Welcome to the first episode of from seed to sauce a beginner's guide to growing chilli peppers
my name is Shaun also known as ChilliChump. In this episode, we're going to be planting seeds.
the first thing you need to do is get yourself a cup of tea
now not only is it tasty and delicious but it's also going
to come in handy when we're planting our seeds
my philosophy when growing chillies or any other plants for that matter is to try and replicate
what happens in nature as closely as possible now I live in the UK which is not typical chilli
growing country but there's a few things we can do to try and optimize that process and still
result in a massive harvest at the end of the season and I'll share all those tips with you
throughout the series today however we are talking about planting seeds and let's think about what
happens in nature when it comes to chillis getting their seeds to be spread far and wide
chillies as we know most chillies are spicy they have capsaicin inside them
which results in a burn and it's not just you and me that feel it but other mammals do as
well so a bear goes and eats some carolina Reapers they will not be a very happy bear.
your dogs and cats will also not be very happy if you feed them carolina reaper so please don't
however if you have birds feel free to give them as many chillies as you want birds cannot actually
sense the heat from capsaicin the capsaicin the part that makes a chilli hot does not affect birds
whatsoever now it's thought that that's a defense mechanism to help the chilli seeds be spread far
and wide birds can get those seeds out further than mammals can for example now we've got to
think about what happens when a bird goes and eats a chilli and those seeds go inside their stomach
obviously the bird flies off and it'll go and poop somewhere and you'll end up with seeds propagating
in the soil and becoming lovely chilli plants so there's two things that are going on there the one
thing is the poop is going to help that seed to have a bit of nutrients to get started but we'll
come on to that in a future episode what nutrients to use but in this one we're interested in the
second part of this which is the scarification of the seeds now in this instance it's chemical
scarification and scarification just means the softening of the seed shell and it allows oxygen
to get inside the seed and it also helps the seed to germinate this is very important for older
seeds not so important for very fresh seeds but still it does help and regardless of my seeds are
a month old or five years old i will still do the process i'm going to show you today the good news
is we don't need the digestive fluids of a bird to be able to do our chemical scarification but we
will replicate that in a way what we're going to use are tannins now this being english breakfast
tea which is just black english breakfast tea that has quite a lot of tannins in the other tea that
has a lot of tannins in is chamomile tea so if you can only get hold of chamomile tea this will be
perfectly fine as well if you make a cup of tea like i've got here take that tea bag out
and put it in another cup you can use a pyrex jug or something like that and put some hot water in
that and let that steep for about half an hour or so once the temperature comes down on that
liquid where it's at room temperature then we're ready to start our scarification of our seeds
something else you can use for chemical scarification is hydrogen peroxide
this is three percent strength which you can get over the counter at a chemist or from amazon
and this has one other added benefit if your seeds have a risk of mold on them if you haven't dried
them properly or you've got some seeds that you're not too sure of the quality of them
hydrogen peroxide will actually help to disinfect those seeds too we're going to need a 30 to 1
mix so that means 30 parts water this is just filtered water and one part hydrogen peroxide
these are the four varieties that we'll be growing during the series
so in the last beginner's guide series i didn't grow a super hot because
a big mistake that beginners make is they'll rush out to get a whole bunch of seeds for super hots
like the carolina reaper seven part primo and that sort of thing and the problem is they need a very
long season and that can be some of the most challenging to actually produce fruit but i'll
show you how i get decent harvest from my super hots and we'll do that with the moruga scorpion
i would grow cayenne every single year because you'll be able to use this far more than you will
super hot and they just taste fantastic we'll be making a sauce with each one of
these chilli varieties and the cayenne will be definitely one that i use to make a buffalo style
wings hot sauce so the Moz Piri Piri this is the seed variety that i've sent out to my volunteers
so this is what they will be comparing progress with when it comes to this series and if you want
to do the same thing then you can go check out chillichumpseeds.com and get yourself a packet.
