374 Success with Pepper Seeds and Seedlings. Fire-Wise Landscaping.

Show Transcript

374 TRANSCRIPT Pepper Seed Germination. Defensible Space.

Farmer Fred:
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original, lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit smartpots.com/fred for more information and a special discount. That’s smartpots.com/fred. Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener, or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred:
If you normally set out your spring and summer vegetable garden in late April, or sooner - if you dare - January is the time to start pepper seeds. Seeds of both sweet and hot pepper varieties can take up to three weeks to germinate, and then up to 10 to 12 more weeks to get to a size where it’s transplantable into the outdoor garden. America’s Favorite Retired College Horticultural Professor, Debbie Flower, has the tips for getting those pepper seeds to germinate in half that time, and she has more advice for getting them to thriive, grow and strengthen during their time indoors. Today’s it’s pepper seed germination tips, and more success with peppers.

With the recent urban wildfire crisis in Southern California, a tragic event combining drought, heavy winds, and wildland fires that quickly become serious issues for urban and suburban homeowners, we revisit our chat from last October about the wildland-urban interface and its growing wildfire risks for homeowners.  We talk about the concept of hardening your landscape from the “Ember Ignition Zone” with insights from Kevin Marini, a UC Defensible Space Advisor. He highlights the importance of maintaining clear spaces around homes and managing vegetation in three defensive zones.

It’s all in today’s episode number 374, Success with Pepper Seed Germination, and Creating Defensible Space. We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go! 

PEPPER SEED GERMINATION TIPS. SUCCESS WITH PEPPER SEEDLINGS, Pt. 1

Farmer Fred:

[2:23] Brr, it's cold outside. You know what that means. It's time to plant your pepper seeds. What? Yes. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Wherever you may be. Yes. Even though it blows your mind, this time of year is the best time of year for planting pepper seeds. Not outdoors, but indoors. Now, the problem is they can take a long time to germinate. So we're going to be talking about planting pepper seeds, planting germination time, how to figure that out, and how to care for that young seedling. So even though the seed catalogs are probably arriving in your house by now, you may want to place an order for pepper seeds because you're going to need up to 12 weeks for them to get to a size that you can plant outside. And depending on where you live, that 12 weeks may come sooner than you think. Debbie Flower is here, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor. And what is it about pepper seeds that takes them so long to germinate, Debbie?

Debbie Flower:

[3:27] I honestly don't know why. Do you?

Farmer Fred:

[3:29] No, I don't.

Debbie Flower:

[3:31] They're about the same size as a tomato seed. They're from the same family. 

Farmer Fred:

[3:38] They're a little bigger than a tomato seed.

Debbie Flower:

[3:40] Yeah, yeah.

Farmer Fred:

[3:40] Not by much. It must be a thicker seed coating.

Debbie Flower:

[3:43] Could be. or they have, yeah, the things that prevent the seeds from germinating are that the embryo is not ready. And so it has to age. And I don't think that's the case with the pepper seed, that the water can't get through the seed coat. So it has to go through a lot of water or be scratched to get it open. Scarified, we call that. Or there are chemicals in the seed coat that prevent it from germinating. And so it has to be washed through enough. So maybe that's what's going on with the pepper.

Farmer Fred:

[4:15] Well, let's get the big words out of the way first. Scarification and stratification are ways to get seeds to pop open sooner. And it really depends on the seed because some want that scarification, some want the stratification. You're a big fan of mnemonics. How do you remember the difference between the two?

Debbie Flower:

[4:35] Well, scarification has the word scar in it. And scarification means to just break the seed coat with something. It can be something rough like sandpaper or a knife or a nail clipper, or it can be something chemical like an acid. It's a lot easier and safer to do the rough kind. But in a production situation, they sometimes use an acid and soak the seeds in that, and that breaks down the seed coat enough that the water can get through it. So in that case, the embryo is correct and ready to grow. It's at the stage that it's ready to grow. But the seed is pre-programmed to go through some kind of process like an animal's stomach, an animal's digestive system, before it is ready to grow. So, by going through an animal, which eats it, the acids in the stomach, maybe the teeth, grinding the seed would do the scarification process. And then it's eliminated in a nice pile of warm fertilizer, which is poop.

Farmer Fred:

[5:34] You're not calling for this, though.

Debbie Flower:

[5:36] In this situation. No, we don't. I have never done that.

Farmer Fred:

[5:39] I bet somebody has.

