Boax in a Texas Garden

BERGHEIM, TEXAS OUTDOORS & IN THE GROUND ORGANIC GROW!!! 30 Plants, 4-5 feet apart - Started seeds indoors on February 28th with a 15-hour light schedule (made a lot of mistakes with light placement, watering and drainage but they kept recovering... seems to be a pretty forgiving plant) .... I know I know, everyone says 18 hours of light but I wasn't in a hurry and didn't want to induce flowering when they got put outside. - While the babies were growing inside, I did a double-dig on the garden to mix some sand, decomposed granite, peat moss, greensand and compost into our clay-heavy soil. Picked out quite a few grubs and cutworms. The grubs were put in the bird feeder I've had out all winter, and the cutworms were smashed & tossed along the rows as a warning to their friends. - By the end of March, leaves reached the edges of the solo cups, transplants were about 5-6 inches tall and it was time to go outside :-) - I wasn't quite satisfied with my garden soil, so in a pinch I dug out 2-3 foot deep holes about 2-3 feet wide and filled with a mix of compost, Happy Frog soil conditioner and existing garden soil. - During transplanting, I sprinkled a bit of rocket fuel in the holes, cut off the first couple sets of leaves, gave a foliar feeding and watered with a light seaweed mix. I had some herb and nasturtium seeds on hand so I also threw them around the planting holes... we'll see if anything pops up. - I am currently providing supplemental lighting to prevent flowering until the garden gets 13+ hours of sunlight. I'm poor, so just using a couple of construction site floodlights. We'll see if it's enough. - Throughout the week several pests invaded: Cucumber beetles, fungus gnats, various species of grasshoppers, moths, june bugs, caterpillars, and one other crawling insect I have yet to identify (might have been a Box Elder Bug). I tried a different remedy each day, and one or all of them worked (Had a single grasshopper this morning, and that was it!). These will be the foundation of my pest management plan: ---------> Maggie's 3-in-1 ---------> Maggie's flying insect spray (around border & walkways, NOT ON PLANTS!) ---------> DE ---------> Spinosad --------> Neem oil ---------> Insecticidal Soap ---------> Horticultural Oil ---------> BT-k (Monterrey) ---------> BT-i (Mosquito Bits) ---------> Bug zapper (which is hung just OUTSIDE of the garden in the chicken run, so that any bugs it's attracting and not zapping will be devoured by the chickens) The stress of the weather, transplanting and bug munching is a bit much. I had to treat the leaves with a little copper foliar spray this morning, but all in all not doing too bad. This is my first serious grow, so I'm sure there are so many wrong decisions being made here but we'll see how it goes. The weather has been crazy (10% humidity to 100% humidity, low temperatures in the 30s and highs in the upper 80s). We've had an inch or two of rain, fog and drizzle so I've only been feeding them a foliar spray in the afternoons when the humidity is low. Waiting for the soil to dry out so I can up their nutes the next watering with that Tiger Bloom. Ya'll read this far, so feel free to chime in and tell me everything I've done wrong! Compliments are welcome as well. :-) lol.

Came back from an Easter camping trip and the girls grew a couple of inches. The only problem was the pests exploded! I'm waiting on some NOLO bait for all the grasshoppers (it's sold out everywhere but online, so guess I'm not the only one suffering this plague), but in the meantime, we'll see how the IPM lineup does. I'm pretty sure we're taking out quite a few of those little guys, but more just keep on hatching.