Cayenne peppers with shriveled seed leaves.

[redneck647]

After the failure of my first batch my second batch of cayennes are sprouting now. I just have a new problem. Many of the plants are sprouting with shriveled seed leaves. The 2 leaves together are about the same diameter as the sprouts stem. They don't open upon there own and just shrivel up without growing any. The stem grows taller for awhile and then dies.
I've also noticed that many of these seedling are having trouble getting rid or the seed shell about 2 3rds of them I’ve had to remove the shell itself but the others with the problem slid out after a few days of spraying it with water.
Ay idea whats going on? I'm guessing that the problem has something to do with the seed and not something I'm doing but I'm not sure.

[imafan26]

What are you planting them in? They sound like they may be dampening off from too much water. I don't worry about the hulls, they eventually get themselves free.

[redneck647]

These ones are in old planting soil from past years. The bags gone so I honestly don't have a clue. I'm watering them from the bottom like I did before with no problems.
I may be wrong but I thought dampening off mostly effected the roots and stems? My plants seems to have health stems. Just showing some signs of needing more light which I'm guessing is because of the leaves.

[imafan26]

I don't usually put seedlings in old soil. I put seedlings in new soil or at least sterilized old potting soil. I will reuse soil for transplants. Too many disease issues and rubbish in reused soil.

If you bottom water, do you have water in the tray all of the time or do you let them go almost dry between?

More light wouldn't hurt, but I have not had shriveled leaves from low light, mostly soft dark green leaves and stems bending toward the light.

[redneck647]

Thanks. I usually wouldn't have used it but the bag of soil I had at the time of planting was contaminated with mold spores.

I let the trays dry out before watering.

As for the light I'm using a home made grow light that I mad 2 years ago. Only difference is its about 8” above the seedlings this year because of the higher markers I used.

I took a picture of it this morning. Once I have time I need to figure out how to post it,.

[redneck647]

Here we go. Now this one actually seems to have growth starting between the seed leaves so I'm holing it'll get its true leaves and survive.
The bottom part of the left seed leaf is pretty much how they started as before the tip of it and the right leaf shriveled.