A Complete Guide to Starting Peppers Indoors: See Description for a Digital Table of Contents

welcome to the rustic garden today I want to do a comprehensive video on seed starting peppers indoors today is March 4th and I have had these peppers starting somewhere from the middle of January all the way through February so I can show you different stages and really cover the whole process I want to start right at the beginning and again this video is really for people that are just starting growing transplants indoors or if you want to learn more about peppers but if you don't need all the stages just fast through fast words through the video so first thing is is seed starting mix you do not want to use soil from outdoors you will bring in fungus and insects so you want to get a bag product that usually stays indoors and that would be like gypsy starting mix that's what I like to use there in the mylar bags that are sealed now that being said because it's a natural product you're probably going to get fungus gnats they have and pretty impressive ability to lay eggs it's kind of bless through everything you can pour boiling water into here to try to kill off any eggs I put neem oil in here now to disrupt the growing process of any potential fungus or insect eggs or anything that might be in here you can microwave it I don't recommend freezing it because the eggs can last through a freeze also pre moisten the soil put some water in there get some fluid into it because if you just use dry mix it's not gonna really draw water in when you go to water and I'll talk more about that when we get to the watering so it's a pre-moistened mix drop it into the seed tray fill it once some pack it down fill it again and you have a great starting bed for your pepper seeds I do not put fertilizer in here at the beginning the actual seed will supply enough nutrients to the plant to get your emanated and get going and we'll talk about fertilizing afterwards I used to say go ahead and put some organic fertilizer in there go ahead and put in some props of chemical fertilizers I found the organic fertilizer can cause fungus and mold growth it doesn't hurt your plants but it's unsightly and the plants just really don't need it so here are two trays that set up and you want to start to seeds first base and if you're not doing a lot of seeds you could go ahead like for instance I'm going to do Cayenne red pepper I'm going to do an orange cayenne serrano and this is an Anaheim pepper if you're only doing a couple you can go ahead and just put them into a cup or a container like this this way you can skip the transplant you can skip planning into something small like this and having to transplant it up but if you're doing a lot of a lot about peppers you can do it this way so just start by dropping two seeds in and just press it in you can do a quarter-inch 1/2 an inch I did plenty of experiments and found that the pepper seeds will germinate at any depth alright and that's all you do cover them up you would label them put the date on there and you're good to go now peppers are going to take anywhere probably from seven days to 21 days to germinate let me show you what I mean so when it's flat I started these on February 11 so today is March 4th so what's I've been 17 days plus 6 so 23 days so this is about 3 weeks in and what you'll notice are like this variety much larger germinate more quickly this was a bell pepper wonder bell both of these groups or bell peppers so they germinate pretty quickly and then you come on over to this group and you can see that some of them are just Germany now and this is a poblano so different varieties of peppers will take a longer time to germinate so don't get discouraged but it's going to take somewhere between 7 and 21 days this is how I start all online my grow closet stays at about 7075 degrees peppers like heat to germinate so you could put a heat mat under here that's going to raise the temperature up to about 83 is a little bit more and these will germinate quicker the warmer they are once you use a heat map they germinate they break the surface in about two or three days you can shut off the heat mat with the assumption that your you know grow closet or the room that their interview to stay around 70 degrees fries but a heat map will speed up the germination process but you don't need to leave the heat mat on through the whole process I mean once they start growing shut it off and they will grow just like this with no problem so I keep mine in a tray just like this and I bottom water and what bottom watering is is instead of pouring water right on top of the surface which is going to possibly splash out starting mix move the seeds and if you have disease or funguses you're going to spread the disease and fungus with the splashing water you don't want to do that and it's more time consuming I water just by keeping something a jug like this fill up the trade this way to about a quarter step with the tray and just let the trays soak up the water from the bottom these are just been watered they're nice and dark whatever they don't absorb in 15 or 20 minutes just pour out but you'll find that you get you know pretty good practice at eyeballing how much they're going to need the other question I get is how often do I water these and the answer is one time a week to five times that we could depends on their size depends on how warm your grow lights are it just depends on what's going on but you watch the top of the soil when this soil becomes light ahead videos on it if you want to look it up when the top of soil dries out get to the light brown the color that the starting mix looks like when it doesn't have any water that's when you bottom water the top will drive first Moisture will stay below