Category Archives: Peppers

Spring Is Here (Almost), Starting Seeds, Transplanting, and Other Garden Chores

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I feel like I am just awakening from hibernation. The bears have it right, taking a nap in the winter. Although I wouldn’t exactly call it a winter. Very little snow. That makes a lot of people happy but I live HERE for the four seasons. What this does for me, is make me antsy. I hear the birds chirping, I don’t need a coat for the most part and I am chomping at the bit to start our plants.

My table is filled with germination mix, seed trays, and seed packets, a sprayer, garden marking pens, tags, etc. All the paraphernalia you need to plant seeds. and I even have printed spreadsheets. I am trying to be organized.
These are my seeds. I store them in the dining room, which at this time of year is no longer called a “dining room” but a “seed propagation” room. You can see in the background the racks and LED lights we use to germinate them.
Tomato babies, they look really good this year.
Pepper babies, they take a lot longer to germinate than tomatoes do.

I spend a lot of time looking online at seed catalogs, choosing new and old varieties of tomatoes, peppers, veggies, and flowers. It is a veritable buffet out there. So far, I have 357 varieties of tomatoes, 64 kinds of lettuce, and 126 kinds of peppers and the number of flowers is almost incalculable.

Flowers and more flowers. Snapdragons, stock, alyssum, asarina (a beautiful vining plant), begonias, salvia, and alyssum.

Now that I’ve found out I can grow teeny, tiny seeds that look like dust, I am growing all of them I can. Of course, for things like coleus, begonia, and petunias, I am finding the benefits of using pellleted seeds. I am even trying calceolaria. Talk about dust. You want to plant maybe 30 or 40 plants, no, what you have in your hand is more like 5000 seeds, or so it seems.

Petunias, I am trying something different using plug trays for individual flowers. It doesn’t necessarily save space but it should save time in the long run.
Here I am transplanting the first sets that are going to live in gallon pots

So it begins, transplanting. We put a couple of heaters out in the greenhouse for me to work and not freeze, a fine music system (well actually my iPhone and a Bose speaker) and I am happy as a clam. There’s something about playing in the dirt.

Today I have transplanted 600 tomatoes. Only a billion more to go. I am glad I love doing plants although it can be overwhelming at times. They say that if you find something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life!

One of These Things Is Not Like The Other!

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It’s been a while since I posted. Just trying to get my health and my mind back. Spring may have sprung somewhere but not here yet, even so, I have been busy in the greenhouse. I hope to share all of that with you. Thought I’d start out with something simple. We started our peppers back in January. I have to say that they are the best peppers I’ve ever grown! I would swear by the LED lights we purchased from Barina on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=barrina&crid=3GACK3JDA1B5Z&sprefix=barrina%2Caps%2C170&ref=nb_sb_noss_1.

As I was hovering over the seed trays looking at all the life that popped up I saw something I didn’t recognize, at least it didn’t look like a pepper leaf. This was, of course after they grew their first true leaves. Hmmmm. didn’t know what to make of it since we had not opened a tomato seed packet at all! Just pepper seeds. Well, I don’t know what it is or where it came from so since it seemed like a plucky little thing, we transplanted it into a regular pot. It looked like the Ugly Duckling sort of thing. Not ugly really, just definitely not a pepper. I am going to grow it out and hopefully, it will be some magical, fabulous-tasting tomato.

Our peppers in progress as of March 7th, this one is called Super Khi

What I want you to get out of this is that mistakes don’t always happen in my hands. Often, from a seed packet, we will have plants that are supposed to have a potato leaf and not a regular leaf. those are the easy ones to differentiate. I have had as much as a 50/50 difference in the seedlings. Where I feel bad is when a customer gets something he didn’t bargain for such as a cherry tomato, not a beefsteak. Sometimes it’s a happy accident. Our friends had an oxheart and not a Cherokee Purple. didn’t know what it was although we had some guesses and he saved the seed which we are growing this year in the hopes it will be the same. They waxed rhapsodically over the sandwiches they had from this particular plant. Who knew? You really don’t know until it fruits. Sometimes I can tell the difference between a short little dwarf and an indeterminate or it may have bluish-green leaves or even a differently shaped leaf such as the Silvery Fir Tree. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine.

