It often amazes me just how quickly winter passes. It seems like it was just the holidays and yet today when I woke up my face bloomed into an anticipatory smile, for it was the fifteenth of February, otherwise known as Pepper Sprouting Day!
We have a brutal growing season. Sometimes it's only a couple of months between frosts, so even though I have a greenhouse and I am well-versed in season extension techniques, I refuse to start my peppers before the middle of February. One of the lessons that gardening has taught me is to not start your plants too early.
Trial and more often than not error lessons aside, Pepper Plant Sprouting Day always makes me happy, for it is like the official start of gardening season on the farm. Now, for years I have used a rather unconventional method for starting my peppers and tomatoes, I sprout the seeds on paper towels and then transplant them into cell containers under grow lights.
One, I am sorta frugal. Seed mats are expensive, as is running heaters of any kind, and both peppers and tomatoes require a high germination temperature followed by a more moderate growing temperature, and I hate paying for extra power to do that. It's expensive. One year, after a bunch of research and brainstorming, I got out a pie plate, some paper towels, plastic wrap, and a Sharpie. That right there is a recipe for danger in itself.
I squished up a bunch of damp paper towels in the base of the pie plate, and then I dampened a half square of paper towel, folded it all origami like, and placed seeds in between the folds.
Next, I put a bit of warm water in the pie pan, so that the lining paper towels would stay damp and I covered the seeds in the pie plate with plastic wrap. Then I threw the whole thing on top of my fridge, a place that stays nice and toasty, checking the dampness level of the sprouting seeds daily.
Seven to ten days later, without fail I always have sprouts, most of the time with a 100% sprout rate, for that is the other reason why I sprout my tomatoes and peppers this way. Instead of preparing a massive amount of seed trays and trying to over compensate for lack of germination, with sprouting I start more seeds than I think I will need and transplant exactly how many plants I want.
Unconventional yes, but oh so satisfying and it works for me on a small homestead gardening scale.
Production explanations aside, this year I am growing seven varieties of peppers/chiles, two of which are cultivars I have never grown before.
One of them is the fiery Bhut Jolokia, AKA the ghost pepper. I am excited for this one. A friend of mine is the finest smoker of meat and cheese products that I have ever encountered and one of my goals is to make him a pepper rub out of the ghost peppers. I also have a fondness for ghost pepper BBQ sauce. Heck, I have a hankering for ghost peppers period.
The other variety that is new to my garden is the rainbow blend sweet pepper. I might have noshed a bags of them last summer, I love dipping sweet baby bell peppers in hummus for a summer snack, so it really does make sense that I grow my own. Plus, there are purple peppers in there, I am a sucker for anything purple.
The other peppers that I started today were habanero, jalapeno, Anaheim, serrano, and cayenne. All of them have performed well for me in the past, especially the jalapenos and the Anaheims. One year I had to roast an entire laundry basket of Anaheims. I wasn't sad about it either.
In less than fifteen minutes I had fifty sprouts doing their sprout thing and my spring is coming smile increased as I placed the pie plate of future pepper plants on top of my fridge. So great was my elation that as I sat down to enjoy a cup of rooibos and rose tea that I found myself playing with the cats.
A couple of my heathen felines must have sensed my good mood and came in to see what was the matter. Dogcat and Yaga both sat at my feet and stared at me in their insolent cat way. Next to the stove is a paper bag of wood shavings we use to start fires, I took out the longest curly one in the bag and began taunting, er, I mean playing with the cats while waiting for my tea to cool to sipping temperature. If only all garden chores could be so easy😉.
And be sure to drop by my blog next week or so if you are curious to see how I transplant my little pepper plants. The process is a touch surgical in nature and involves a pencil, which for some reason still tickles me greatly even after all of these years using the method of plant starting and transplanting.