it moisture will stay down here in the root system so as soon as you see the top dry it's a good time to water it's also a good idea to let the tops try because that helps take care of some disease and fungus issues if you always keep the soil moist the top is always moist the fungus and molds are going to keep growing so if you let them dry out it really disrupts their growth cycle and here's an example from another video this is salad bowl lettuce which is not healthy this is what leg enos is called but you can see the difference in the tops same starting mix this is fully saturated this is dried out and the tops are light brown so that's what you look for is the light brown colors now for lighting this is an example of lettuce not getting enough light to get tall they get thin they get leggy same thing will happen with your peppers so you can either if you have grow lights make sure the grow lights stay above them and I recommend that the lights stay on top on for 18 hours when they just break the surface and keep them on for 18 hours for I don't know three four five six seven days after germination that's when they need the most light that extra light will keep them from getting leggy and spindly and it will be nice and stocky once a week goes by cut the lights down to anywhere from 12 to 16 hours whatever you'd like to do and that will get these off to a great start now there's no feed in here they don't need to be fed yet but they're getting close and we'll talk about feeding in a second let me talk about acclamation because there's two ways to do it and again I know this was a lot of information but I want to put it all in one video for those of you that just want to watch it start to finish acclamation is a process of taking your indoor plants and putting them outdoors in a way that the Sun the wind the cold doesn't burn doesn't harm doesn't stress out the plants these plants have no resistance to the Sun the UV rays because I've been growing comfortably indoors two ways to do it when your seed your germinating if you can take this outside and it's you know 40 degrees or warmer just put this out in the Sun for about an hour let the Sun hit these newly germinated plants and they will start getting a tolerance to the Sun you will start acclimating them and just do that you know for an hour every day if you can or every other day and you're going to be acclimating them why they're mostly growing indoors but you're going to be taking them in and out so when it gets to this size they have some tolerance build-up they're you know getting the wind blowing across them they're feeling the cold weather so they're going to be a tougher plant now if you can't do that and your plants get to this size and they're ready to go out you have to slowly acclimate them to the outdoors over a week and I can't give you an exact recipe because if it's a cloudy day they can stay out longer if it's a sunny day they can only stay up 15 minutes so what you want to do is start with 15 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes for the first day but then get some Sun some wind some cold bring it back inside next day same amount of time Thursday you can start lengthening the amount of time for six days to be moving into an hour so seventh day you can give them a lot of fun if you're able to put these out when it's a fully cloudy day give them four or five hours with being outside they can get used to the cold the wind the clouds will protect them from the Sun and you can slowly harden them off as this one of the terms use harden them off to the elements but you have to make sure you acclimate these or when you move them outside you're going to be really disappointed because all your great growth is going to be harmed by the Sun the wind in a cold so we have the plants growing at this stage now this is about what do we say 23 days about 3 weeks worth of growth they aren't quite ready for a feeding but they're getting close and when they all have their second leaves that's what they're secondly that's they're actually first set of true leaves when all of them have the first set it truly is I'm going to give them a liquid fertilizer I prefer and use the process chemical fertilizers because they cover everything they don't smell they don't attract insects but you can use if you want oh that's actually kelp meal you could use fish emulsion that's a 5-1-1 fertilizer you want too low fertilizer I recommend using something that stays under a 5 5 5 n P and K I like using the organic fertilizers outdoors I just don't like the smell the plants do not care I don't care what people tell you organic gardening is great but you don't have to be an organic gardener to be a great gardener or to have healthy food the process chemical fertilizers do not hurt you you do not care plants at this stage there is no soil life growing in here so these chemicals aren't going to harm your microbiology and soil you just don't have it as a plain old basic starting mix and if I didn't mention I just want to make sure that when you set up your seed starting mix is you you don't use soil that's been sitting outside because it will bring it insects and disease alright so how often do you feed them well this is a 10-10-10 fertilizer so use this at half-strength quarter strength a two point five a two point five a two point five NPK or something around the five five five is perfectly fine I would just use it once a week you can use a fertilizer keeping it low once a week that will be plenty of nutrition for these plants and this is what they've been getting they've been getting that fertilizer I just showed you and they're doing really really well so that's about three weeks worth of growth then we come over to these plants pepper plants that were started