Welcome from south OC. Good luck with the peppers. I didn't have any luck when I put mine in the ground. Just too hard to control the moisture, fertilizer, water intake, and bugs so I actually put all my plants in pots last year and just put them on top of the dirt. It was funny to see, but the plants in the ground did horribly in comparison to the plants in the 5 gallon pots on the dirt.