Everybody’s favorite, Jalapeno. Last year we had almost nothing in the Jalapeno catagory. this year we have 10 different varieties!

Even though we try hard to keep things straight, it happens. In my business, I always will replace the errant plant Personally, can’t imagine how difficult it must be to keep seeds straight out in the field. And collecting and preparing them for seed packets, what a job!

Islander
Giant Marconi and Long Red Cayenne

Container Gardens And The Plants That Love Them

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me in garden with tomatoes811

Wishful thinking, one summer in years gone by. Warm weather, monster tomato plants on our homemade tomato cages.

tomaotes-gallons

Our gallon pots that we are selling now

First, let me apologize, I fully expected to be able to continue this thread and then life got crazy! We started selling our plants much earlier than we had planned to. The Garden Expo we were camping up for was canceled due to the virus situation, and that is a third of our sales. I wish this was my “hobby” but it’s around 50% of our income so we had to scramble to figure out how we were going to overcome this serious setback. Instead of 1500 gallons, we had 3000! Thankfully, we are considered an essential business and we knew that the “new normal” would make selling a lot more difficult so we started to sell early. Everyone had been very generous and understanding. I lowered the price of my gallons by $2, they are now $8.00 and have changed the way we are getting plants to the customer. Curbside delivery, home delivery with minimum orders, appointments, social distancing, monitoring how many in a greenhouse at a time (1) husband and wife are considered as one person, if they haven’t caught it from each other at home they won’t be catching it in the greenhouse! Fun times! Apologies aside here is the long-awaited post.

mixed flowers21

Cute little guy with impatiens. For a shade garden, small soil cavity so better for a shade garden where it won’t dry out as fast.

So far we have discussed basic tips on raised bed gardening, in-ground gardening and edible landscaping which simply means including vegetable plants in your decorative gardens. I am a big believer in container gardening, for vegetables, for flowers, and for both mixed together. Edible container gardens don’t need to be boring or plain or merely functional. In container gardens, there is a design principle that most of us learn, thrillers, fillers, and spoilers.

containers and bed12

For a shade garden – wax begonias, impatiens and alyssum in a “flower bed”

Thrillers are your focus plant. It is the dracaena spike, coleus, begonia, ornamental grasses anything that is a big, eye-catching focal point. In an edible container garden, it would be your tomato plant, cucumber vine, lettuce etc. Can you imagine growing carrots, with their ferny, frothy foliage in the middle of a large container surrounded by flowers? Sweet.

krainiy-sever--3-6-22-17

Krainy Sever, a dwarf tomato with petunias and lobelia

Fillers are mid-size, mounding or rounded plants that surround your focal plant. You can use it to complement or contrast the colors of the focal plant. If it is a dappled shade garden, wax begonias, gazania, ageratum, impatiens would be good choices. Petunias, mounding lobelia, alyssum, ivy geraniums, nasturtiums, and million bells, are all good choices for plants in containers in the sun.

pansies in pots58

Pansies and alyssum as a fluffy white skirt in a coffee pot

Spillers are plants that tumble over the sides of the container, softening the edges and providing more color. Bacopa, petunias, alyssum, trailing lobelia, sweet potato vine, ivy, are good choices.

salad bowl pictures - 2

Salad Bowls – various lettuces in colanders with alyssum and lobelia

Light, Temperature, Nutrition
Some plants can work in partial, dappled shade, million bells, lobelia, alyssum, bacopa, petunias, and geraniums. Very versatile. This leads me to my next point: keeping in mind the various light, temperature and nutritional needs of the plants.