To soak my seeds i'm going to use these small shot glasses which will do a perfect job you
don't need a lot of liquid in here just enough to cover over the seeds and these are really cheap
and reusable as well so i'll use them each year you can label them you could write on the shot
glass itself if you want you can write a label and stick it on or you know use a tag and put it
next to it i use this little container it just helps out with dispensing the liquid when you
are using such small cups so all that we do is give it a bit of a squeeze and there we go
we're going to be using a good quality compost for our germination this is just
plain compost it's beautiful stuff lovely and dark and it's actually quite fluffy
as it is however there are bits and pieces in there that aren't ideal for germination
so we need to take a riddle something like this where we can serve out any of the big particles
and that gives us this beautiful fine fluffy compost now you can buy seed starting compost
as well but it's far more cost effective to buy this because this will be used
for when i pot on as well i won't need to actually sieve it as much this will be perfectly fine
where chillies typically grow it's fairly warm and you've got to make sure that your chillies have
a good start to life by trying to replicate that warmth you want to reach around 28 degrees celsius
that is not something i can get here in my potting shed it actually gets below freezing in here most
of the time so i need a heated propagator some other ways you can use to heat your trays if you
are doing this indoors it's a little bit easier because you probably already have heating on
indoors these trays as long as you make sure there's no holes underneath or you put them inside
another tray you can put that on top of the fridge sometimes fridges will be quite warm on the top
and that should be enough to get the temperatures up for you you can also put this on top of
satellite boxes sometimes those can be quite warm but again make sure that you're not spilling water
near electrics but for me i'll be doing it inside a heated propagation tray
i'll be using SeedsIO to track my plants so if you do want to
follow along you can go into SeedsIO and check out what's going on there
i know this is tray number 12 and i've got it laid out how i want it to be so i'm just going
to mark this tray you can see i've already put some masking tape over there but this is tray 12
and then we're going to mark our rows this just helps me to keep track
it's easy to keep track when you only have one tray but i'm going to have about 15 trays
this compost has been sitting outside for a while so it's
fairly cold we're going to let this come up to temperature while our seeds are soaking
if you want another little trick to help you get better germination rates
stick your seeds inside the fridge for a couple of days before you go and soak them in the tea
what this does is it kind of tricks the seeds into thinking it's gone through a winter cycle
and it's now ready for spring when it starts warming up like this and spring is typically when
nature says hey we've got to start germinating so just another little tip that could help you out
it's time for us to plant our seeds so we're going to start off with our cayenne
which we'll be taking up this column over here column e so here column e and all that we do is
we stick it on top of the soil we don't need to embed it very low down so we just take one seed
and get that in there now you can put more than one seed in there if you want and then you just
thin out the strongest that is completely up to you and it's a good strategy as well
if you want to ensure the success of that seed cell
we got there actually i'll do column f as well so we'll add that to cdo
i do love my cayenne plants and chillies
before i forget i just added in here
and there we go so we've got the cayenne in there
so something to point out while we're doing this you can see in here that some of these
are floating that does not mean that they are not good seeds so just bear that in
mind don't throw away the floaters it's not always an indication that they're bad seeds
if you have extra seeds then yeah feel free to double them up
you'll just be pruning them a little bit later you'll be pinching off the less
vigorous growing one one that's not growing as quickly
the next step is to lightly cover the seeds with some of your compost
you can use things like vermiculite or perlite if you want but i like to just use a little bit
more of the compost that i've already used so make sure you don't budge these seeds
into a different seed cell because you'd be very upset when you get the wrong type of chilli
I’m going to pat down lightly you don't have to do this necessarily but
that'll be fine
okay
make sure that all your seeds are actually covered you don't want them exposed to the air and when we
water we'll be able to have another look and see whether any have been exposed for this
initial watering we're just going to use a spray bottle and we'll see how that goes try and get the
water to room temperature you don't want to use freezing cold water don't use water from the tap
if you can help it because of the chlorine if you do have to use water from the tap then let it sit
in an open container for about an hour or so and hopefully the chlorine will evaporate
but unfortunately sometimes it's not just chlorine that's in the water there's something else called
chloramine which does not evaporate the water i like to use is water straight
from the heavens so i use rain water quite a lot i collect most of it off my greenhouses and
i use that for watering so i can already see some of my seeds are poking out a little bit
so we'll just add a little bit more soil and make sure that they're covered over
until my plants are outdoors i will be bottom watering and the reason for that is typically
you'll have lights overhead and if you don't have lights then of course you're going to have
some sunshine and if you're watching from the top it can cause a green film of algae
okay so i've wet that down all right for now, I'm going to still do some bottom watering here
because i can feel it's still quite light all I've done is settled the top by using the sprayer and
that makes sure that at least from the top the the seeds are nice and wet and they are covered over
we just need to saturate the soil and to do that we need about a liter of water if both these trays
were full then i would use two liters of water but one liter of water will do just fine for this
make sure the water is above the base level as you can see here just a little bit not too much
you don't want this to be sod and wet this needs to dry out over the next two or three days but
that is just fine that means that the water will actually pull up into the soil once we've watered
from the bottom we need to get the humidity dome back on to make sure that we keep the moisture
inside here it's a bit of a balancing act but it is hugely important to make sure that your seeds
do not dry out at this early stage until they've germinated you've got to make sure that there's
always moisture in your hair without being too much moisture so make sure that the humidity dome
is on these flaps make sure they're closed so no air can get in and out it just keeps the humidity
in here you should start seeing some condensation on the inside of the dome if it's doing its job
if it's heating up correctly and if you've got enough water in there and at this stage you do not
need any light this light that i have above the plants at the moment they'll go off in just a bit
is one of my favorite things to experience when growing chillies now when that happens you'll see
a little shoot come up and there'll be what are called cotyledons appearing above the soil they
the cotyledons that's when i start putting light over my chillies what you need to do to look after
your seeds until they all start germinating and until i take you on to the next episode where we
talk about seedlings just make sure that this is damp not soaking wet water from the bottom
so every other day if you've got the humidity dome on you every other day look underneath make sure
that it's dry underneath the sea tray there's no standing water and if there is any standing water
do not water if it's dry underneath there then you can add some more water another liter or two
if both your seed trays are full up that's it for this episode i hope that has helped you out and
i hope that you have brilliant success with your germination and until the next episode stay spicy