What are you using for fertilizer?

Even in socal it's a bit cool for peppers and any other warm-weather crops, so don't discount the temperature factor, it's a powerful one.

If you had posted this over on the Soil forum here the first thing they would have told you is to contact your local county extension office and arrange to have a professional soil test done.

In this case i agree with them. it is the only way to know exactly what issues you are dealing with. Keep in mind that there is no comparison between the results obtained from a professional test and one of those home kits (which are notoriously IN-accurate) so your soil and water pH readings are likely way off.

Plus you don't mention what you added in the way of plant nutrients? Fertilizer? Compost? Anything?

Dave

Although the Big Box stores will sell almost any vegetable at any season, January is not a prime growing time for peppers in Southern California. Adding peat to the soil may help counteract the alkalinity and lack of nitrogen is associated with pale leaves. Are your plants getting enough sunlight? Have you added compost? Don't worry about the water. If it's safe for you to drink, it's safe for your plants. Rainwater is better, but we don't have a lot of that.

Your local Master Gardeners (http://www.mastergardenerssandiego.org/) will be a good source of information and will be able to refer you to the county extension office, since they are part of UCCE.

Here is a link that might be useful: What's Growing On?

I used distilled water to test the soil with one of those DIY kits. The water was tested with a pH/EC/TDS/Temp stick, not a kit or litmus paper.

It was raining almost daily for the last week or so. Temps have been low for us San Diegans (highs in the 60s, lows in the high 30s-low 40s). I haven't been collecting any rain water, nor have I tested it; but since I tested my water I've been letting mother nature do the watering. It has since stopped raining daily, but it is moist in the mornings. What I would use to collect the rain water (55 gl drum), I'll be using to store my RO water here shortly.

The soil... So I turned over the lawn, and removed the bigger clumps of grass. The soil that I put in was two bags of miracle grow organic choice garden soil, and the other was canna terra pro? I also had like half a bag of some random dry, fine coarse mulch my wife bought when I wasn't looking. I've also been crushing up egg shells to an almost dust-like size and sprinkling that. There was also a box of E.B. Stone Sure Start (the amount used was for the square footage of the bed) that was supposed to help the plants root well and help from transplant shock. There was also some E.B. Stone dolomite lime, that I added before I tested the soil or water because I thought it was going to be acidic based on all the clay that was in the original soil. After I had already mixed it in and tested it is when I found out that my original soil was nuetral, and my water is alkaline. I have three different types of bat guano I plan on using (each one is higher in N, P or K); but I don't want to use any of it until I figure out what's going on here. I did use a very weak mix of all purpose fert to see if it would get any better or worse, can't really say I can tell if it helped or hurt any.

Transplants came from a nursery and all the plants were already outside in full sunlight when I purchased them. I don't know how long they've been out there; maybe they were still hardening off, I don't know for certain. But my guess would be that they've been in the sun fulltime based on the limited space the nursary has. The plants have been in the bed since Dec 15th or so? Maybe a couple days longer than that, but that's pretty accurate.

Compost; I have none that I added myself. I need to start composting. I have all the raw material outside of another bed to do it in.

I know the weather is pretty nice in San Diego but the shortest days of the year are in December. You can plant, grow, and harvest throughout the year, especially with hoop houses or some cover or protection to keep the heat in, and being closer to the equator helps, but the major strawberry season where you are is ~April-July. Wait a couple of months or set up a tunnel/hoop house with plastic and then see how the plants are doing.

Here is a link that might be useful: Digital Gardener's Southern California Vegetable Planting Schedule

D-licious:

If you're a CITY resident, the Miramar landfill has compost(which I've had great results with) for free up to 2 yards if you load yourself. I'm in Santee so I have to pay for it but they load it for $12/yd. Definitely worth it for them to load it, unless you're only going to get a small amount.

As far as YOUR plants are concerned, I don't know--- maybe too much water from all the rain. Also, like lgteacher said, it's just too "cool" for peppers to thrive right now here, even if you're right on the coast where the temps aren't cool, but they're nor warm. Not to mention, the lack of sunshine per day. Peppers like lots of warmth and light. I've only got 2 pepper plants right now IN CONTAINERS and they're brought in to the garage each night -- There's no growth on them whatsoever right now, I'm only keeping them going to ripen existing fruit.