I would never put coleus and petunias in the same pot. Coleus, for the most part, like shade (although there are new sun-tolerant varieties coming out today), Petunias do better with more sun. Vegetables also do better with more sun. Lettuce would be a good filler or focus plant for partial sun. Tomatoes need a lot of sunshine to be prolific. anything that produces fruit, such as tomatoes or cucumbers, need a lot of energy to form it.

Think of putting drought-tolerant plants together, shade-loving plants, or sun-loving plants in the same pots. Temperature is another factor although I think of it more in terms of succession planting. Pansies and Schizanthus like cooler temperatures and lots of sun. One of my favorite combinations to plant is a tomato or lettuce plant (which also likes cooler temperatures), petunias, lobelia and alyssum. When the cool weather plants succumb to the heat, or I eat the lettuce, the petunias alyssum and lobelia take over. I can also insert other plants in their place. Two-season beauty!

container lettuce 2

Lettuce, alyssum, and a tomato in a pot, probably a Tumbler

When choosing your vegetables for your pots, choose varieties that are developed for containers. Determinate or dwarf tomato plants, compact pepper plants, carrots that are short in length, cucumbers that don’t vine too much, squash with a more compact shape, bush beans, (if you had a large pot, you could do a pole bean and trellis it), spinach, beets. and even melons. Look for words like “compact”, “determinate”, “short vines”, “small” and “dwarf”.

The picture above shows “Small Wonder” spaghetti squash, “Spacemaster” cucumber plant and fingerling potatoes in pots. Below are carrots that I grew as an experiment in pots. They were amazing!

carrots - 2

Carrots in a square pot

sweet rebas acorn

Sweet Reba acorn squash

“Sweet Reba” (above) is a good candidate for a large container since it is a compact plant.

Here are some good choices for vegetables:

pamsies99

Coffee anyone?

garden front big pots

Tomatoes and flowers in a large pot

Let’s not forget herbs. Most herbs like to live in pots. Purple Basils add a nice punch to a container. Thyme would be a good spiller.

Rosie basil
Cardinal basil
container herb garden

 

In the end, we are gardeners. We try everything, if it works great, if not we try again!

Here are a few pots that I have done over the years.

a mix of petunias, alyssum
shade planting coleus and ivy geranium
tomatoes spilling over a pot with flowers
tomato with petunias
nasturtiums and lettuce
feher ozon paprika pepper in pot
candyland in pot
lettuce
Rosie basil with other plants
patio tomato

a mix of petunias, alyssum
shade planting coleus and ivy geranium
tomatoes spilling over a pot with flowers
nasturtiums and lettuce
tomato with petunias
feher ozon paprika pepper in pot

Pepper Varieties: Glow and Volcano Candy, Sweet and Spicy

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glow

Glow

Glow is a sweet pepper that caught my eye as I was thumbing through the catalogs. It literally looked like it was glowing. Amazing.

Since I haven’t grown these yet, I have to rely on the descriptions I read.

Tapered, thick-walled, 2-3 lobed fruits are 4-5″ long and are deliciously sweet and fruity. Medium-size plants yield well. Early and easy to grow in diverse climates.

It’s cute that people tell me they want and orange (or red or yellow) pepper. They say the green peppers don’t agree with them. The reality is that most peppers start out green, when they mature, they turn color. That is why the green ones in the store are so much cheaper, they can be picked earlier, leading the way for more peppers to form.

