Pepper Seedlings

Peppers! My pepper seedlings are growing well, I was just thinning them  out when I decided I needed a photo. I leave two seedlings per cell because I like to have extra in case we have an "I forgot to water them for four days" incident and only some of the cells survive. I know, it isn't that hard to water plants but I'm notoriously bad until I can get them into the dirt outside where Mother Nature takes care of the essentials. These are the varieties I'm growing this year:

Spicy Peppers (Mostly for canning salsa):
Habanero
White Bullet
Pequin
Manzano Yellow
Naga Viper
Wimpy (Some type of cherry pepper I got from a coworker)

Spicy Peppers for Drying:
Puya
Chi Chien

More Mild Peppers (Salsa and eating):
Jalapeno Big  Guy
Jalapeno Born to be Mild
Trinidad Perfume Pepper
Anaheim
Ancho Gigantea

No Heat:
King of the North

A lot of the spicier ones I'm only planting one or two plants, but the King of the North bell peppers and jalapenos I grow a lot more.

Seed Starting Setup

This is my setup for growing plants from seed. I just keep it in the storage room so it is out of the way and the plants didn't get a significant amount of light from the window I used to put it in front of anyways. I have heat mats under each tray with a temperature controller to keep the soil at an optimum germination temperature. My lights are on a timer so they come on for about 16 hours every day. 

Right now the peppers and tomatoes are the only things in here, because soon I will be transplanting them to larger pots and I'll need all four shelves for everything to fit. Then I split up the lights so there is only one per shelf, although in the future I want to buy more lights so I have six all together.

Spring Vegetable Seedlings

My spring vegetable seedlings are all doing nicely. Now that the low temperatures are above freezing I can leave my them outside so the peppers and tomatoes have more light. (I need another set of grow lights).
My setup has four shelves and I have four lights, but I realized last year that the seedlings grew much better with two lights hung side by side above them rather than just one.
Besides having the extra space inside, the main reason these are on the deck is to harden them off. It is important to acclimate seedlings to being outside before you go to plant them. For the first day, I set them out in the shade on a warm afternoon. Then the next day I left them out from the morning to the night. After that I let them have more sun, and now they are outside all the time as long as temperatures are above 34 degrees. (Note that that low temperature depends on the plants, these are all cold hardy and would probably be fine even if it frosted).

Watering Seedlings

I'm finally over the cold I've been fighting the last couple of days, and didn't kill my seedlings when I forgot to water them for two and half days. In fact, they seem to have thrived with my neglect, as my plants always seem to do. This is actually something I can't stress enough, you have to deprive your seedlings of water occasionally once they start growing. If you keep watering them every day and keep the soil moist constantly, not only will you grow nice green stuff on top of your soil, but you will have plants with little tiny root systems that will try and die on you the moment you plant them in the garden. Once my plants have their true leaves, I water them less and less frequently, letting the soil dry out before watering. This prompts the plants to expand their root systems in search of water. I also water them from the bottom by pouring water into the tray beneath the seedlings so the roots go down further instead of hanging out at the top of the soil.
Don't forget to pay attention to what the seedlings are telling you though, if they get droopy and the soil is drying out, then water them. It's more important to listen to the signals the plants send you than to follow a set schedule.

Starting Tomatoes Inside

This morning I started my tomato seeds inside. I'm growing 5 varieties this year: Federle , Big Mama, Italian Heirloom, German Pink, and Stupice. I'm also planting the eggplant Rosa Bianca seeds in the tomato tray.
I get kind of busy in the spring, so I'm cheating this year and sowing my seeds directly into 2 inch pots. I'll still have to transplant them into larger pots but since I always plant extra I'll only have to transplant about half of these. The rest will remain on backup until I know the garden plants will survive.