Try cool season crops --- lettuces, brassicas(broccoli, cauli, cabbages-- must be PLANTS(no seeds) though at this time of year,snow peas, onions, etc.

Hope you get it straightened out.

Kevin

Here is a link that might be useful: Planting calendar for San Diego County

Mix the guano in as you prepare for planting. It's like here kids, come sit at the table and in a couple of weeks I'll give you something to eat. Plants need nutrients most early on. Soil improvement is important, but so is fertilizer.

Keep in mind that I know nothing about your climate, but could what you are seeing have more to do with the low light conditions? Perhaps coupled with cool temperatures? These are the shortest days of the year, and I was recently given advice about not trying to grow things in my new hoop house until the days start getting longer, like February.

Winter solstice was like two weeks ago. Nothing is going to grow much now.

Also, they look nice/green and healthy when bought because the starts you buy are fertilized and grown in greenhouse with grow lights. Your plants just met reality when you planted them. Don't expect much to happen in Jan/Feb...

Thank you all for the help. I have taken some of your suggestions into action. I have taken lots of pictures, but it's kinda a PITA to post them individually; so I made a gallery.

Please take a look at them and let me know what else I need to do to get my plants tip-top. Keep in mind that the pictures were not all taken at the same time. I believe that they are organized sequentially from oldest to newest.

Let me know what you think!

Here is a link that might be useful: My Gallery

That looks really nice. The plants are spaced closely but that is fine since you can harvest the greens early to keep them thinned out.

Does that wall face the south? In other words does the bed receive sun all day? If yes then the bed should receive enough light and heat to grow peppers and such well. You could add drip lines or a soaker hose to make watering easier and then a layer of mulch such as straw or shredded leaves. You could also fill up the bed by mixing in some homemade or bulk compost but since everything is planted that could wait until next time. A clear plastic tent over the bed can help with growing things like lettuce and cabbage in the early spring or late fall. The plants will grow more as spring approaches.

The wall faces south-east and it receives direct sunlight a great majority of the day.

I'm considering adding a dripper line now; I was originally opposed to it when I first read your post. But since I've tired of filling the watering can one gallon at a time (3 gallon can) with the RO'd and pH'd water. If I setup a dripper line, I can put it on a timer so when I'm gone from home for a while (which is often) the garden will still get irrigated.

I was in Home Depot the other day and saw a few kits. I wasn't sure exactly what to look for and I wasn't shopping for them so I tried to not spend too much time looking at them. What should I look for in a good system? I already have a large resevior with a pump that I just added to it so now I'm not dipping into the reseviour to get water. I can connect the pump directly to a hose with a wand attached to the end and walla! I'm watering! But if I can automate it for each individual plant, that'll be ideal.

And I do have two compost bins going simultaniously; one worm bin and a traditional compost bin. The worm bin has scrap vegetables and the outside compost bin has anything that's biodegrable in it. It's mostly horse manure and some certified compost I got locally as "seed". Right now I would assume that I have about 150 gl of compost just starting to rot. Worms are supposed to be faster... I'm not impressed. I don't know how many worms it's supposed to have been, but I purchased a 5 gallon bucket of worms and bedding. I'm certain there is too much food in there now so I stopped putting anything in with the worms and have only been adding it to the bin outside. BTW, I didn't keep the worms in the 5 gl bucket (if you're wondering).

Yes, I can't wait for it to get warmer! It has been warming up here lately, though. It almost feels like Southern California again!

A soaker hose for about $10 and one of the battery operated timers with garden hose fittings for about $30-40 is one of the simplest ways to go in my opinion. Designing/buying the pieces for a drip system can work better but it takes more time to set up. I'm not sure how well a soaker hose would work being gravity or pump fed from a reservoir but you could try it with an old hose with holes poked in it around each plant. Either a water hose timer like the one in the link, or a timer for your pump should work. You can try watering deeply 1-2 times per week when it doesn't rain depending on circumstances, for example one hour on per week, or 30-60 minutes on every 72 hours.

Here is a link that might be useful: Water timer

Thanks, art. Now I'm stuck on Amazon looking at what other cool gadgets I can add and automate the garden with. :)

Well I went to upload my new pictures and they are there on my gallery. But, I'm out of bandwidth for the month, so no one can see the pics. So I'm uploading one here and maybe you can see.

This is after I watered the garden, so some plants look like they've been handled roughly.