Debbie Flower:

[5:42] Then there's stratification. And that is a cold, moist treatment. The reason they call it stratification, to stratify means to layer. And they used to think you had to carefully layer some moist media. It could be peat moss, it could be perlite. Just some moist media, sand, and then a layer of seeds, and then more moist media on top. So you would have layers. And then you put it in the refrigerator for the recommended amount of time, and that amount of time will vary by the species of the plant and to where it is native. If it's native to a very, very, very cold place, you might have to have it in the refrigerator for months. If it's native to a place that has a shorter winter, you will have it in the refrigerator for a shorter amount of time.

Farmer Fred:

[6:25] Because we're gardeners, we like to experiment, I attempted to germinate the seeds from the flower of a saucer magnolia tree. And I have a very good book called Plant Propagation by Alan Toogood. Excellent book. Just about every plant you could ever think of wanting to propagate is in that book. And the book instructions for the saucer magnolia seed called for both scarification and stratification. So it was moisture and a three-month period in the refrigerator in  peat moss.

Debbie Flower:

[7:02] And did you have to then scar the tissue?

Farmer Fred:

[7:05] Possibly. I can't remember exactly, but I think that may have been part of it as well.

Debbie Flower:

[7:10] I did Southern Magnolia, and I remember collecting the seed. I remember that they germinated, and I was surprised that I was successful. Yeah. It's always a nice surprise. Exactly, yeah.

Farmer Fred:

[7:21] We gardeners, it doesn't have much to make us happy. 

Debbie Flower:

[7:25] Right. And when you experiment, you have a lot of failures. So, the successes are really nice.

Farmer Fred:

[7:30] So, basically, with a pepper seed, you want to give it plenty of time to grow. Now, I know a lot of instructions when it comes to planting seeds, pepper seeds, they talk about, plant it eight weeks before you're going to set it outside. Well, I'm here to tell you that pepper seed could take up to two weeks to germinate.

Debbie Flower:

[7:49] Yeah. And when I was teaching and we were having plant sales, we would plan. Ideally, I wanted my tomatoes and peppers and tomatoes don't have the same problem germinating. I wanted to give them nine weeks from the time we planted the seed until we put them up for sale. And they're for sale in a little four inch, three or four inch pot. They're not huge plants, but to get them tall enough, strong enough that they would be successful when they were taken home and planted in somebody's garden.

Farmer Fred:

[8:20] You wanted pretty plants.

Debbie Flower:

[8:22] I want pretty plants and I want my buyers to be successful. Yes.

Farmer Fred:

[8:25] It always amazes me how most home and garden shows are in the dead of winter and how these growers manage to get such beautiful plants in the dead of winter.

Debbie Flower:

[8:33]  Yeah. The shows that you attend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of them come from elsewhere, Hawaii, where we lived. A lot of plants come in from Hawaii or Southern California. On the East Coast, a lot of them come in from Puerto Rico, from Florida. So, yeah, they bring them in from afar and they may be in flower and they may be beautiful, but they may not survive if you plant them out when you first see them in the nursery.

Farmer Fred:

[8:57] So when you go to plant pepper seeds, you need to do some backwards counting because you want to set out pepper plants when the soil temperature generally is around 60, 65 degrees, probably 10 degrees warmer than the soil temperature required for a tomato plant. So I would get out of the habit of starting pepper and tomato seeds at the same time, wherever you're growing them, or starting to grow them. And maybe bump up the time when you're going to plant pepper seeds and then two or three weeks later do the tomato seeds. With the pepper seeds, what I like about starting pepper seeds is you don't need light.

Debbie Flower:

[9:34] Well, in general, for most seeds, you don't need light. There are a few exceptions.

Farmer Fred:

[9:38] But not peppers.

Debbie Flower:

[9:40] Not peppers, not tomatoes.

Farmer Fred:

[9:41] So you can start these...

Debbie Flower

[9:43] In a warm area.

Farmer Fred:

[9:44] I know a lot of them talk about using an inert mix to start, like a seed starting mix.

Debbie Flower:

[9:50] I would definitely advise using a seed starting mix.

Farmer Fred:

[9:52] As opposed to the soil from the backyard.

Debbie Flower:

[9:55] Absolutely. And as opposed to a container mix or, boy, they have all kinds of names, a soil conditioning mix. I wouldn't use either of those. I would use a seed starting mix primarily because the particle sizes are very small. And the seeds are small and the plant that first comes out of that seed is small. And it needs to be able to push the media out of the way to expose itself to the sun.