 

volcano candy 2.jpg

Volcano Candy

One of my husband’s new favorites. We grew these for the first time last year. originally named, Devil’s Kiss, we took artistic license and renamed them. Volcano Candy. Dark red, round fruits, very prolific, somewhere between the heat of a jalapeno and a habanero. The husband says they actually have a peppery fruity flavor and that if you cut them and removed the seeds and membranes, the flesh wasn’t hot at all. They look like cherry bombs. We kept this growing in our greenhouse (along with our Yellow Bull’s horn) long after the first frost and it did well until mid-December when we decided to pull the plant. We just couldn’t keep the greenhouse warm enough to maintain their health.

steve and corno di toro yelow

October 11, 2019, My husband standing next to our Corno di Toro, still growing strong in the greenhouse with its friends.

corno yellow late dec
Notice how the leaves are starting to droop. 
They got worse as the month went on. At first, I thought it was a lack of water but their fruits were just as firm as ever. I realized it was temperature. Peppers come from warmer climates after all.

last of the corno di tornos 2019

Corno di Toro (Yellow Bulls Horn) Here is a picture of what we harvested on December 22 right before we pulled the plant. That pepper is 7 inches long. Believe it or not!!!!

My New Favorite Pepper: Violet Sparkle

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violet sparkle 82019 - 3

“Violet Sparkle” from my garden.

As most of my friends know, I like my peppers sweet and my tomatoes sweeter! I don’t eat hot or spicy peppers…ever! The sweetest pepper I have eaten up to this point was the Patio Red Marconi, a small golf ball-sized red pepper. I was only able to grow it one year and then couldn’ find the seed anywhere. 

A teaching moment here: Most people buy blocky, green peppers in the store for considerably less than the red, yellow and orange ones. The green ones are actually unripe. With a few exceptions (there are some that start out white, chartreuse green, or purple), all peppers begin life green, and will eventually turn some color as they mature. The reason you pay more for the colored fruit is that they stay on the plant longer. Doesn’t matter whether they are hot or sweet peppers, hybrids or heirlooms.

Back to my favorite pepper. While perusing the seed catalogs last January, I was intrigued by a pepper called “Violet Sparkle” carried by Baker Seeds. First, it caught my eye because it was purple. Secondly, it had stripes. I am all over those things. Last night I cut one fo the red ones up and it was by far the sweetest pepper I’ve ever had. No weird aftertaste either. So, in conclusion: starts out purple, stays purple with cream-colored stripes (varies from pepper to pepper), fairly prolific and early, matures to a lovely, deep red, and is the sweetest thing on my plate. What’s not to love?

Purple Cauliflower, Golden Cauliflower White Cucumbers, and A Paprika Pepper

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cualiflower cucumbers 8119 - 3We have been picking broccoli for quite a while now, today, I picked our cauliflower. One was a gorgeous purple and the other a beautiful cheddar yellow. First time I’ve ever grown cauliflower and got something besides a softball size, insect-eaten, inedible object, sprouting flowers. My first introduction to colored cauliflower came from Winco. One day, they were sitting in the produce aisle. As you know I love color. They taste exactly like the white ones but are prettier. Great for a veggie tray although I see cheese sauce in it’s future.

Shown is also one of my white cucumbers (yes, I was going to eat it and cut the ends off and then decided it needed it’s 5 minutes of fame). Love it! Sweet and juicy, not bitter in the least. There is also the spineless Beth Alpha, an Israeli cucumber and several pickling cukes. I think I have enough to make several jars.

 

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The red object is one of my paprika peppers. This is the most amazing pepper plant ever. Let’s face it, peppers are hard to grow here. We always grow our plants in the greenhouse which develops extremely hot temps, probably not unlike a blast furnace. I always tell people don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have success. Some years are better than others.

This one is growing outside, in a large black pot. It was the first one to put on peppers and there are so many that they are crowding the stem. I picked the one that was starting to color up. This one is called “Feher Ozon Paprika” the plant isn’t even two feet tall! This is the first year for this and I will certainly grow it again.

Just a little note: Making your own paprika is easy. Let them dry thoroughly (ok, truth be told, I put mine in a box and promptly forgot them for two years) until crispy, dry and light. They are easy to crumble. Use a coffee grinder to grind as fine as you like. It was a wonder using my own ground paprika, didn’t taste like red dust!

Beaver Dam Pepper

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Beaver Dam Pepper

A pepper so good, Hungarian immigrants carried it with them when they came to Wisconsin.

It is no wonder that the Beaver Dam pepper was nearly lost to posterity, trampled upon by the market demand for easier-to-grow pepper varieties that don’t require such laborious agricultural techniques as planting individual stakes for each pepper plant.

The eponymous pepper came to Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, in 1912, with Joe Hussli, a Hungarian immigrant who couldn’t conceive of a new American life without a little peppery taste of home. Locals and descendants of friends of the Hussli family like to say that the Husslis planted the seeds, grew the peppers, and shared the seeds with friends and neighbors, thus setting up a little community of Beaver Dam pepper growers who appreciated the delicious plant’s mild bite, enough to pass the seeds down for generations. There are pepper-growing families in Beaver Dam who have saved seeds from at least the 1980s. However, over generations, farming of this pepper has dwindled considerably as hybrids flood the market.

Today, Beaver Dam still celebrates its favorite pepper in the form of an annual Beaver Dam Pepper Festival. Fans can buy the prized crop from local growers, eat pepper sausages, and even participate in an apple pepper pie–eating competition with the town sheriff. Current growers, who descend from a long line of Beaver Dam pepper cultivators, also give presentations on the plant’s history.

For locals, preserving the town’s pepper is crucial. The story of its near-extinction is a story of how our current food culture has prioritized efficiency and shelf-life over flavor. The Beaver Dam, an heirloom variety, requires more care in growing than hybrid peppers that are hardier, more disease-resistant, and thus more dependable in terms of yield. But organizations such as Seed Savers and Slow Food USA are building up a steady base of growers yearning for flavor and willing to return to traditional, sustainable methods of farming. Thanks to their interest, the Beaver Dam pepper has been preserved and there are enough seeds available now to bring the pepper back from the brink of extinction.

The peppers start out lime-green but gradually mature to an orange or blood-red color, over a period of 80 days. Between three and eight peppers grow on each plant. Thick-fleshed, the peppers are mild-to-hot with an appealing crunch that is great in salads and fresh salsas. They also go brilliantly sliced into a sandwich or stuffed with a rice or meat filling. And some fans insist that they’re an absolute must in Hungarian goulash. The peppers are between 500 and 1,000 SHU on the Scoville heat scale.

 

For those not in the Beaver Dam pepper inner circle, the seeds are also available through organizations such as the Seed Savers Exchange, a repository of heirloom seeds meant to preserve endangered varieties of garden and food crops.

New Pepper On My Rotation: Violet Sparkle: The Tomato Lady

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violet sparkleviolet sparkle 2

Isn’t she pretty????? Pointed, wedge-shaped fruit is purple streaked with pale yellow. This heirloom came from a Russian seed trader. It begins with chartreuse, evolving to purple with tan/yellow streaks and then to red. Lovely and delicious, sweet, crisp and thick-walled.

A unique looking pepper with excellent yields, great size for roasting, bbq, fresh eating. Sweet but very firm. Would be good for pickling and sautées very well. Plants are short with many uniform fruits.

The reviews I’ve read all say they love this pepper. I can’t wait to try it.

Growing Note: They had excellent germination and were very healthy.

Some of My Favorite Seed Companies – The Tomato lady

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samson in gardenHere is a list of seed companies that I interact with on a regular basis. Good prices, nice selection of varieties, excellent seed quality, and good customer service! (My cat, Samson, has nothing to do with this subject but he sure is cute and is in the garden! Sam is a Maine Coon)

Seeds n Such
I love that this gentleman used to own Totally Tomatoes and decided to retire, which didn’t suit him so he opened up Seeds n Such. One of the nicest things about him is that their shipping is right in line with what it should be and they have a deal whereby if you buy 20 packets of seeds, they are all $1.99. Believe me, it’s easy to find that many things you want.

Tomatofest
Lots and lots of heirloom tomato seeds, some I have never heard of. The really nice thing is they are “local” –  California based. Most companies are midwest or eastern based companies. (I love them too, I just like buying local if I can)

Totally Tomatoes
Many, many varieties of tomatoes and peppers. Now they have other veggies. so I guess they aren’t “totally” tomatoes anymore! That’s ok, I like the variations.

Swallowtail Garden Seeds
This is for the flower growers. Veggies are good for your bodies, flowers are good for your soul. They have a nice variety, good prices, and quality seed. I love the pictures on the website, and they are fast!

Geo Seed
I recently found this company. I can’t remember how but am sure glad I did. Prices are phenomenal, customer service outstanding (Dora rocks!) varieties are numerous. Stuff you didn’t know you needed! the only drawback is that they don’t have pictures (but that is what the internet is for, right?) and at this time, you can’t order online. Mere nuisances. They have trade packets and bigger bulk sizes. I’d recommend the trade packets for home gardeners.

Fedco Seeds
I found this company in the last couple of years also. I love that they are a Cooperative and represent seed from a lot of small, independent growers. Great website too, lots of pictures. I found they have seeds with great histories; for instance, I found a winter squash called Uncle David’s Dakota Dessert Squash (a mouthful) on their site. it was passed down forever and as far as I can see, it’s not available anywhere else. it is delicious! Lots of fun stuff!

Irish Eyes Seeds – Located in Ellensburg, WA, Huge selection of potatoes and garlic and other cooler climate veggies.

High Mowing – I ordered from them last week and they have great selection and shipping was surprisingly fast. Out of Vermont.

Baker Seeds Great selection, good prices, and reasonable shipping. Unusual heirloom seeds from all over, rare and exotic seeds from around the world. Two examples: Thai Lavender Frog Egg Eggplant and Sichuan Red Beauty Radish. I have to be honest, some of them are so odd I can’t imagine growing them, like the Sakurajima Giant Radish, considered the world’s largest Radish. it’s white and bigger than my head! Definitely, an entertaining place to visit.

Snake River Seeds – They are new, at least to me, and I have yet to order from them but I will. they have bulk seeds too and they are local to me. In their own words:

“Snake River Seed Cooperative is a collective of family farmers in the Intermountain West who work together to produce a wide diversity of locally-adapted seeds. We believe that sharing seed saving knowledge with farmers in our region is vital to growing a robust, regional seedshed.”

While I can’t name everyone I like dealing with, (actually I could AND include all the links but I do have other things to do today!) here are some other companies I recommend, just search for them on the internet: Parks, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Victory Seeds, Pase Seeds, Harris Seeds to name a few.

Don’t forget Northwest Seed and Pet. It is the best and biggest gardening store that I know of here in Spokane. They have a HUGE selection of seeds, a lot of which you may not have heard of. They carry their own bulk brand, Burpees, High Mowing, Baker Seeds, Snake River Seeds, Botanical Interests, Irish Eyes and many, many more. Don’t miss their cat, give him a scratch.

 

How to Test the Germination Rate of Your Old Seeds – Courtesy of You Grow Girl

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This is an excellent article on testing the germination rate of seeds. If you are like me, I am always saving seeds I buy, seeds I collect from my garden, seeds I save from other folk’s plants… Sometimes I feel the need to test the germination rate of seeds I buy from commercial seed houses! Occasionally I get no or little germination on a seed packet.

How to Test the Germination Rate of Your Old Seeds

I love to buy, collect, save, and trade seed, but I have to admit that I do not go about it in a particularly organized fashion. While I am careful about where and how I store my seeds and I do have my own “it’s all in my head” system, it doesn’t exactly compare to some of the personal seed banks I have seen. I do not have Excel charts or lists of any kind that track what I have and when I got it. If I’m being honest, I often don’t realize I am out of a particular something or other unless I bother to check ahead of time. However, most years that moment doesn’t come until I am in the act of sowing. Whoops, guess I won’t be growing that this year.  For this reason, it’s not uncommon for me to find packets in my stash that are older than I can remember. Most store-bought seeds have a “packed for” date on them, but I receive a lot of seed in trade, and some of those traders are even less organized than me. The seed of some plants last no more than a year or so. If I find an unmarked, rogue packet of onions or leeks I can be nearly certain that they are junk. Tomatoes seem to last forever, so if I find a packet of unknown origin that I’d like to grow, it’s worth spending the time to test its germination rate.A germination test determines the viability of the seed — how many in a packet will reliably germinate. This is important because the window of opportunity to get some crops sown and growing can be short. I’ve lost the chance to grow a specific variety some years because I sowed and then waited on seed that wouldn’t grow.Germination rate can also provide a gauge of a seed’s vigor. I explain what this is below.

How to Test for Germination Rate
There are lots of ways to go about this. Some people use paper towels. I use coffee filters because I find it easier to see the germinated seeds and their roots should I opt to plant those that have germinated. Fragile roots and leaves tend to disappear in the pile of paper towels.

What You Need:
Coffee filters
Plastic baggies
Water
10 Seeds (per test)
Permanent marker

Cut or tear the coffee filter along the bottom and one side seam. Lightly moisten with water so that it is moist, but not sopping wet. I sometimes use a spray bottle but you can also just dip it into a bowl of water and squeeze it out.

Open the filter up flat and lay out 10 seeds on one half. You do not have to do 10 seeds at a time, but it makes figuring out the germination rate a heck of a lot easier. Spread the seeds out so that they aren’t touching. I do this so that there is less chance that their roots will become entangled should I decide to plant them up.

Fold the half of the coffee filter that does not have seeds over onto the side that does.

Fold the bottom half up.

Place the moist and folded coffee filter inside a baggie and seal. Write the variety name and the date you started the test on the outside of the baggie. I write this onto sticker labels so I can reuse the baggies in further testing.

Place the sealed and labelled baggies in a warm place and check on them every few days to see whether germination has occurred. Some seeds may require more time. Some may also require light in order to germinate, or more heat.

Tip: The majority of the seeds I test do well in a kitchen or utility drawer that is used often. Otherwise I have a tendency to forget about them! I also put a sticky note on the front of the drawer as an added reminder to keep checking the seeds! Hot peppers tend to need more heat, so I keep them on top of a reliably warm (but not hot) appliance.

The rate is determined by the number of seeds out of 10 that have germinated. For example, 6 out of 10 seeds = 60% 3 out of 10 = 30% and so on.

You can go ahead and plant any seedling that have germinated into soil just as you would a seed. Don’t bother trying to remove the seedling from the paper — you risk damaging delicate roots. Instead, tear the paper around the plant. (Note: If your seedlings have browned roots like mine do in the above photo then I would not suggest planting them up. I left those too long and the roots were starting to rot.)

Loss of Vigor: Seeds that fall below 70% germination tend to suffer from a loss of vigor that will increase with each passing year. What this means is that even though many of them will still germinate, the seedlings that develop may not be healthy or develop into strong, vital plants. If the percentage isn’t too low you may decide to take a chance and see how the seedlings develop. It should be easy enough to determine which are suffering. However, if you’re planning to save seed from this plant for future crops then you may want to replace the seed now. Unhealthy plants beget unhealthy plants and since you’re going to the effort, it is worth it to start out with the best of the best.

Please note that some varieties suffer from a poor germination rate even when new and healthy, so it’s important to know your plant/variety.

Tip: I keep all of my seed testing equipment (including the used baggies) together with my seed saving equipment in one of the dollar store containers that I use for organizing seed. That way I have it on hand whenever I need it.

Source: How to Test the Germination Rate of Your Old Seeds – You Grow Girl