minutes to drain
- Ground Vermiculite (ground in a coffee grinder) is then used to fill the hole
- Pop the pellet into a labelled tray and into the propagator.
- The thermostat was set to 28°C.
The propagator is ”small” heated Vitopod from Greenhouse Sensation. Although it is classed as “small” it certainly is not measuring 560 x 550mm.
On January 5th 2012 sweet and hot peppers were sown and on January 15th 4 varieties of tomatoes and 1 variety of Cucumbers were sown. Within 5 days, the majority of the peppers had germinated, so the above method works for me!
Seed inserted into the "dimple" of a dry coir pellet
Coir Pellets with the hole filled in with ground vermiculite
Peter Peppers germinating after just 5 days