Farmer Fred:

[10:17] Even though the depth which you're planting the seeds may only be maybe a quarter inch deep.

Debbie Flower:

[10:22] Right.

Farmer Fred:

[10:23] And you have a good tip on that, too, as far as if you're planting seed, you'd like to top dress it with that quarter inch worth of vermiculite.

Debbie Flower:

[10:32] Yeah, I would rather. The danger of planting a seed too deeply is that it will germinate. Like you said, it doesn't need light. It needs warmth. It needs moisture, but it doesn't need light. So it's buried under there and it may germinate, but it only has a certain amount of food in the seed to sustain that baby plant until it gets above the top of the media and can get sun and make its own food. It's one of the principles of using mulch for weed control. You bury the seeds so deeply that when the weed germinates, it never makes it up to the sun. So you don't want to plant your seeds too deeply. So, I plant on the shallow side, and then I take vermiculite, which is mica. The type of rock is mica, and it has been heated, so it's expanded, and it's sort of like an accordion, and it's very shiny. And I place that over the top. It does two things. One, moisture gets stuck in those accordion folds. So it prevents the seed from drying out. If a seed starts growing in moist media and then runs out of moisture, it dies. You cannot revive it. So I don't want that to happen. So I use the vermiculite for that. And then if the plant has come up and is ready, you know, can get some sun, the vermiculite actually reflects sun. And so it reflects light. It can be light bulb light, too. Reflects light and the plant can still grow.

Farmer Fred:

[11:55] Well, that brings up the point is, OK, so we've been growing these seeds, starting these seeds in darkness. At what point do they need light? But let's back up a couple of steps and talk about a trick or two to get those pepper seeds to germinate in less than two or three weeks. And one of your favorites is hydrogen peroxide.

Debbie Flower:

[12:15] Yes. You know, it was frustrating when I was teaching. We were working on a semester schedule. We start in January. We finish in May. I had to get the plants up, grown, sold, teach the students all about all that stuff in that period of time. And you want to sell them when people want to buy them. So you don't just wait till May here in California. That's too late. I did a lot of looking around. I did not find peer-reviewed research that indicated how to reduce the time to germinate a pepper seed. But I did find some suggestions, and one was to soak the seeds, pepper seeds, in hydrogen peroxide for 10 minutes. Hydrogen peroxide is H2O2, two hydrogens and two oxygens. 

Farmer Fred

Is it considered an acid?

Debbie Flower

 I don't know if it's considered an acid. My theory was that the extra oxygen in the molecule somehow helped the seed to germinate. But that's just out of my head and I have no proof. But we tried it and it worked. It greatly reduced the germination time down to about a week, which was very gratifying because then classes meet every week. Next week we can come in and there they are, up and growing. 

Farmer Fred:

[13:23] Okay, so hydrogen peroxide for...

Debbie Flower:

[13:25] 10 minutes.

Farmer Fred:

[13:26] 10 minutes, not 10 seconds. 10 minutes. Right. Okay. And then this would be  pure hydrogen peroxide? Yes. Okay.

Debbie Flower:

[13:35] Well, I don't know if there are different concentrations. The hydrogen peroxide we used was the kind you would buy in the drug department of a store and use on a wound on your body.

Farmer Fred:

[13:46] In a brown bottle with a flip top.

Debbie Flower:

[13:47] Yes. Yes.

Farmer Fred:

[13:48] Yes. Okay. Some people, I mean, I did this for years, was to soak the pepper seeds in just warm water overnight.  And that, I think, sped up the germination by three days or so. But I think another key to germinating pepper seeds quicker than three weeks or two and a half weeks is bottom heat. Yes. To have what they call a propagation mat or a heat mat that can get the temperature up around 70,

Debbie Flower:

[14:15] 75 degrees or so. Right. Before I had the funds to indulge myself in my gardening tools, I would put the seeds in a container, put the container in a flat that doesn't have holes in it or some pie tin. I often use pie tins and cake pans and then cover it. You can use plastic wrap or put it in a plastic Ziploc bag that you close and put it on top of the refrigerator because the top of the refrigerator is a warm spot. The refrigerator exhausts hot air out of the back of it and it comes up over the top of the refrigerator.

Farmer Fred:

[14:49] Despite the fact that in a lot of refrigerators, the freezer's the part that's on top.

