You’ll never buy pepper seeds for your vegetable garden again with this tip. With this simple experience, you will understand what a seed needs to germinate. Does it need light or dark? Is it possible to germinate them faster?
You will need:
- One Pepper
- A knife
- A ziploc bag
- 3 square of toilet paper
From 6 years
Difficulty : easy
Let's experiment
Ask an adult to cut the pepper if you cannot do it alone.
Harvest the seeds that are inside
Fold 3 squares of toilet paper and moisten them.
Then put the seeds on it. Put everything in the ziploc bag. And repeat the operation to obtain 3 bags of seeds.
Now place the bags in the following three places: the first in the fridge, the second in a dark place at room temperature (between the pages of a book for example) and the last in the sunlight.
Watch what happens over the next few days. Here is our result after 17 days.
Understand the experiment
Adequate weather in a plastic bag
Surprise! After a few days, the seeds of peppers placed in the sunlight will have germinated. In this specific case, you observe that the germination of the pepper seeds depends on light and mild temperatures. All this combined with the humidity retained by the toilet paper provides the ideal weather conditions for growing peppers.
Germination is when a seed goes from a sleeping state to an active state. When active, it sprouts to form roots and the first leaves. The seeds are, therefore, alive, and must be “awakened” using the right conditions of temperature and light.
Did you know?
Some seeds also germinate in the dark.
Some seeds germinate as well in the dark, as long as they are in contact with moist soil. This is the case, for example, with cucumbers or eggplants. Others prefer complete darkness to germinate. This is the case of certain carnations, gazania, delphinium, … flowers that we find in our gardens.
Challenge
Explore your refrigerator and collect the seeds of the fruits and vegetables that contain them. Repeat the experiment to see which ones will germinate in the plastic bag, in the sunlight. Pssstt: don’t forget to moisten the toilet paper before!
Curiokids, official partner of Enseignons.be