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First Time Gardener, Mishaps & Exploits

First time gardener here, 9b in Southern California, have around 550-600 square feet of space to use.  Starting a garden this year, because its the first time I've had room for more than one or two plants in the last 6 years and I have hated vegetables outside of a small range since I was a kid.  I'm hoping I can help kick my issue with vegetables this year by growing them.  This all started with a drunken night celebrating and ordering some mystery "Super hot, Pepper Seed mix" off of Ebay.  No clue if the seeds will actually be true to their labels, Reaper, Red and Peach Ghost, Trinidad Scorpion and Orange Habanero.  Since I made this mistake, and didn't realize it until the item had shipped, I figured I would give it a go anyways.  My girlfriend was down (not for the peppers) to grow other assorted veggies and has since become annoyed with all of my pepper stuff that is growing.  I ordered a few types of seeds from White Hot Peppers, Bahamian Beast Peach F3, Sugar Rush Red, Purple UFO, Swamp Thing, Fatalii Chocolate, Bahamian Goat, Satan's Kiss and Aji Pineapple.  I will probably have to ninja those seeds straight into potting mix outside in my garden, because I might be murdered if my girlfriend sees me setting up a mini-greenhouse inside our house again.  I also picked up a few peppers at Cal Poly Pomona's Pepperzania about a month ago, a Carolina Reaper, Chocolate 7-pot, Himo Togarashi and one I am drawing a complete blank on.  Garden also includes your typical garden veggies, tomatoes (few different types), cucumbers, sweet corn, squash (no clue what type), carrots, beets or radishes (drawing a blank) and I am pretty sure I am forgetting something.
 
Most plants are in cloth planter bags (is that what they're called?) and all the seeds will be ninja'ed into 2 gallon cloth bags and put out of direct line of sight from my overseer.  I will take some pictures and post them up when I have time, currently at work and had a few extra minutes to type this up.  I will be enlisting help via pictures of issues I know I will have, currently fighting off a bug infestation of earwigs, neem oil should be at my place tomorrow (diatomaceous earth hasn't helped much).
 
Pepper List:
 
Cal Poly Pomona Plants:
Reaper
Chocolate 7-Pot
Himo Togarashi
One I am going blank on
 
Mystery Seeds:
Reaper
Red and Peach Ghost
Trinidad Scorpion
Orange Habanero
 
Actual Seeds from White Hot Pepper:
Bahamian Beast Peach F3 
Sugar Rush Red 
Purple UFO 
Swamp Thing
Fatalii Chocolate 
Bahamian Goat 
Satan's Kiss 
Aji Pineapple
 
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Thanks for all of the kind words on my first actual full on garden project!  Didn't get to do as much work over the weekend as I intended, mailbox got ran over so had to take a few hours to put it back together (glad I got a metal one and not a plastic one) and had to attend to family emergency for half the day on Sunday (all is good).  
 
Due to my insect infestation, mostly earwigs, which have been munching on my plants, I bought cold pressed neem oil and put together a neem oil spray based on other forum members having good luck with it.  I did that on Saturday night to all of my vegetable plants and so far it seems to have kept the earwigs away and any random grasshoppers I have seen around.  How often do you guys suggest I apply more neem oil?  
 
I made the mistake of not buying a heating mat for my seeds I started at the end of March and had almost given up on them, when they finally started sprouting after 6 or 7 weeks.  I planted seeds in rockwool for a few kratky setups and used Jiffy Pellets for the others.  The Jiffy pellets sprouted a couple weeks earlier, but I am guessing that is due to them being insulated more by the peet, when compared to the rockwool and water.  
 
This little guy is the oddball out:
 
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Here is what I am working on in my garden area at the moment, which I call "redneck engineering."  I'm originally from Kentucky, so don't mind my lack of polish (if it works, it works).  That area of my garden will soon have 11-12 hours of direct sunlight, so I put that 30% sun shade over the top to try to help my cloth planters from drying out too fast while I am at work.
 
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In my original post I mentioned trying to start some seeds from WHP, does anyone think I will be able to get them going and harvest any peppers?  I am thinking I will have time due to the extended summer in Southern California, which tends to stretch into December.
 
I will be extremely busy with my day job until the end of May and then it should slow down until at least July, so, I am hoping to update this GLog at least 1-2 times a week.
 
 
 
I was pretty excited to get home from work today and open up my seeds I ordered from White Hot Pepper, especially because all the reviews on here says you get freebies. I wasn’t let down at all!

I got the following freebies on top of my order:

Ghostly Jalapeño
Orange Rocoto
Reaper x Chupetinho
Dedo de Moca Red
Serpent Noir
Anaheim
Bahamian Beast Red F3

I’m thinking I can try between 2-4 seeds of each pepper and plant out from there.


