It all started when my mom returned from vegetable shopping one day and was expressing her frustration with the way prices have been going high. Especially this capsicum or Bell peppers as its popularly known. It was around INR 40 a kg.
“Can you not plant some of these in our garden?”
Fueled with this motivation, I biked to the seeds selling store and returned home with seeds of a cultivar called “California Wonder”.
Seed starting procedure was as usual.
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Take a sterile seed starting mix.
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In small pot/pan sow the seeds in the moist media ( 1/16th of an inch deep).
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Slightly cover the seed with media.
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Cover the pan/pot with a polythene to preserve the humidity.
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Keep it in a bright place away from direct sunlight.
Tada! thats all there is to it. In about a week’s time, you can see seedlings just peeking through the media. At this stage, they need good amount of sunlight and lack of sunlight will make the seedlings lanky.
Once the seedlings has two true leaves, they can be transplanted into their final containers/ prepared bed. In my case it was containers that too a 3 litre container.
The container mix is equal parts of cocopeat, vermicompost, sand. Regular watering and fertilizing is all you need to do for good results.
You can see there are 4 good sized capsicums from that 3L container.
Another view of the same plant.
Plant with the container. The fibrous thing that you see near the root of the plant is “Moss”. I am not sure if it sphagnum moss or not. This moss is what you see wrapped around a stick and sold as stakes in garden stores for plant support. They are also called Moss sticks. Why I have put it in there?. This “Moss” doesnt decay that easily. Infact it stays the same for so long. So I started using it as a mulch to avoid water loss.
Size of a pepper.
I have 3 such pots and each of those containers have around 4-6 descent sized peppers. Not bad huh!?
Next I am gonna sow pepper cultivars called “Bull nose” & “Purple beauty”
More later.
gg
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