New to starting tomatoes and pepper from seed. Tweak my plan!
asm198 - Zone 6a (MO)
9 years ago
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asm198 - Zone 6a (MO)
9 years agoRelated Discussions
When should I start my pepper & tomato seeds?
Comments (11)Hi marial1214, I'm in your same zone in PA, mid-north Montgomery County. I set out my tomatoes about May 1-15. I do everything a little early, so I'm risking frost. Last year, a late frost hit on May 19th, so I had to build tent cities with Xmas lights around my tomatoes. They were fine, but it was a lot of work. I find it to be worth it to plant them early. I set out my sweet and hot peppers based on night time temperatures, usually around June 1st. They and sweet potatoes are the only plants that I don't put in the ground earlier than recommended. For seed starting, I do the following: Hot Peppers: January 15th (but I will be starting the Habaneros next week) Sweet Peppers: February 15 Tomatoes: March 1 I have a VERY good light set up and my tomatoes grow thick, bushy and quickly. For all my plants, I pot up several times. For the tomatoes, I dig a deep (~12") hole, so even if they do get big, a fair amount of the stem is underground (they will put out roots from that stem). I've been doing some odd additions at planting time for the tomatoes: (bottom of hole) wool, crab compost, shrimp shells, Root Zone beneficial microbes, crushed calcium carbonate. I then water with Root Shield beneficial microbes (2T per gallon). The microbes/shrimp/crab compost is to prevent Verticillium wilt, but oddly, it also helped with late blight last year. The calcium carbonate is to prevent blossom end rot. Hope some of this helps. I've attached a link to my seed starting setup (can't find the one I posted on this forum) Good luck! Bellatrix Here is a link that might be useful: Bellatrix - seed starting light setup...See Moreis it possible to start peppers from seed now in my climate?
Comments (2)Right now temperatures sound perfect for setting flowers and new peppers on the plants. But soon it will be too hot for that. If you plant seeds now you will have to wait for temperatures to cool down before they set new peppers. However, you will have a longer time for the plant to grow big so when it does cool down the larger plant will set a lot of peppers. You will then need a couple of months for them to ripen red. lets say a month to grow big and green and a couple of weeks to a month to turn red. So need to know more about all 12 months of your weather. Technically you should be able to keep your peppers alive for a few years if they do not freeze to death or dry out completely in the heat. I am up north in zone 5 with short season. Basically I start mine early and then get them outdoors and get a few peppers to set. they ripen over the time of higher heat and then set a lot of peppers as it cools down. If you are going into a real hot season I would probably expect better results if planted in the ground and not in pots. Although pots would be good if you are home all day every day to watch them closely and water them at the first sign of drying out. But one miss and they can dry out and die on you. When planting in dry soil it is probably best to plant in a hole. you fill the hole with water and that makes watering much easier. The water does not flow away from the plant. I would definitely plant some seeds immediately. You will learn best by experimentation. I am sure you will have some success. Of course pots have the advantage that you can move them out of the super hot sun. Maybe talk to some people from Arizona where it gets desert hot and they use other tricks to keep things alive over the heat. I think you want to try some chinese and annual peppers at this time to see how different they grow. habaneros vs say some jalapeno or new mexico types. I like to think of it this way. The best place to grow peppers is at the equator up high in a cool mountain. It never freezes but never gets too hot either and the plant can grow for years....See Morered chili peppers - no fruit (started from seed)
Comments (2)I'm also in NY (long island). I think the possibility for your plants to set fruit this year is done, at least in our neck of the woods. You should've likely seen flowers in July for harvesting now. I have a wee little pepper in a teeny pot that has only now set fruit. I saw flowers about 4-6 wks ago. Anyhow. I think your problem of too much foliage & very little fruit could be due to too much nitrogen. Barring poor stock that is. If memory serves correctly, high nitrogen will give you plenty of foliage but not necessarily support fruit production. Makes for very healthy house plants, lol. I *have* heard about hanging plants at the end of the season, but not to overwinter. If you end up with a ton of unripened fruit & the season is closing fast & you're not overwintering, you can hang the plants in a cool shaded place (like a garage). The fruit will then ripen, kinda the same way blushing tomatoes can be picked & allowed to ripen on the counter or the vine, but your plant will surely die. I'm planning on overwintering this year. This past weekend, I pruned 2 trees really hard. They were about 3 feet high & just as wide in containers. This weekend coming up, I'll dig them out, bare root & plant in a gritty mix. This year is an experimental one as some of my peppers did not produce useful peppers for me, I use 'em for cooking and everyday consumption, so I want 'em hot & full of complex flavor. Do a GW search for overwintering hot peppers & you'll get pics, info & guidance. My suggestion is to sort out where they'll get the most light first, then pick the best plants, have a backup (air dried seeds labelled WELL, trust me on this) in case one gives up the ghost, cut back hard & leave a couple of leaves, watch & treat for pests (you WILL have them) and water sparingly. Cold & wet sucks for us & them too 8) Good luck! Antoinette...See MoreMixing my own tomato seed starting mix.
