Growing chillies

Seed starting with worm castings

In my latest series of posts on growing Chillies, I took an in-depth look into the finer details of starting seeds. I covered all aspects, from seed selection through to the first potting on. However, I only touched on the use of fertilisers. It is a base I thought I already had covered. After all, Chilli seedlings don’t need fertilisers until much later. They first need to develop their first set of true leaves. When this happens, the seedlings are potted on. It is only at this stage that nutrients need to be considered.

It was to my surprise that after researching worm castings, I discovered there may be a better way to do things. It seems worm castings have a fantastic role in seed starting. This is what I learned.

Worm castings are essentially “worm poo”, for the want of a better way of describing them. They are a fertiliser made by feeding waste vegetables and animal products to worms. The worms eat these waste products; it passes through their digestive systems, and you are left with castings.

The conventional wisdom is that seedlings have enough nutrients to carry them through to their first set of true leaves. They don’t need any additional nutrients before then. So, if that is the case, why would anyone want to change? The truth is, what I discovered made total sense to me. It seemed like I had found new ground, and it was something I just had to try. Here’s why.

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Some background

One of the biggest lessons Chilli growers need to learn concerns watering. I have been growing Chillies for many years, and still constantly make mistakes in this area. While not so serious when Chiili  plants are established, getting watering wrong when they are still seedlings, can lead to disaster. Overwatering can lead to diseases, and under-watering to other complications

I recently noticed that leaves on a couple of my Chilli seedlings were turning yellow. I concluded this had happened because the seedlings hadn’t been properly watered. First, they had been overwatered. To fix that, I let the soil dry out. But then I went to the other extreme. I allowed the soil to dry out too much. The seedlings started wilting and needed to be given water to revive them. The seedlings protested to being put under so much stress, and their leaves turned partially yellow.

With this event and the other problem I faced earlier in the year with overwatering, I decided it was time to find the best ways  ensure that seedlings are properly watered. This is certainly something I need to master, as it is a recurring problem. I have already made some headway with some new methods and will be trying out some other ideas in not too distant future

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Why tap water can be bad

In my last post, I covered potting soil as part of my series on looking into the finer detail of growing Chillies  I developed a new potting soil for potting on.  I have already used some of this soil to pot on my Rocoto Chillies for the first time

As the next part of this exercise, I am looking into water. Up to now, I have used tap water (straight from the tap)  to water my Chillies. However, on doing research, I found it was not the best way to do things. So with this in mind, I will be examining this aspect of Chilli growing in more detail

Many believe chlorine or chloromines added to tap water are harmful to plants.  In fact, this is not true.  If the tap water suppliers (and most do) follow the WHO recommendation of less than 5 ppm tap, from a chlorine or chlorine perspective, tap water is safe for watering plants.  Chlorine / Chloramine levels would have to be over 150 pm before it started becoming toxic to them.

What makes tap water not good for watering Chillies is something else. Ordinary tap water contains a mixture of minerals and salts that can inhibit plant growth. These minerals and salts build up in the soil, raising PH levels over time. This, in turn, will impact a plants’ ability to extract nutrients from the soil. This is known as a nutrient lockout. If a plant cannot get what it needs to thrive, it won’t grow into a healthy plant.

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New mix for the Rocotos

As part of my series, looking into the finer detail of growing Chillies, I am looking into potting soil. It is particularly fitting to do this now, as the Rocoto’s will be potted on for the first time.  To give them the best chance of success, I will use a new potting mix I recently formulated.  I believe it has everything they need to thrive.   I will also use this mix to repot my other Chillies when they require potting on

This potting mix will only be used for intermediate repotting. It will not be used for final potting on. I will use a different formulation for that. Final potting-on is the stage when Chillies get potted on for the last time. They are placed in containers specially prepared with nutrients so the plants can achieve vigorous growth.  The size of these pots is typically twenty to fifty litres (sometimes even bigger). The plants will remain in these containers until the end of the season.

Intermediate potting, on the other hand, is when seedlings are progressively placed into bigger pots as they grow. The reason this is done is to develop the seedling’s root ball.  To do this, seedlings are allowed to grow in smaller pots until their roots start becoming constricted. At this point, they are repotted into a larger pot.  A larger pot allows a plant to rapidly expand its root system, as it now has the space to do so. The new pot should be about twice the size of the previous one, nothing bigger.  As a rule of thumb, I repot my seedlings once they have reached the same height as the container they are planted in.

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Looking into yellowing

Even with the best care in the world, when growing Chillies, you will always have some new mystery appearing out the blue. For me, the latest is that a couple of my seedlings have developed yellow leaves. It is a bit strange, as it only involves three plants and has only happened in one growing station. It’s time to look into why this has happened.

My research has revealed that the causes of leaves turning yellow are wide and varied. Yellowing of leaves can be caused by factors such as nutrition, watering, disease, pests and temperature. Judging by what I have read, I don’t think it is disease that has caused the yellowing on my plants. On my plants, the leaves are yellowed on the outside. They are otherwise quite healthy. With diseases, it seems you need to look for a yellow to brown mottling and leaves to be wilting. Examples of these diseases are bacterial leaf spot, wilt and phytophthora blight.

Luckily, none of my plants have any of these symptoms, so I could only believe it had to be something else.  The only way to reach a final conclusion was by a process of elimination.  I examined each of the remaining potential causes and arrived at what I think is a logical finding. Here’s how I did it

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Getting seeds right

I want to become far more scientific in my approach to growing Chillies. As part of this, I want to examine everything required to grow them in finer detail. I will examine Chilli seeds, potting soils, water, fertilizers, growing temperatures and anything else needed. The aim here is to get a fresh perspective and build on what I already have learned about growing Chillies.

Matters surrounding seeds are probably some of the most important decisions that need to be taken in growing Chillies successfully. Seeds are after all the beginning of the whole process, so it is essential to get them right. If you can do that, everything else rest will fall into place.

So, isn’t choosing seeds just about using seeds saved from last year, getting them as a gift from a friend, or buying them online or at a garden centre? Not really!  There is a lot more that needs to be considered. Where we buy our seeds, susceptibility to diseases, which varieties to plant, and growing conditions ( amongst other factors) need to be taken into account.

This post discusses that in detail. It covers what needs to be considered when buying seeds, and also what seeds need to grow healthily and with vigour. It also discusses how important it is to be selective in who and where we get our seeds from if we want to prevent the spread of Chilli plant diseases in the United Kingdom .

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