on 128 so these have four weeks so these are at about five weeks so and it's five weeks it looks great this is when they're getting close to really be transplanted up into these pots and the way you tell is really by side these guys are ready to go you can simply top the plant look at the bottom and when you see the roots starting to curl at the bottom they're close this guy could go another week or so in this container but he's ready to be potted up and what I do is I either use some recycle containers my neighbors always give them to me or a press container this way styrofoam cups are great if you don't like styrofoam pick a cup or a container of your choice but you want about an 8 ounce cup let me just see what this was this is an escandalo and this is how I like to label I like these cups because you can write write on them so just label Escamilla it was started what do we get for the deep on here on 128 so I put an S for starting day 128 and then a T for transplant day of March force now we use starting mix to get these going when you're moving them up into the cup you can then go to the bagged soil the stuff that's outside if you bring it inside you're still going to get insects but at the point where these are going to be outside mostly you're perfectly fine to use bagged soil that's been you know sitting outdoors like any kind of potting mix or grow mix if you want to use but what I have here is the starting mix now I do mix neem oil into my starting mix to help deal with fungus and diseases and all you do fill it up put a nice big finger circle in there I'm going to remove this plant and this one germinated late but I just want a single plant in here drop it in maybe just a quarter inch or so over the stem press it in add in a little more soil and it's good to make sure you put holes in the bottom now this will also go into the same tray that I showed you just like this and then I just put in all of my cups or my containers through here and I still bottom water it's the easiest way to do it because you just fill the tray real quick the plants will absorb what they need so we started with planting the seeds you saw what three weeks growth look like this is about five weeks growth and then in plants over here are only 13 days let's see what we got these were started on 1:15 these are start on 1:28 so this is about seven weeks worth of growth so all the plants here have been growing for seven weeks they're nice and strong they've been actually getting acclimated to go outdoors but I would still won't be able to put these up for about five weeks and I wanted some peppers just to get really strong and tall at this point I'm also doing something where I'm growing to be growing two peppers right next to each other because I read but that's something that you can do and they do really really well for a long time I just won't let the information that they have to be you know one plant per whole space it up to feed apartment that probably isn't true now when they get to this size you can do something that's called topping them off and you would do this when you still have three four weeks five weeks of indoor growth and what you do will go with this one and this one just to give you a reference this was started around 118 it was transplanted in here on February 26 and today is March 4th once you transplant them into here you want them to grow for at least a week or ten days before you do this but you're going to top them off that means you're going to just go to put it down here to do it you're going to take off the growing tip pinch it off your plant will look like this I remove the growing tip this with just kept growing up just like that what this is going to do it's going to force side shoot growth from here the plant is going to be stockier it's going to have more side growth and you're going to get more blooms and more peppers that way what I found was that most peppers enjoy this it makes them stronger don't do it with banana peppers don't do it with bell peppers I found they don't really benefit from having the tops taken out but most the other peppers really seem to do well alright so now it's gone from seed to you know through week old seedlings five week old plants that are ready to come out of go into the cups now these are going to stay in here like I said four to five weeks they will be fed same way that I explained once a week with a organic fertilizer or a chemical process fertilizer either one is fine at about a 5 5 5 and piqué or lower and these aren't going to go into the ground until the ground temperatures are about 50 degrees a bit the ground might be a little bit colder but you want 50 degree nice 73 days acclimate these to the outdoors and you will have really healthy great-looking pepper transplants that will get you produce will get you peppers sooner to your table because you've been growing them indoors for 8 to 12 weeks that's the benefit you get nice sized plants out there as soon as the ground is ready rather than putting in a pepper seed and then having the weight 8 to 12 weeks for it to get to the side you are already there hope you enjoyed the video quite comprehensive I notice I said it was wrong but I hope it gives you an understanding start to finish on what you need to do for growing peppers indoors and getting your transplants going please check out my blog at WWDC garden blog spot.com also check out my youtube videos I also have a seed in garden shop where you can buy the seeds that I'm growing in my videos and grow as I grow thanks

Channel: Gary Pilarchik (The Rusted Garden)

Views: 811,731

Keywords: organic, Vegetable, Garden, peppers, seed starting, watering, lighting, fertilizing

Id: Cu1J7K2VKDY

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 04 2017