Hello MargoCostas, and welcome!

There are many different opinions about seed starting how's and when's. So many, in fact, that GW offers a forum just for it. I am including a link to it, below.

Personally, I think that very young seedlings adjust more easily to being transplanted than those that older and larger. I transplant most seedlings within a week of transplanting and have no problems. Peppers are touchy about temperatures, so that may have been a problem...then again, an ornamental pepper may very well be a small plant.

As for a method, I just use something like a thin screwdriver to dig out a bit of soil with a seedling in it and transplant it right up to the cotyledons, which are those first little leaflings that sprout out of the seed. If I have allowed the seedling to develop true leaves, I nip off the cotyledons and plant up to the first leaves. If not, I leave some room to add soil once those first leaves do appear.

If you pull out a bare root, not to worry, the roots are strong and can be actually cut in half and you will still get a strong plant. Just take care not to damage the stem. That will most likely kill the seedling.

Check out the starting from seed forum. There is a lot of good information there.
Kay

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing from Seed at GardenWeb

Thanks for the link. I have been handling them by the stem so maybe I got too rough with those seedlings. A couple of them actually were not totally out of the seed yet.

We plant all our tomatoes and peppers in open trays and then transplant them in peat pots. We have been doing this for quite a few decades now with no problems. Both tomatoes and peppers, we wait till they are fairly large to transplant, but not too large that they don't fit in the peat pots! The main reason we wait is that we live in zone 5 and we do not have a heated greenhouse so we have to wait till it is warm enough (no danger of frost) to leave the transplanted plants in the greenhouse. Tomatoes love it hot, but peppers not so much. They are fussy in that sort of way and require lots of water on real hot and humid days.
We have also found rather recently that our later peppers don't really benefit from being transplanted into peat pots. We plant them bare root. Our early peppers (peppers are so slow to grow so we have to plant them extremely early) we transplant into peat pots to give them more room to grow before we put them in the ground.

I usually wait till my seedlings either start to get their second set of true leaves or just before they begin to get their true leaves. I have a lot to transplant so I usually get a little behind and some of mine get quite large before I get to them. Below is a picture of some of my bell peppers just before I transplanted them.

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I would suggest that you do not wait quite this long before transplanting them, I would say that this size is probably the limit. Of coarse it also depends on how crowded they are in the flats.

If you transplant them around this size I would not worry too much about the disturbing the roots because they have a pretty good root system by this point. I very very rarely loose a seedling, and after a couple days or so they take off and start growing very quickly. I have never transplanted mine as early as you did or even Kay so I am not able to make a comparison, but my method works well for me.

I think that everyone has their own method that works best for them, and it may just take you awhile to find out what works best for you. Just keep trying, experimenting and learning, and you will be fine.

I agree with Kay about the temperature. I had that happen with eggplant once before. They need to be started really early and need to stay even warmer than peppers. I had two flats of eggplant one I started later than the other. The second group, in the end ended up being a lot larger than the first group. The first group did not produce until the second group was almost done.

What was the temperature where you were growing them?
Also how long has it been since you transplanted them?
Maybe it just appears like they are stunted. Sometimes it may seem like it takes a long time before they get their true leaves and then before you know it they are monsters.

I agree with everyone above. I would suggest you wait until you have at least one set of true leaves.Grab the seedling by the leave not the stem. To transplant a seedling that still has the seed pod on it is not nessasary I also have trimmed the roots of transplants( actually kinda rip them) and have never had a problem losing plants.Practice makes perfect. Good luck

Hi, I have always started my seedlings directly in cells. What would be the advantage of the trays? I can see that it would ensure having one and only one seedling per cell, but I usually sow two seeds, and have no problems with empty cells. I just pinch the smaller of the two seedlings if I get two. Just curious since it seems like it just adds another step in the process.