In my experience peppers take forever to get started from seed. The last few years I have planted them I did it around the same time as tomatoes and the tomatoes ended up 6 inches tall before the peppers even broke the surface of the rockwool. This year I’m going to start the peppers a few weeks before everything else.

Last year bell peppers came out phenomenal for me. This year I’m going to try some seeds called “Carnival pepper blend” and “long pepper blend” in addition to the bell peppers so I have a little variety.

Planting in rockwool is really simple. Soak the cubes for a couple hours before you get started. The soaking fully hydrates the cubes and normalizes the ph of the cube to around the PH of your water. In my case our water is good has a good pH for growing that’s a good thing.

I generally put 2 seeds into each cube of rockwool. This gives me the ability to thin them out and pick the dominate plant in each cube. Sometimes I leave them both and honestly I haven’t noticed any negative impact of doubling up as long as I keep both of the trunks apart while they grow so the light can get to the plants. The inter mingling of the root systems doesn’t seem to cause any problems.

Use the pointed end of a pencil to poke a couple of conical holes in the rockwool. Drop in a seed and use the eraser end to push the seed about a quarter inch into the hole. I don’t bother closing up the tops but it wouldn’t be a problem if you did. Slap a few labels on the container so you know what is growing a few weeks later.

Finally, once all of the seeds are planted put about a quarter inch of water in the bottom of the container so they don’t dry out. I usually put the containers on the top of our refrigerator until the seeds sprout since the fridge puts out just a little bit of heat to help germination.