Comments (13)DWD2, thank you for posting your methodology. It always good to see how others grow their seeds and compare methods. I have grown my own starts (36+ tomato varieties) for the past 5 years. Before last year, I had not had too many plant health problems, except for the first year when my light system was not close enough to my plants. In that year I had problems with leggyness. I strongly suspect that my problem last year was the seed starter mix, but it could have been a few other things. I may have introduced disease into the first batch by incorporating compost into the mix. I think this is unlikely because in other batches and other treys I did not use compost in the mix but still had the same problems. Also, once the plants were in the ground they recovered and grew well the rest of the summer. If it were a disease I would have expected that the plants would still have had problems after planting, which they did not. Tomatoes are really amazing in what they can take early on and still produce well. For example, I had a mouse eat all the leaves of two plants shortley after they were in the ground. There were only stems left and I thought they were done, but I did not pull them out. Both plants sprouted new leaves again and became bushy healthy plants. I was astounded. I have had others suggest that with an approximately 50/50 mix of vermiculite and peat, I may have had water retention problems that suffocated the roots. Thats possible, but I was pretty careful about my watering. I can't totally rule that out. It may also have been too many nutrients from a dilute solution of fertilizer at watering as the problems occured shortly after that. I have read that new seedlings don't need many nutrients becuase they get what they need from the seeds/cotyledons. Some have even suggested that you will cause more problems by fertilizing than just not fertilizing. The reason why I fertilized is because we had a number of storms in May that pushed my planting date back 3-4 weeks longer than our average frost date. So I fertilized a little. I may also have had root binding problems. There is another possiblity which DWD2 suggested. I used a seed heating matt for the first time last year and most of the tomatoes had it under them for at least a day. So I may have over-heated the soil a little and damaged the roots. However on the last seed trey that got started late, I did not use the heat matt because I suspected it may have caused the problems. Yet I still had the same problems in the last trey. My strongest suspicion is still the starter mix. I have read the ingredient list on several seed starting mixes. In most cases, they usually contain peat (as the main medium plus it has high cation exchange capacity) + vermiculite (for micro nutrient exchange and water retention) + lime (to balance the PH of the peat). They sometimes include perilite, but sometimes not (example Jiffy), they also sometimes include a few other things (mycorrhizae for example or a source of nutrients). The main ingredient that I was missing that most starter mixes have is lime for ph balance. I could not find lime in any stores in Utah at the time. They do sell it here, but it is not a common soil amendment in Utah because most Utah soils are slightly alkaline (PH 7.8-8.2). So most folks would not want to add lime. This year I am interested to try mixing my own starter again but I wanted actual recipies to get an idea of the right proportions to use. Also I had no idea that mycorrhizae was available so I am defintley going to use that in my mix. Alternatively I could just buy a pre-made starter mix, but I wanted to save money and its a learning experience as well....See Moreasm198 - Zone 6a (MO)
9 years agoSouthCountryGuy Zone 4b-5 SE BC
9 years agoasm198 - Zone 6a (MO) thanked SouthCountryGuy Zone 4b-5 SE BCasm198 - Zone 6a (MO)
9 years agoasm198 - Zone 6a (MO)
9 years agorhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
9 years agomike423
9 years agoSouthCountryGuy Zone 4b-5 SE BC
9 years agowxcrawler
9 years agojdevers (zone 7a Farmington AR)
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoPeter (6b SE NY)
9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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