Nurturing my Chilli babies!

Everyone who follows Mark's Veg Plot knows that I love my chillis! Every year I grow lots of them. Usually I start with good intentions - you know, "This time I'll only have 6 or 7 plants" - but I seldom manage to limit myself to less than 20. This year I have sowed 22 pots, each with 2 seeds in. Some of my favourites (Aji Limon, Aji Benito, Hungarian Hot Wax) are duplicated so that I can be fairly sure of having at least one of those, but I'm conscious that germination rates for chillis can be quite low, and since some of my seeds are a few years old, I'm unlikely to achieve a 100% result. Perhaps I should also mention that I have six over-wintering plants too, some of which may survive.

I try to improve the chances of germination by keeping the pots inside plastic propagators, which serve to maintain a high level of humidity. And since my propagators are unheated, they live temporarily in the airing-cupboard which is always warmer than anywhere else in the house.

Propagators in the airing-cupboard.

I check at least twice a day (usually more often) to see if any of the seeds have germinated, and if they have, I move the pot(s) in question into the light of my trusty Garland "Growlight House".

With chillis it is hard to predict how long germination will take. This year my first ones popped up on the fifth day after sowing, and now after two weeks have elapsed at least one seed has germinated in 10 of the 22 pots. Some varieties of chilli can take a long time to germinate, and I never give up hope before at least a month has passed.

Newly-germinated chillis are very delicate and need to be protected from extreme conditions. They particularly dislike big fluctuations of temperature. They are also very likely to become etiolated (aka "leggy") if they don't get enough light. The oft-recommended sunny windowsill is seldom enough. This is where my Growlight House comes in. It's not designed to provide heat, but chillis seem happy enough with the ambient temperature in my house which is usually about 20C, and its main purpose is to reliably provide suitable levels of light. You might like to see this little trick that I use to maximise the light.

It's a piece of double-sided shiny insulation/packaging material, draped over the Growlight House so that it reflects the light from the strip lights in the roof section. The lights do also give off some heat, and this material helps to retain that too.

I use a simple timer device to keep the lights on for 14 hours a day.

Every day I check the levels of moisture in the little pots, and add water if necessary. I also use the spray bottle seen above to spray the plants and pots with warm water in order to increase humidity.

As you can see, in some cases both seeds in a pot will germinate. In theory, I pinch-out the weaker of the two seedlings, leaving the stronger one to grow on without disturbance, but in practice I often keep both and transplant them to new (individual) pots when they are big enough to survive this. The first of mine won't be ready for this to happen for perhaps another week. Still, everything seems to be going according to plan so far. Let's hope there are no major delays, because in about three or four weeks time I will be needing the Growlight House for the same procedure, but involving Tomatoes instead of Chillis.