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

 

[PaulG]

I don't care where you live, that's hot!
 
 
 
  

 

[Mr.joe]

Yea, I wasn't quite ready for summer. Got my bhut kicked yesterday at work. Today thermometer in my truck showed 109. I'm gonna take it easy if I can get away with it. Hope my plants enjoy it. I may put up the shade cloth this week... the second I do the wind will come. Just talk nice to your plants and give em extra water.

 

[simp3204]

I don't care where you live, that's hot!
 
 
 
  

Yup! I much prefer 75-80 with a nice breeze over those temps. Looking forward to the dip back down into the 80’s.


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[simp3204]

Yea, I wasn't quite ready for summer. Got my bhut kicked yesterday at work. Today thermometer in my truck showed 109. I'm gonna take it easy if I can get away with it. Hope my plants enjoy it. I may put up the shade cloth this week... the second I do the wind will come. Just talk nice to your plants and give em extra water.

My brother called me up complaining about his work truck temperatures too! My other buddy that is a safety inspector for a construction company is not happy right now. Finishing some extra watering earlier, all my peppers seem to be just fine, but, my corn seemed a little mad.


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[PaulG]

I couldnt agree more!

 

[simp3204]

First flowers are starting to form on my Carolina Reaper:

Serrano flowers forming:

3 bell peppers on the plant and more flowers forming:

Jalapeño finally flowering:

I think this is my Anaheim flowering:

In other garden plant news:

I think these little cherry tomatoes will be fully ripe in a few days.

First squash, I think it’s a spaghetti squash, don’t mind the diatomaceous earth I sprinkled on and around the plant:

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[simp3204]

So my squash is growing like crazy and I have no idea what kind it is. It’s 4-5x larger than it was last week and that might be an understatement. It’s 2-3x larger than the small seedless watermelons you find at most grocery stores. I figured I should give it some extra support with an extra plant container I had laying around.

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[Mr.joe]

Wow. Makes me wanna grow squash. Looks good

 

[simp3204]

My girlfriends parents called me up asking if I wanted some extra fencing they had from their garden they had last year and expected the shorter 2’ or 2.5’ wire. Drove over to pick it up and was greeted by the pvc coated 4’ wire fencing.

I bugged Uncle Eccoli in his glog about how he setup his 5 gallon Kratky w/ wire, thanks for the ideas! Since I was greeted by the 4’ wire I went with the lazy setup. Going to keep them under the tree for a few days so they can get use to the extra hours of full sun, since they only got 2.5-3 hours of sun each day through the window.

Before:

After:

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[simp3204]

Sprayed down my entire garden with neem oil solution last night, discovered the earwigs love hanging out in my sweet corn and lettuce, with a few bang arounds on my peppers and tomatoes. Going to do weekly treatments for the next 3 weeks to make it a month of spraying. Hundreds were spotted last night, hoping to cut that down to a few dozen.

On a side note I discovered the 7 foot tree that is next to my garden is actually a fruit tree and is currently covered in baby plums! I’m pretty excited, because I love me some plums. We had enough rain in Southern California this year to get it to throw some fruit.

Also found this garden protector in said plum tree and the gate to my garden:

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[simp3204]

Planted 4 peppers into a raised box out of my mini greenhouse. Totally forgot to take a picture, will update at the end of this coming week.

Squash watch 2019, it keeps getting larger, the pictures don’t do it justice!

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[PaulG]

Nice score on the fencing!

Good to have a snake buddy around
to take care of that big ol squash that
looks like a watermelon!

 

[simp3204]

Nice score on the fencing!

Good to have a snake buddy around
to take care of that big ol squash that
looks like a watermelon!

I’m still pumped about scoring the fencing, it was at least 3/4 of a 50ft roll!

I’m hoping the little snake decides to hang around, it was a really friendly snake. The squash is getting ridiculous, I’m going to just let it keep growing. I don’t even like squash, I started it for my girlfriend.


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[simp3204]

No superhots yet, but, my first peppers besides my bell peppers are finally growing:

Jalapeño

Anaheim

Squash is continuing its growth

Tree that I thought was dying last year from the drought and is now officially a plum tree!

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[PaulG]

I wonder what kind of sauce can be made
with plums, or maybe spicy plum jelly?

 

[simp3204]

I wonder what kind of sauce can be made
with plums, or maybe spicy plum jelly?

I was thinking the exact same thing! In my head a plum/habanero jelly sounds like it could work. I’m not sure how the little plum tree will do with the incoming summer heat in the next month, but if it holds out I should have some habaneros and plums at the same time.


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[simp3204]

I don’t work on Fridays in the summer, so I have extra time to work in my garden. Got half of my peppers potted up with another 4 in my raised planters. All but 4 of the cloth pots in the picture have coco coir based potting mix that I mixed together today. The other 4 have Home Depot’s potting soil mix in them to see how the peppers grow when compared side-by-side.

Also, pretty sure I have a pumpkin vine on my hands for squash watch 2019. No clue how I mixed the melons/squashes up that bad in my seedling tray.

Sorry for the shit picture, I was tired and super hungry after mixing the soil and planting everything.

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[Mr.joe]

What's the white stuff? Epson salt?

 

[simp3204]

What's the white stuff? Epson salt?

Some protein based 2-4-2 organic fertilizer, bone meal and a little epsom salt. I realized after planting I didn’t mix the right amount of fertilizer into potting mix I made and decided to just throw it on top. Just watered all of them and it mixed into the top layer pretty well. We will see how it works.


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[simp3204]

Put mulch down on top of the cloth pots to help with the incoming heat for the summer.

In other garden news, I harvested my Kratky grown leaf lettuce for my girlfriend and her mom (I despise lettuce).

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