Hi all, it’s been a while! I decided to try and get more active on Steem again, so here we go. After some planning a week or two ago, I finally started my chilli growing season of 2018 today. I have a couple of plants from this year still kicking, although all are somewhat suffering from lack of good care. After we moved to a house in the early summer (yes, I do have plenty of space now!), I have been focused on other business and the plants have basically been on nothing but water for the whole summer and autumn. I have been unable to locate my cans of fertilizer, although I am sure I brought them with us when we moved. I’ll need to find them or buy new ones very soon to avoid more issues.
Today, with eager help from my son, I sowed the seeds for chillies I’d like to grow next year. This is unusually early for me, since I tend to sow them in January or later. This time I should be able to set up a proper place and lighting to make the plants grow much better than in the previous years, since I have space to set the lamp without bothering anyone else (my wife). That also means I’ll have space to let them grow larger before needing to take them outside, or even to keep them inside for the whole season if the summer is too cool.
Here’s the germinating method I currently prefer. Credit for popularizing the method (at least in Finland) goes to Chilivaari, although I use a simplified method (without Styrofoam or similar padding under the paper). As you can see from the above picture, I have drawn lines on the paper towel and marked them (this time with both Roman numerals and letters). After this I added some plain water to the plastic container and set the paper towel on the bottom to soak up the water. I had to fold the paper towel to fit it better – a rectangular box would have been better, but I didn’t happen to have any reasonably sized ones around. The picture also works as a reference as to what is sown on each square, although I’ll keep a list as well. The order of the seed bags equals the placement of the seeds on the “raft”.
Here’s the result. All that’s left is to move the box carefully to a safe location that stays at a nice temperature (at or a bit above room temperature, possibly cooler during the night and warmer during the day) and covering the box with something. I used the lid from the container this time, but plastic film would work just as well. I haven’t bothered to punch holes through the lid, since I’ll be opening it at least once a day if not more to check on progress. If you copy this method, be careful not to add too much water – the extra will move the seeds around if you tilt the container too much. More can always be added later, and should be added, if the paper seems like it will start to dry. It’s quite a bummer to notice the paper’s dried taking beginnings of roots with it. This method makes it easy to see how many seeds germinate and it keeps them in a small space until they start to grow. Seedlings can be moved to pots relatively easily, as long as you’re careful not to damage the roots or leaves.
As an extra, here’s a picture of my seed bank – its’ a case for tools, screws, bits and such, but works pretty well for seeds. It could be a bit bigger, I guess, although I don’t really need to get many more seeds... seeing as I haven't (properly) grown even half of these so far.
Those look great, do you have any updates on the situation? :)
I do recognize the container as an ice cream package.. not sure if it's an Aino-ice cream or not, but that looks like a perfect way to reuse them!
Hi! A few of these germinated (surprisingly few, I usually have way over 50 % germination rate), but since I was unable to locate my fertilizer I did not want to transfer the seedlings to coco coir, which I'm using as the soil nowadays. After postponing it way too long I finally transferred three seedlings to individual containers a couple days ago, although they're not very well anymore and I still have not found the fertilizer (we moved to a house last spring and have so many closets and storage spaces I keep forgetting about some of them).
I have been planning on sowing more seeds soon, since these had so little success. I guess I'll do a follow-up post soon, once I know whether the current seedlings will make it.
Oh my, instead of following you I had actually muted you.. so I didn't notice you had responded.
Hopefully you'll still make the follow-up post in the close future :)
Which fertilizer you have been using? I hope at least some of the plants survived, I've had a poor start for my chili growing season this year too.
And here we go, falling inactive once again for a while and missing your reply. I did end up sowing more seeds and ended up with a couple dozen seedlings, which I neglected to transfer to large enough containers and a place with proper light (they were at a large south-facing window, but a bit too low to really get any light). I now have four "larger" (read: 15 cm plus) plants in AutoPots and a few smaller ones in cut milk cartons. Same goes for tomatoes, although there are only half a dozen or so of those. The biggest achievement this year so far is that the Starfish I germinated last year made a few flowers and is now growing the first two or three pods - something I've wanted to grow but failed for one reason or another so far.
I've been thinking of transferring the smaller plants to an NFT system, but I haven't built one yet and I'm not sure how fast they'll adjust after being in coco until now. I may just move them to a bit larger pots and place them outside as well, since I don't have a greenhouse nor enough light inside. Hopefully, I'll have everything set up better next year and can keep heating for the house better during the winter so I can get an earlier start.
I used Puutarhan Kesä at first, since I had misplaced my other fertilizers and had to buy some before all of the seedlings die of starvation. Once my wife found the fertilizers in her suitcase (packed there when we moved), I started using Nutriforte 2-component fertilizer for the AutoPot plants and PK for "manual watering". Unfortunately, Nutriforte seems to no longer offer the kit I have (Tomaatti&Mansikka and Typpi&Kalsium iirc), but I should have well enough for this year and maybe some of the next. I read they're updating their selection, so maybe they'll have something similar soon. You can also find several brands advertised for chillis, but I haven't tried any of those.
Haha, it does happen, I haven't been very active lately as the summer has caused me to do so much more than just sit at home on my computer.
Your setup seems really nice for the pots and the fertilizers. I've too noticed some good products disappearing from the market, but I've found "fatalii's finest" series and have been using those now on my hydroponic system. Still going with basic Puutarhan Kesä with other plants though.