Post here about your 2025 growing.
My various trays (the last dozen seeds from GTS 2024, GTS 2025, some low desert landraces, and saved seeds from the 2024 Canyon City Chile work) are about half seeded. Have been holding about 69 degrees so far. I’ll probably add one light bulb to the closet to bump it up to 75 for the sake of non-zero germination of some new genetics.
I made a little neglectable patch at my friends’ house (with his permission). I direct sowed the spicy pepper seeds from going to seed. I put a little picket fence around the patch (not pictured here) so his lawn service can’t mow them. Zone 7b east tennessee.
I started my hot pepper seeds indoors around the end of February here in NE Ohio (zone 6a). About half are GTS 2025 grex, and the other half are saved seeds from a few years ago from my previous garden in Georgia – including serranno, guajillo, habanero, and a jalapeño that seemed to have a genetic mutation.
I started half the seeds in native soil and half in a mix. The ones in native soil are germinating fine, but apparently there were a lot of marigold and tomato seeds left in the soil from last year because a bunch of those came up before the pepper seeds. You can see one of the marigolds really clearly in the top left cell in the picture.
I will be starting my peppers in a week or so. Starting them too early here results in pot-bound, sad plants.
I tried to start 8 kinds of peppers, 4 sweet and 4 spicy. My hubby LOVES spicy peppers. Sweet were RBP23, RBP24, black beauty and Ozark giant. Spicy are poblano, Anaheim, orange habanero and serrano. Notes on names: RBP = red bell pepper with the year I harvested the seeds. Black beauty, Ozark giant, Anaheim and poblano were all seeds from Baker’s Seeds. I harvested the habanero and serrano seeds from peppers I harvested last fall. Alas, RBP24, habanero and serranoes never sprouted. And then I killed all the Anaheim and poblano with soil that I’d sifted to all small, fine pieces.
I’d started everything in small paper cups and decided to transplant up into flat after they sprouted. I have a nice mix of many-years-composted shredded wood, some wood chip mulch and compost that I used for the sweet pepper transplants. Then I sifted out the big pieces for the spicy peppers. And they all kicked over within a week, while the sweet peppers are doing great. Yep, I’m learning. Anyhoo, my plan had been to have a bed of sweet peppers and a bed of spicy peppers. I might just get some spicy pepper seedlings today so I can still do that.