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We actually got some good rain in my area last night and my plants outside loved it!

I definitely didn’t fertilize my plants properly when I first planted them and today I fertilized them with Jobes Organic fertilizer spikes. Does anyone have any experience with them?

Going to try my hand at mixing up some of my own potting mix this weekend. Thinking of doing a coir, perlite and vermiculite blend with bone and blood meal for fertilizer. Any suggestions on other additives? I have access to chicken manure mix.

The little guys in the rockwool seem to be doing good. Don’t think I’m doing anymore Kratky setups besides 2 more quart mason jar setups.

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The little guy below is supposed to be a Ghost pepper plant (not sold until peppers are showing) and I’m pumped it’s finally growing it’s first set of true leaves and it’s root is growing like crazy.


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I've been crazy busy, so I haven't had time to write up anything about my garden for the last few weeks, just enough time to browse the Glogs I'm following and leave a few replies.  Weather has been unusual for May in Southern California, so I am concerned with the temperatures dropping to around 48-50 at night for the next few weeks.  So far, everything seems to be doing just fine.  I made a mini greenhouse, mainly for the fun of it, would have been cheaper to just buy a small grow tent and put a light and fan in it (probably would have saved $15 or so).  I keep forgetting to take a picture of the little greenhouse which is currently trying to keep some seeds warm enough that they will germinate.  I planted out all of the seeds I bought from White Hot Peppers and the free varieties they sent me and have the greenhouse sitting over the top of them.  The greenhouse got ripped out of the ground last week during a small rain/wind storm we had, so the seedling mix/seeds got rained on.  I am hoping this didn't possibly nuke them or anything too bad.  
 
Upgraded my super-mini greenhouse with a 15w Sansi light, I am hoping to plant them out in the next couple weeks when the temperatures are supposed to hit around 80 degrees during the day.  I have two pumpkin plants in there and they are just itching to get some room to grow outside.  
 
 

 
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also, two of my three garden helpers tuckered out after helping me put together the seedling mix:
 

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Mr.joe said:
Looking good, I'm following along since I'm also down in so California. Does cal polly Pomona always sell seeds or was that only for that event?
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I hope this crazy “cold” front we are having isn’t wrecking any plants you have out!

I’m not entirely sure if Cal Poly is always selling or not, the greenhouse area is right behind their Farm store and it looks like they tend to sell standard garden vegetables and ornamentals for part of the year. This year was the first year I had heard about the pepper festival, but I would be surprised if they don’t also sell all the different varieties year round or until they run out.


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@ Simp: Looks like you are off to a good start.
The long SoCal grow season should serve you well.
 
@Mr. Joe: Boo! Hiss! Sorry to hear you lost your
plants to the weather. That's not supposed to
happen there!
 
Mr.joe said:
The weather has destroyed almost all of my plants, but more on the way. Lol
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear, somehow most of mine have hung on despite the 30-40 degree temperature roller coaster!


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PaulG said:
@ Simp: Looks like you are off to a good start.
The long SoCal grow season should serve you well.
 
@Mr. Joe: Boo! Hiss! Sorry to hear you lost your
plants to the weather. That's not supposed to
happen there!
Click to expand...
Thanks PaulG! I’m just hoping to have enough peppers to experiment with different hot sauces and spicy bbq sauces.


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Got a little work done today mixing some potting soil until I realized I was basically out of perlite, hopefully Amazon comes through with delivery tomorrow so I can finish potting everything I wanted to this weekend.

My yard is infested with ear wigs and found this disturbing bastard earlier:

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Garden crew minus the pug:

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Tiny greenhouse with some baby plants freshly added:

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Got some hand mixing in since I don’t do much manual labor anymore:

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I’m the dog in this picture right now, I’ve let work stress get to me over the last few months, gotta get back into the gym:

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Made some DIY earwig traps today. My girlfriend goes grocery shopping on Sundays so I had her pick me up a few things. Told her I needed some sort of dish I can bury with a top soft enough to cut into or drill holes into and she found some small pot pie dishes. She was supposed to pick up some fish sauce or something smelly, but forgot to so I used some of my 5-1-1 fish emulsion and put it into some canola oil. Buried 4 of these little guys around my garden, if they work I will probably make some more for around my house.

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Started off Memorial Day checking my earwig traps. 2/4 are confirmed killers with 10-15 dead earwigs in them.

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Finally some normal weather for this region:

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I hope everyone enjoys Memorial Day and remembers what the holiday is for. RIP to my brothers I lost in Iraq back in 2006 and to all our lost service members.


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