Dry seed starting pellets
To achieve a good germination rate for Chilli seeds, they need careful tending right from the start. While I try as I may not to make mistakes, sometimes stuff happens.
This morning, I was inspecting my peat pellets and Rockwell cubes for moisture. I noticed the peat pellets seemed on the dry side. As I have previously said, whilst you don’t want to give your seeds too much water, you certainly don’t want them to dry out either! Yesterday I noticed condensation on the propagator’s lid. This normally means lots of moisture, so I wasn’t that concerned they were drying out. But guess what?
When I lifted the lid this morning, mainly to give the pellets some air and shake the condensation back onto the pellets, I noticed they seemed quite dry. This seemed strange, so I thought I would look into it.
It turns out that when I sowed my seeds into the pellets, I put them into a seed tray insert, but did not place this into a seed tray. This means the seed tray insert (with holes in each compartment) has been in direct contact with the heat mat. As the pellets lie directly on top of these holes, they have been getting far more heat than would normally have been the case. This cased the pellets to dry out.
I immediately moved the inserts into a seedling tray, and then sprayed each pellet with a fine mist of lukewarm water. Normally I would have only given them a couple sprays from my mister, but because these were dryer than normal, each pellet got wet until it was moist to the touch. Hopefully, the seeds have not suffered any ill effects from this. They are quite tough, as you would expect worse to happen in real nature outside, but let’s wait and see what happens
You have to be on the ball to be really successful at growing Chillies !