Congrats on your success! I agree and usually start my peppers at least 2-3 weeks before my tomatoes since they do tend to be slow to germinate and even slower to grow.

Enjoy your peppers. :)

Dave

Hoo Haa! Great news! 5 days is FAST. Heating is the magic ingredient.

Last year my peppers from seed were a total flop. But I'm on the right track now. I started 60 seeds (6 seeds * 10 different kinds of peppers) on 02-26-2013. 12 days into it, I have 65% to 70% germination with plants at or above soil level. That's over twice as many as I have room for in the garden (and about 40 more seeds than germinated last year). Help! It worked too good!

Thanks, I'm only a 3rd year gardener....but I'm learning. I love experimenting with different plants and reading on others experiences. Alot of what I've read is to expect up to 21 days for germination. So I figured I'd share my story.

I've seen alot of people questioning (in this forum) the heating mats. I keep my heat in the house around 60-62 and this mat is on my kitchen table on top of a folded towel.
The mat is big enough to fit 2 full seed trays on....or one tray and a large orange cat. I would say they are TOTALLY worth the money ( so far ). Each year you use it the cost just keeps going down.

Thaks for the pos feedback...hope anything I've shared helps someone else...

Those are the two secrets... a heating mat, plus figure out how many plants you want and plant AT LEAST twice that many seeds!

One week after sprouting...heat mats off. T5's on 16-18 hrs a day.