Debbie Flower:

[14:53] Yeah, but it's still the air coming out the back. The thing that keeps it cold inside is that the hot air is expelled out the back and it cups up over the top. Then later on, we had a waterbed and we ditched the waterbed and waterbeds have heaters and those heaters worked really well for starting seeds.

Farmer Fred:

[15:10] Yeah, I would think so. Do you have to watch them so they don't get too hot?

Debbie Flower:

[15:14] I did not.  Now I have regular propagation mats that I bought at my local nursery and I roll them up and keep them in a container in the garage and then pull them out and plug them in. You can't, when you touch them, it doesn't feel hot, but they're working. In fact, you have to be... Vigilant. I mean, I think you should visit your plants, all your plants every day. But if you're using bottom heat, then they will dry out faster.

Farmer Fred:

[15:43] That's right. And to keep them moist, one trick would be to cover that container and have a dome over it too.

Debbie Flower:

[15:51] Yeah. Seed starting domes are nice things. Yeah.

Farmer Fred:

[15:53] All right. So, we've got the pepper seeds germinated. They've popped their little of heads up out of the ground, first leaves appear called the cotyledons, which aren't the true leaves. They'll come a little bit later or a lot later,

Debbie Flower:

[16:06] Depending on how fast the plant grows.

Farmer Fred:

[16:09] How fast the plant grows. I would keep that bottom heat going until true leaves appear.

Debbie Flower:

[16:14] Right. You don't want to do anything. Well, once the plant is out of the ground, out of the media, it has germinated from the seed and shown itself, you want sun or light of it some sort. Because the cotyledons, if they appear in the dark, they'll be yellowish or cream-colored. They can't make chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is made by the plant when the plant can use it to make food. If the plant's in the dark, it won't make chlorophyll, or if it's in the complete dark. If it's in the shade, it'll make more chlorophyll than if it's in the sun, because it needs to collect more energy from the light. So it has to have more chlorophyll for that. But for a seedling, we want it to grow quickly. We don't want it to put in extra effort to make extra chlorophyll. So we want it in bright sun as soon as it comes out of the ground. And then those are cotyledons, as you said, seed leaves. After that, we'll get the first set of true leaves. And I don't want to touch my seedlings until I have at least two true leaves.

Farmer Fred:

[17:14] Now, for a lot of people, you might be saying, well, if they want as much sun as possible at the cotyledon stage, should I put them outside? No, not if it's 20 degrees or 30 degrees or 40 or 50 or 60. You want light, and that can be achieved by a lighting system that you can find at any good nursery. Right.

Debbie Flower:

[17:37] And you don't have to spend a fortune for many. And they last for  Many, many years.  I just used a shop light from the hardware section, and you can get a warm bulb, fluorescent bulb, and a cool fluorescent bulb. So you want a shop light that will hold two bulbs, and then you get a warm fluorescent and a cool fluorescent bulb. And they need to be new. I only ever used it for seed starting, so I used it year after year after year, but I was only using it for, you know, a month or two each year. You don't want to just take your newly germinated peppers and put them under a fluorescent light you have on your desk that's been there forever. Our eyes can adjust. The plant can't adjust to the dimness that occurs with a fluorescent over time. They make great LED ones now for growing. I have not gotten into that. But for the cheapest, it used to be you buy the shop light for $10 and then each bulb was $1 or $2.

Farmer Fred:

[18:33] And gas used to be 25 cents a gallon.

Debbie Flower:

[18:36]  I'm dating myself, aren't I? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it doesn't have to be a special full spectrum bulb. It just needs to be enough to help the plant grow.

Farmer Fred:

[18:45] Yeah, these nifty  LED lights, a lot of the ones you can buy that are fairly inexpensive, $25, $30, are like spider legs of red lights and blue lights.  And you put the different light on depending upon what you want the plant to do.

Debbie Flower:

[19:00] Right, and I don't remember that one. I want to say  blue grows the green part, the above ground, and red grows the roots. But I'm not sure I have that right.

Farmer Fred:

[19:10] Or was it red growing for flowers? I forget.

Debbie Flower:

[19:12] Yeah, I do too. I'd have to look that up.

Farmer Fred:

[19:14] It will come in the instructions.

