Transplanting the peppers!

Oh, happy day!

 

We are ready to transplant!

 

We put everything on the table we thought we'd need.  Jacob was working with me today since he wanted to do his own peppers.  He is growing the Jalapeno peppers and dreaming of homemade salsa.

 

 We gathered the potting mix, larger 4" pots, masking tape and ink pen, scissors, my large bowl, and an old measuring cup to scoop the dirt out with.  I also got my Hydrogen Peroxide to create an antifungal solution to water the plants with,

 

 

and some powdered activated charcoal to use for a one-time dusting on the surface as another antifungal agent.

 

 

I started by labeling the sides of each pot to keep track of what type of pepper each plant was.

 

Then we put just a bit of potting mix in the bottom of each pot, just enough to cover the bottom so that we had enough depth to really plant the pepper deeply with the goal being to cover where the cotyldon leaves grew out of the stem.

 

 

We snipped off the cotyldon leaves so that we wouldn't be leaving any growing part of the plant that we would bury and that might then rot and affect the health of the plant.  This step might be unnecessary but we decided it was better to be safe than sorry and it seemed logical to me so we went ahead and did it.

 

 

 Then we tossed the leaves down into the pot to serve their last life purpose as compost matter.

 

We placed our fingers on either side of the stem trying hard to not actually touch the stem and tipped the tray upside down and rumpled the tray to encourage the soil to loosen and let the plantling slip out into our upturned hand.

 

 

Then we placed it down into the larger pot and filled in more potting mix, patting down the soil ever so gently.

 



 

Here is one of the King of the North bell pepper plants that I potted. 

 

 

After we had transplanted all of the peppers we put them into the long trays like this one


and watered them from the bottom by pouring the water in and leaving them for 15 minutes to soak up what they needed and then we pour off the excess water so they don't sit in it.  We will be watering from the bottom from now on out.

 

We put 1 tablespoon of the Hydrogen Peroxide into 1 quart of water and poured that into the long tray and let them have a good drink while we cleaned up.  Then I transfered them all into two different long trays, sorting them by height so that I could keep the light as close as possible to the tops of the plants.  You can see how the light is slightly lower on one end.

 

We put the peppers on their new shelf and adjusted the lights on them and stood back in wonder that our experiment is still working!

 

 

Then it was time to reorganize all of the other peppers still down on that first shelf on my wonderful heat mat. 

 

Ethan helped me to sort out all of the pepper plants that we had given up hope that they would ever germinate.  We did this so that I could more easily manuever the ones that were left for watering them and to encourage more air circulation around them so they'd be healthier and encourage them to get their act together and grow up.  Then that wonderful boy washed all of the used smaller insert trays in a hot, soapy bleach solution.  I love my little minion!

 

Lastly I put all the peppers that weren't ready to transplant yet all in order of height in just two trays to tidy things up a bit and improve watering efficiency.

 

I am starting to really think that this might all bear us some peppers some day! 

 

So far, so good!