Looking good so far
Chill growing in the UK is now in full swing.I now have about 50 seedlings and more on the way. The germination rate for the seeds planted in peat pellets has been excellent, with a germination rate of over 90 percent. I always plant more than one seed per pellet to cater for the possibility of germination failure but guess what? Yup, virtually all the seeds have germinated. This, of course, is far too many to take through to fully grown plant stage. Unfortunately, this means that once these seedlings get to about two inches in height ( when they will be potted up for the first time), I will need to select only the healthiest plants to continue the season with.
The excellent germination that I have experienced with the peat pellets, at least, makes up for the failure I seem to have experienced with Rockwell cubes. The experiment I tried with capillary matting doesn’t seem to have worked. And now, sadly, it seems, the Aerogarden isn’t going to be successful either. This is a first for me as usually, the Aerogarden usually always works
I think I know, though, what the problem is. In a nutshell – non-viable seeds. My success with the peat pellets has undoubtedly been because I planted newly bought seeds in them. With the Rockwell cubes and the Aerogarden, I planted seeds from chillies from last year’s season. Normally this works, but not this season. I obviously need to pay more attention in the future how to store the seeds to improve germination rates. This is certainly something that I am going to be concentrating on this year!
I have had more success with the paper towel germination method this year , but this too has been a learning curve. My next post will explain what happened
Image credit: jalexartis Photography / CC BY 2.O /via Flikr