 Hi guys and welcome to my video. Today we're going to look into how to germinate and propagate chili seeds. Now I've grown a few different plants in my garden in the past. This year I wanted to focus on chilies, have a few different varieties going, see how we get on. Now the first thing you need, we're trying to germinate your seeds, there's a two-part propagator, base and lid. Easily available online. I got this one from Amazon, it was about three pounds. Second thing I find ideal but isn't necessary if you have a radiator. It's a heat map. This is an old one I used to have from when I kept bearded dragons. The perfect thing for fitting underneath. What it does is it gives a nice bit of heat from the bottom. It's what seeds need to germinate. So that should start. Now the net's seeing and need is something to germinate in. Although these aren't 100% necessary, you could use other things. I like to use the queer pellets. Again, get them from garden centres, easily online, Amazon's your friend. We do. Just pop these in the base. You add a small amount of water. What these do is they will expand to about an inch and a half tall, which will give you the perfect base for putting your seeds into. So what we'll do is we'll give that a few minutes. They'll expand and I'll be right back with you. Okay, so that took about 10 minutes. Wasn't too long until. As you can see, they've puffed up nicely. It's all dulled and the moisture I gave them. I did have to add a little bit more. So I was a bit too careful the first time. Now the next thing to do is to put the seeds in. Before I do that, looking back at the last part of the video I did. I apparently haven't learned the field of vision yet. So if you didn't actually see what the queer pellets are, small piece of expanding soil. So that's what you need to buy. You can buy them in packs. They generally come in 2550. Use those, perfect. Okay, now for the seeds. I'm going to give you a few different types. The ones I'm going to be planting in the video is this set, a tropical heat mixture which has some scotch bonnet in and some habaneros. Along with these, I'm also going to be planting some cayenne peppers. And dareingly the Carolina Reaper. Supposedly the hot chili in the world. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get it going, but we're going to do our best. Okay, now with the seeds, they can be a little bit hot. So if you use the seeds of your hands, you can then rub your eyes, go to the toilet. You don't want that. It's not going to be bad. Burn yourself in places. You don't want to be burned. So I use a set of tweezers. And all you do and the small well. I should plant a couple of seeds in each. As I say, this is the scotch bonnet habanero mix. I'm going to start with these. I'll do the rest off camera. See how we get on. And then we'll come back to those in a few days time. Now seeds can take a couple of weeks to germinate. So if you do this and you know two or three days go by, you haven't got any seeds, don't worry. You're not necessarily doing anything wrong. It just means they're still working on it. The two important things are to make sure they're moist. Don't keep them too wet. And warm. So if you don't have a heat mat like I do, feel free to pop them on a windowsill above a radiator. Make sure they get nice and toasty. Once you've done this, just cover them over gently. They don't need a lot of soil. Just enough to hide them. Once you've done that, you want to pop back on the lid to the propagator. Now what you'll find is after a couple of hours, this will start to feel with condensation. Don't worry. That's normal. That's what's going to keep them moist. You don't need to go back to them every day. You don't need to water them every day. The propagator does that job for you. Check them every two or three days. Make sure they're not going dry in case you've got any cracks, leaks, etc. If you need to, moist them up a little bit. Just a very small amount of water to keep them going. And then what you should find anywhere from one week to two weeks, three weeks, you'll see small sprouts starting to appear. It means you've done it right. From that point on, you leave them in the propagator. Let them grow up. They've got a couple of leaves. You want them in in your two tool before you take them out. That's why you've got the space in here. Okay. Now in the next part of my video, I'm going to show you a slightly different way of trying to germinate them. It's not 100%. I'm not too keen on it, but a lot of people like to try it. So I'll show you nonetheless. Okay, so the second method of germination. It's quite a simple one. What you want to do is get yourself a slightly damp piece of kitchen towel. Put your seeds in the middle. Get them nice damp. And then simply fold them in to the kitchen roll. Once you've done that, take yourself a nice sandwich bag. Place them inside. Push out the air. Clip it shut. Then once you've got a nice little parcel, take it. If you've got a heat mat, you can sit it on there. It'll do the same job as the propagator. The other option, place it near a radiator on a windowsill or something. Or you can even put it in your air and cupboard. They don't need lights. They're fine in there. It's warm. Put them away. Forget about them for a week. And that's your two ways of propagating and germinating seeds. What I'll do is I'll come back in a week. I'll plant up the rest of my seeds. As I say, I've got the clams to do. I've also got the California Reapers. I might try and do this method for some of the California Reapers and see how that goes. We'll check back in in a week or so. We'll go from there. The prime time to do this is mid to late January. That way you can develop your plants inside. Grow them into seedlings. Then when the spring does come about, you can start to introduce them to the outside. They'll be nice and ready. In the next few videos, we'll go over re-planting into pots. Repotting into larger if needed. Then we'll move on to topping and harvesting. So I'll upload those as I make them. Let's check back with these in a week. Okay, the week's gone by. I'm quite happy with the results so far. If we open this up, what you'll see here is two of the Scotch Bonnet Habanero Mix. I've started to sprout. We've actually got two seedlings here. These two haven't yet, but I'm not too concerned. What we had in there in the pack was three different types of Habanero and one type of Scotch Bonnet. So it's quite possible these seeds are due to germinate and start seeding earlier than these two. What we've got further back is all four of the cayenne pods have started sprouting. We've got two here and one in each of the other ones. As you can see, they've done very, very well after a week. I put that down mainly to the heat mat. That's given them exactly what they need. Further back, as of yet, my California reapers are yet to do anything. I have only planted two in there because I tried to germinate the air and covered method. I'm quite happy with the result of that. I can see one of them is starting to sprout. Unfortunately, I did have space in the back for my peach scorpion seeds, which haven't turned up yet. So I'm yet to start on those. What we'll do today is we'll have a quick look at how my air and covered reapers are progressing. We'll plant those in the remaining two quayert pellets. I have them here, camera roll focus. As you can see, just here, we're starting to sprout. Perfect. That gives it a head start when it goes in the pellet. At this point, I'm more than happy to move it on and let it develop the rest of the way from there. Again, we'll grab our tweezers, supposedly the world's hottest pepper, so no way am I touching these with my hand, especially when they've started to seed. Now the rest of these seeds have swollen a bit, so I'm hopeful they will continue to progress. It has only been a week, to be honest. The space for a week, all of these seeds have done brilliantly, so I'm more than happy with how they are so far. Again, if you get to this point and they haven't started sprouting, don't worry, they can take weeks. Look at my first couple. They've done nothing. Okay, so they're all covered up. Get rid of the wet towel. I've got some more seeds in the air and covered. I am going to do some more seeds on top of these at some point soon. Now the ideal time to plant these is mid to late January. I'm doing this video.