It was a busy day in Pepperland.  There was one new sprout to plant.  It came up yesterday but I didn’t have the time or energy to deal with it.  So, today I had to figure out where I could put the little guy.  He ended up in luxury accommodations.  He has his very own paper cup!

You may notice that his soil looks a little different than the stuff I used in the really big tray.  That’s because I found some potting mix that was left over from a few years ago.  Not only does this guy have more space than the other seedlings, he also has a much softer bed to sleep in.  Hopefully, this little ghost pepper seedling will appreciate it.

I did a full inventory of the plants and seeds to see what I have and double-check my labels.  I have 96 baby plants altogether.  That’s including the new ghost pepper I transplanted today.  Weirdly, I came up with one extra lemon drop pepper, and one less scorpion pepper.  I’m pretty sure I must have gotten confused and mislabeled one of the scorpions as a lemon drop at some point.  But which one?  I have no idea.  Fortunately, scorpion peppers and lemon drop peppers will look quite a bit different.  I’ll be able to figure it out eventually.  I still find it a little annoying that I screwed it up.  When I do this again, I’m going to have to improve my process.  I need to keep better track of where everything is.

The tray of seeds has been downsized, and I’ve redone it a little differently.  I folded up a cotton rag to line the bottom of a plastic tray and put a brown paper towel over the top of that.  I moistened everything and moved the seeds over to their new home and packed them in quite a bit more densely than I had in the old tray.  Then I sacrificed one square of precious toilet paper to cover up the seeds.  I’m thinking that maybe the fibers from the toilet paper will wick the moisture up over the seeds and give them a little boost.  I don’t know if it will.  It’s just an idea.  Since the paper is wet, it’s partially transparent, so I should be able to see if anything sprouts.  I may not notice it as early.  The root will have to grow a little bigger before I’ll notice it compared to when I could pick up the seeds and look at them.  Using the cotton rag as a reservoir for moisture and anchoring the seeds in place with the toilet paper may help keep things organized better.  Sometimes when I’d add water to the old tray the seeds would float on the water and move around.  Not good…  This new method may work a little better.  We’ll find out over the next few days.  This is what they look like now.

The rest of the peppers look about like you’d expect.

And the herbs are still doing fine, but there aren’t any new sprouts.

Tomorrow, I’ll probably try to pull the cilantro seeds out of the pod that hasn’t sprouted and put in another one or two fresh ones.  Since the other two seeds are already up and on their way to having their second sent of leaves, I’m pretty sure the ones that haven’t sprouted are duds.  I’m not sure about the parsley.  I might give it a few more day.  Or maybe I’ll stick some siam queen basil seeds in that pod.  You can never have too much basil, right?

I’m also going to start something new tomorrow.  What will it be?  You’ll have to check back tomorrow to find out.  I’ll be starting an experiment to answer a question that I’m certain everyone…  Well… At least that I want to know the answer to…  And I’m going to try to find the answer using SCIENCE!