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Before I begin let me say that I somehow missed out on planting seeds and general plant care and the like as a child despite growing up in a farming and ranching community. My responsibilities were always with the animals so I was never exposed to it. The one time my Elementary School class was doing something with seeds I was out with bronchitis

Last Summer I bought a Madagascar Dragon Tree (Dracaena marginata) and 2 Spider Plants (Chlorophytum comosum) for my office from Home Depot, along with some pots to put them in and 2 bags of "Miracle-Gro® Organic Choice® Potting Mix".

I used 1 bag of soil on the tree and one of the Spider Plants and opened the 2nd bag just for the second Spider Plant. The tree and first Spider Plant have flourished while the 2nd Spider Plant looked like it was dying from the get go. After 2 months it was definitively dead.

As these were my first-ever plants I figured I did something wrong. Maybe I over-watered, maybe I was too rough when re-potting, maybe my plant selection skills needed work, etc. As luck would have it Home Depot has a 1 year plant replacement policy so I brought the dead one in and exchanged it. The replacement Spider Plant did not fare well after transplanting either, and died before the Winter. This made me start questioning my plant care skills altogether.

Fast forward to this Spring. In preparation of the organic garden I'm putting in I needed to germinate some watermelon, tomato and bell pepper seeds (I don't yet understand why some seeds need germination and some don't... out of the 16 seed types I have right now only these 3 require germination). I still had the remainder of the bag of soil I used on the 2nd Spider Plant which had been kept air tight and unfrozen over the Winter so I used it to prepare 2 pots with the seeds. After my experience with the house plants I had read and re-read and re-re-read all the directions and on-line sources I could find. I followed every direction, tip and superstition.

2 weeks later I had no seedlings. I began to wonder if something wasn't wrong with the soil, but then my wife and I were able to bring home 2 potted flowers from an awards ceremony we attended which died rapidly under my care as well. After just a few days they looked bad so I gave them some diluted compost tea in the hopes of helping them. While I was at it I did the same for my germination pots, more out of desperation than any hope of a result. After another week the flowers were completely dead and I still had no seedlings. I dug into the germination pots a bit and found seeds that looked like they'd come straight from the package rather than ones that had been in sun and water and soil for the last 3 weeks.

I was about to give up gardening altogether when a friend who had been at the same ceremony came over to visit the following weekend. She saw my dying flowers as soon as she walked in and said, "I'm glad I'm not the only one who can't keep these things alive. My roommate and I both grabbed one at the ceremony and they both died. I don't know what those kids from the Boys and Girls club did to these things but it wasn't good.". While I wasn't sure that this was the cause for my flowers dying it gave me a ray of hope.

The next weekend (9 days ago) I decided to test out my "bad bag of soil" theory by buying what could potentially be my last bag of that organic stuff from Home Depot. I emptied out the pots and used the ones I got from the awards ceremony to expand my meager operation. I again planted watermelon, tomato and bell pepper seeds from the same packages as the first round. Since then I've been just as religious about keeping them moist and out in the sun each day, then back inside at night, as I was with the first batch.

Yesterday morning when I went to put the pots out on the patio I noticed a new lump in the watermelon pot. Ever so carefully I looked closely and my heart skipped a beat as I saw a seedling pushing up through the soil. By the time I brought them back inside last night that seedling had cleared the soil and was standing about a centimeter tall. :woot:

This morning the second and final watermelon seedling was breaking through the soil as well. :bananajump:

The tomatoes and peppers haven't shown up yet but I am now confident that they will. I threw out the remainder of that second bag of soil and will finally pick up a replacement for my missing Spider Plant at the office next weekend, using the 3rd bag of soil for the transplant.

I don't know what can be done to a bag of potting soil - especially one with an organic label - that can make it kill any plant it touches, and it couldn't have come at a worse time in my gardening experience, but that second bag was definitely "the soil of death".

Not fiasco level yet, but it sounds like you've reached the frustration level. Peppers require patience with germination (we usually grow about 10 types). We buy seedlings of the common varieties of pepper, but germinate the unusual ones (by we I mean my wife:).) The quickest germinators this season took about a week to 10 days, the slowest, crimson hot (my favorite), took about a month. Two or three weeks spent on top of the refrigerator seems about normal for our peppers' germination. Likely reasons to have germination problems include things like old seed and the the wrong soil temps.

In terms of killing your indoor plants mis-watering and too little light are probably the most frequent problems, but if your water has a lot of salt or chlorine in it you can get problems that way too. Once it thaws, we water tender plants only with water from our rain barrel.

Peppers can be a pain to get started at times. Out of the 20 or so seeds I planted only 10 or so came up after my first try this year. This attempt included a heating mat under my flat... it seems that sometimes pepper seeds just don't want to sprout

you might want to consider the seed source as a problem, I have had a lot of luck in the past with large seed companies (burpee and park have a great track record in my experience(the variety from these two companies is great as well), The seed you can pick up at the big box stores has been a source of frustration for me in the past (only 4 of the 20 cosmos seeds I planted from lowes sprouted this year)

also potting soil isn't the best choice for starting seeds, you can find starting soil mix that is ground finer so the baby plant wont have to push up against any large chunks of soil/twigs

hope that helps, life's a garden, dig it

Brian, I bought "organic" Miracle-Gro soil last year for my outdoor raised-bed garden.
I didn't have the bad luck you did...my seedlings did sprout and grew alright. But one thing really bugged me about their soil. I noticed little shreds of colored plastic in it. I can't see why shreds of plastic should be in any product labeled organic. I will not buy that product again. This year I just added compost from my own compost pile to last year's soil.

I bought seeds from a new company this year, and although I planted my seedlings indoors late again this year for the tomatoes and peppers, they have sprouted. The germination rate for these seeds was awesome. Of 15 tomato seeds, 14 germinated and of 30 pepper seeds, I was able to get 29 to sprout.
My real challenge is getting them to transplant outside without ruining the whole affair.
Anyway, here is a link to that seed company. Maybe you would want to try them out sometime.

http://www.kitchengardenseeds.com/

I've always found those garden center bagged soil mixes to be difficult to grow plants in since many of them are designed to be lightweight for ease of shipping and have problems with drying too too easily and shrinking away the edges of the pot. I usually go out in my yard and dig up soil from locations where leaves, hay, or grass clippings have naturally composted and accumulated into a rich top soil.