He: Hey, I have these peppers that my Uncle gave me. Do you think you can grow them?
Me: You have seeds or the plant?
He: I have seeds inside the dried pepper. I've had them for 5 years in a little baggie in the garage. What do you think?
Me: Umm, 5 years? Let me see 'em.
He: I know they're a little old....here they are.
Me: Huh, what is that gray stuff?
He: Paint, oh, and maybe some mold. They came all the way from Puerto Rico.
Me: Do ya know what kind of pepper they are? Maybe we can look it up and see how to grow them.
He: Don't know the actual name, nobody does. We just call them Puerto Rican peppers, they're my favorite.
Me: Well, I can try......
And try I did. I put approximately 40 seeds into some soil and got......
Exactly 2 plants. Only 2 seeds germinated out of 40ish.
Not 4 plants, only 2. These are just multiple pics of the same 2 teeny weeny plants. I tried all sorts of different things to try and get them to germinate and when I finally gave up, they sprouted. Ha! Figures.
I just happened to have an empty egg carton when I was ready to plant these seeds so I thought back to kindergarten and made a little seed starter tray out of the egg carton. Genius - reduce, REUSE, recycle! I gently planted the seeds, kept them optimally watered and covered them with plastic wrap for extra heat. Well, nothing happened after about 20 days so instead of wasting the soil, I none-too-gently dumped the soil into a potted plant outside. Wouldn't ya know it, after a week or so, 2 little sprouts appeared. I was skeptical at first, thought they were just weed seeds that had gotten in there, but the second one had the actual pepper seed attached to the leaf so I was pretty sure the mystery pepper germinated! Success!
Now I just need to try and keep the little beauties alive. I re-potted them into their own 4 inch pots and brought them in the house to a sunny window because even though we're in Florida, these babies are from the Islands and I figure they like it a little warmer.
