Starting the Peppers

We use soil blocks to start and grow our seedlings here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm. We use the Eliot Coleman soil mix (with a few substitutions) to make our small and large soil block mixes.

below are some pictures of small soil blocks used for starting 300+ pepper seeds.

A tray of small blocks all ready to go. To the right is the metal pan (a full sized hotel pan I got back in my food service days, i believe from Sigma Alpha Mu because they used it for some extra-curricular activity, bent a corner and tossed it in the trash where I retrieved it and brought it home to start it's new life as a farm tool). The red thing is the block maker and the black stuff is left over moistened soil mix

The tray is filling up. Here I have completed the Revolution pepper seed

Almost done, I still had the Valencia (sweet orange peppers) and Jalapenos to go. The green thing is a hand seeder that I use. It makes the job much easier and faster over using one's fingers or tweezers.

the next step after getting all the seeds onto mini blocks is to water lightly with the sprayer and than cover the entire tray with black plastic and into a warm place. the seeds get watered about every day. We don't want the blocks to dry out but we also don't want the seeds to stay dripping wet either so they are checked morning and evening for dampness as well as for any signs of germination.

Once they start to germinate we make large soil blocks and put the little blocks and seedling into the square hole in the top of each large block and they are done until they need to be transplanted which should happen the end of May.