How is the preparation of pepper seeds for planting

Any experienced gardener knows that in order to grow a great harvest of vegetables in the garden, first of all, you need to worry about planting material. The future depends on the quality of the seeds. harvest... So that the whole process of growing a vegetable crop, including sowing, processing and harvesting, does not go to waste, the seeds must be properly processed.

Content:

• Preparing pepper seeds for processing
• Disinfection of seeds
• Soaking
• Hardening
• Saturation with trace elements
• Bubbling

This is especially true for everyone varieties of pepper... Pepper is not only a beautiful and tasty vegetable, but also very healthy. It contains a huge amount of vitamin C (significantly more than black currant), B vitamins, rutin and important trace elements. It is impossible to imagine modern garden beds on a plot without multi-colored peppers, almost everyone grows pepper. But not many people know how to prepare seeds for planting and for this reason, the yield drops significantly. So, in order to avoid the vain hassle associated with growing pepper, you need to properly process the seed.

Preparing pepper seeds for processing

Pepper seeds quickly lose their natural freshness and become unsuitable for sowing. Therefore, seeds collected with your own hands or purchased in a store must be processed before sowing. There are different ways to do this.

Pepper seeds can be disinfected, soaked, hardened, saturated with microelements, bubbled.

Each of these methods is simple to execute, effective in its own way and gives a good end result.

To begin with, from the entire mass of seeds, those that are suitable for sowing should be selected. All seeds are placed in a mild salt solution for 7 minutes.

It is not difficult to prepare a solution: add 35-40 grams of salt to 1 liter of slightly warmed water and stir thoroughly. High-quality seeds will sink to the bottom of the vessel, and "dummies" will remain on the surface, which can be thrown out without regret, they will not sprout anyway. Selected seeds are washed well and dried.

Disinfection of seeds

It is useful to pickle pepper seeds before sowing. To do this, they are placed in a 1% solution of potassium permanganate, kept for 15 minutes, rinsed and dried. Such treatment increases the resistance of seeds to different diseases, ensures the normal development and rapid growth of young crops.

Soaking

This processing method is suitable for those who want to get seedlings faster. The disinfected pepper seeds are wrapped in cheesecloth, moistened with warm water, and placed in a warm place for germination. Within a day, tiny sprouts appear and it's time to start preparing soil... Before sowing seeds, it is disinfected with a solution of potassium permanganate and well moistened. In dry soil, tender shoots can dry out and die.

Hardening

This seed preparation for sowing can be done in different ways. The easiest one is to soak the seeds in warm water. After they swell, place in a cold place. The optimum temperature for hardening is -1-2 degrees. Maintain at this temperature for 1-1.5 days.

You can use another method, it is a little more complicated and takes more time.The overgrown seeds are exposed to varying temperatures: 12 hours are kept at + 20-22 degrees and 12 hours at + 2-4 degrees. This procedure is carried out for 10 days. If the sprouts are large enough, the hardening period can be shortened.

Saturation with trace elements

Enrichment procedures with useful elements are carried out a day or two before sowing seeds. A solution of wood ash is well suited for this, it contains about 30 different microelements useful for plants.

Prepare it as follows: dissolve 2-3 grams of ash in 1 liter of water, stirring occasionally, and insist for 24 hours.

Pepper seeds are placed in gauze bags and immersed in the prepared solution for 3-3.5 hours. Then they are washed, laid out on a dry cloth or paper to dry.

Bubbling

This method is used to accelerate the emergence of sprouts. It consists in treating the seeds with water saturated with oxygen. Pepper seeds are bubbled 1-1.5 weeks before sowing. Germination occurs half of the term earlier than that of seeds not treated with oxygen.

At home, you can use an aquarium compressor to pump oxygen. Tall transparent dishes are filled 2/3 with warm water, to which you can add a solution of potassium permanganate. The seeds are poured into the water and the compressor tip is placed. Saturate the solution with oxygen for 24-36 hours. After the seeds are "breathed", they are rinsed and dried.

All these methods of processing seed material have been tested in many years of practice by experienced vegetable growers. They are effective and simple, but you should not mix all the methods into one process. It is enough to choose 1-2 of them. Properly prepared seed is a good advance for a decent harvest. To achieve the goal, the correct technology of growing pepper is also important.