Germination on the boiler cupboard shelf: 26 degrees and a damp paper towel
Without a heated propagator the warmest reliable place in the house is the top shelf of the boiler cupboard, which my thermometer puts at a steady 25 to 27 degrees day and night from November to March. Chilli seed wants somewhere in that range to germinate briskly, so that is where it goes, in a method that has worked for three years now.
Each type gets its own small zipped bag with a folded piece of kitchen paper inside, dampened with warm water and squeezed until it stops dripping. Ten seeds go between the folds, the bag is sealed with a little air left in it, labelled with the date and the type in pencil, and laid flat on the shelf. Every two days I open each bag, check the paper is still damp, look for the white tip of a root, and seal it again. The checking matters: in the first year I left them a week and found roots grown into the paper.
This year’s dates from sowing on the 18th of January. Jalapeño: first root on day 5, eight out of ten by day 8. Cayenne: first root day 6, nine of ten by day 9. The mild stuffing type: first root day 6, seven of ten by day 10. Lemon-drop: first root day 9, six of ten by day 14. Bird’s eye: first root day 10, eight of ten by day 15. Habanero: nothing until day 13, then five of ten by day 17 and one more straggler on day 21. The habanero seed was also the oldest, saved from 2024, which may have slowed it as much as the type did.
As soon as a root shows, that seed goes into a 5-centimetre pot of sieved compost about a centimetre deep, root down, and the pot goes back on the shelf under a clear plastic lid until the seed leaves are up. Then it comes out to the kitchen windowsill, where it is cooler and brighter, because a seedling left in the warm dark will stretch to 8 centimetres in three days looking for light. I have the photographs of 2024 to prove it.
Fourteen seedlings are now on the windowsill and another eight are still in the cupboard. That is more than the greenhouse will hold. It always is, and the extras go to neighbours in May.