pointer80
Senior Member
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 1:50 pm
Location: northern Michigan

pepper seeds got quite warm.. ok or not?

Hello everyone, I was playing around with some pepper seeds that were slow to germinate in the seed starting mix so I decided to try the paper towel, baggy method just to see how they germinated, well I had a chunk of foam board that I put in the house and put a heat mat on top of the foam and a towel on top of the mat for a little heat barrier. I laid the bags on top of the towel with another thin towel on top of the bags. Well to my surprise when I check them a little later they were very warm, I got a meat probe and the temp was between 110 and 120 degrees. I never imagined it would have got that hot. I am thinking the foam must intensify the heat more than I thought. Do you think the seeds are ruined? I took them off the heat mat when I realized what was going on. Like I said this is just a experiment but when they sprouted I was going to pot them into containers. Thanks everyone.

pepperhead212
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2852
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:52 pm
Location: Woodbury NJ Zone 7a/7b

I always shoot for around 90º, plus or minus a few. What you got was awfully hot, but I've seen some "heat treatments" suggesting a brief submersion in water that hot, so maybe it wouldn't kill them. And one time I had something really strange happen: one variety of my pepper seeds didn't germinate at all (nothing unusual - this year I had 3!), and I took the vermiculite I start all the seeds in, and put it in a small bucket in the shed. It sat there ALL SUMMER, when they totally dried out, and got very hot in the summer sun in that closed building. When I used the vermiculite for planting my fall crop, the peppers came up before most of the greens, in 3 or 4 days!! After that, I'm thinking of heat treating these no-shows this season by putting them in my oven, with the pilot light (about 125º), for a couple of weeks, then trying again. I haven't got anything to loose!



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