Farmer Fred:

[19:18] Hi, it's post-production Fred with the answer to the question, well, what do all those colors in that LED system do for your plants? The answer comes from TCP. They're a manufacturer of plant lights. And they make some key points about the different colored LED lights and their relation to plant growth. The blue light encourages leaf growth, chlorophyll production, and strong stem development, which is important for seedlings and early vegetative stages. The red light, that promotes flowering and fruiting, as well as cell elongation, which is crucial for later stages of plant growth. What about the green light? Well, plants reflect most green light, so it contributes minimally to photosynthesis but can be useful for observation in a dark grow room. Violet or purple light is considered a secondary light source and can support leaf growth and development when combined with the red and blue lights. So on that note, let's get back to our conversation. Thank you. 

Farmer Fred:

But the LED systems are what you're going to find most in this day and age, especially at a nursery. And a lot of them come with nice racks as well for getting that light as close as possible. That's critical  to the plant. Exactly. You don't want that plant stretching and pepper plants stretching. (Loud crash)  You know, we're going to stop recording at this point so I can go see what just fell to the ground. Thank you very much.

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PEPPER SEED GERMINATION TIPS. SUCCESS WITH PEPPER SEEDLINGS, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred:

[21:49] For some unknown reason,  my family's pictures that are on the wall, fall off the wall. Jeanne's family's pictures stick to the wall.

Debbie Flower:

[21:56] Oh, my.

Farmer Fred:

[21:56] Meanwhile, we were talking about having lights close to that little plant. We're talking, especially if it's a fluorescent system, maybe just a couple of inches away. Yes. So you need an adjustable system. Yes. A way to lower and raise the lights or the plants. Right.  And how long does that go on for until you plant it outside? 

Debbie Flower:

[22:17] Well, the other thing you need, so yes, you're going to have it under strong light until you plant it outside. And the other thing you need is wind at the same time. That basically exercises the stem and makes it strong. If you don't jiggle, and this was done as an actual experiment, they didn't use a fan. They just had grad students go and shake the shelves that had the seedlings on them for 10 minutes a day. So each plant needs to be moved 10 minutes a day. What I do is put in a fan that oscillates, goes back and forth, and I run it a half an hour a day, hoping that each plant gets enough. It seems to work. Each plant gets enough movement, so it develops what's called reaction tissue. That's its way of pushing against the air movement, so it will stand up straight and get enough light.

Farmer Fred:

[23:01] These little seeds that you planted, were they in flats or in their own little containers?

Debbie Flower:

[23:06] I prefer to start in my own little containers. And each one, I use this little six packs. I wash them with soap and a brush or a sponge or something to make sure I get in the corners. I reuse everything. You want to make sure any media that has stuck to the inside of that container comes out. There are diseases that can be transmitted from the media. And there's diseases specific to seedlings that you wouldn't have seen in something that was bigger, formerly grew in that six-pack, but it could show up on your plants – and you could lose your whole crop. So, I prefer to do individual seeds in a six-pack. If they're old seeds, I'll do two seeds maybe in a six-pack. 

Farmer Fred:

[23:54] Two seeds. Per cylinder in a Six-pack?

Debbie Flower:

[23:55]  Yes. Okay.

Farmer Fred:

[23:57] Yeah. Now, for those who do plant, though, in a flat and scatter seeds in, all of a sudden, you're going to start seeing plants that are really close together. At what point do you start separating these out?

Debbie Flower:

[24:08] Well, again, I don't like to touch my seedlings until they've got true leaves. One big reason is you don't want to handle the stem of a baby plant. You're much stronger than that stem and you will easily crush it. So I would, as soon as I saw first true leaves, hopefully two true leaves, I would start working on getting those plants out and separated. And it's a great thing to start a lot of seedlings in a little, even like a little four inch. It doesn't take up as much room. You don't need the space in your house or your greenhouse. So it is a desirable thing to do, but you need to watch them carefully. And when they get their first set of true leaves, water that media.

Debbie Flower

[24:46] Hold the plant by the leaf and then get under the roots and push up.

Farmer Fred:

[24:50] Now, I could find episodes of the Garden Basics podcast where you mentioned it's better to cut the stems of surrounding plants than it is to pull it out because you may be disturbing the root system once nearby.

Debbie Flower:

[25:02] That's very true. But there are many people who start their seeds in a bunch. I think you're one of them.

Farmer Fred:

[25:08] I am. Yeah.

Debbie Flower:

[25:09] And so to get them out, you're going to have to do that holding on to it and pushing up from below. What do you do?

Farmer Fred:

[25:17] I  use some very sharp needle nose pruners, flower stem snippers, and just cut them at the base of the ones I don't want and leave the biggest one there.

Debbie Flower: