My simple and efficient method of germinating pepper/chilli seeds at home. I also choose this method for aubergines and sometimes tomatoes too.
Why do I do this?
Peppers take a long time to grow, so I always start them off early - in January, to give them a head start so I can achieve a crop during the summer before autumn arrives. The UK has a short growing season and the climate is relatively cool in summer.
Here are the reasons I sprout the seeds like this:

1) Seeds germinate quickly in around 5 days.

2) No risk of seeds rotting as they won't be sat in cold soil to germinate.

3) If I were to sow directly into compost, I'd need to worry about keeping soil warm for germination which requires heaters. But as the boiler cupboard is consistently warm, I don't need to worry. Pepper seeds germinate best in a temperature of around 27°c.

4) I don't need to thin out plants. Usually I would sow 2 seeds per pot or per module, then thin out the weakest plant to 1 per pot or module. With seeds already sprouted, I can just pot one sprouting seed in each and don't need to worry about thinning out and destroying perfectly good plants. PLUS many pepper varieties, especially F1 hybrids, only contain around 8 seeds per packet! so I don't want to be wasting those!

#gardening