May be you can LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES if you are a new gardener like me.

I am a new hobby container gardener, I do not know about gardening and plants' life. I cannot provide anything educational but may be you can learn from my mistakes.

I am very impressed about this forum. Many of the forum members' willingness to help the other members are remarkable.

I did overwinter about 10 habanero none of them survived :(. Because I did not know how to do it, at least I should have BASIC knowledge and materials for overwinter.

When I found something on the internet, just I tried, I love practice, and without practice theory is nothing to me.

As a hobby container gardener I should do a little bit research before I started, that can save my time, money and will prevent unnecessary minor problems. I never knew/thought about the possible problems of insects, pests and fungus when we moved the plants indoors and its precautionary measures too.

My mistakes:

1. Selection of containers is one of the keys to success container gardening I think. Without a good container a good container soil is almost useless it does not give anything good to my plants. What is a good container, I think you knew very well. It will be a long explanation but in short a good container should have drainage hole whether it is self-watering or not. All my containers are self-watering without drainage holes; I did not know proper use of self watering containers too. It was my FIRST BIG MISTAKE.

2. I used peat moss, I do not know exactly what it is but considered it as peat moss. I am 100% sure it is not the container soil our expert forum members talked about. I do not see any perlite, vermiculite, pine bark but it has sign of compost. I have some plants already have grown on the said soil. I started to know the important of mixed soil for the container gardening. So I have bought pine bark and perlite. Then I mixed the soil and started replacing by digging around the plants. It damaged the roots and gave a lot of stress to the plants. It was my SECOND BIG MISTAKE.

3. I have changed the soil just I said. However my plants could not get any improvement. I have checked some of the containers and found that too much soil that were compacting and suffocating the roots. It was my THIRD BIG MISTAKE.

4. I have repotted and fertilized the plants with the new mixed soil. I ignored the dose of concentrated fertilizer to mix in the water. I did fertilize very often in the soil and on the leaves too. As a result the plants got problems. It was my FOURTH BIG MISTAKE.

5. I got aphids and fungus gnats. I have applied insecticide, pesticide, fungicide and homemade remedy. It was killing my healthy plants, because I used too much without following the instructions. A few aphids and fungus gnats won't kill the plants and I do not need to apply heavy insecticides, it should be the last option I think (manually I could remove those aphids). It was my FIFTH BIG MISTAKE.

6. I did overwater due to the unreasonable self watering containers' water level indicators and incorrect use of self-watering containers. It was my SIXTH BIG MISTAKE.

7. Lighting, I use modified "energy daylight" without the white plastic protector it is powerful. I haven't used it when I started to grow these plants. I have started to use it after my plants have grown about 3-4 inches tall. I used too much instead of using gradually increase the time of lighting. It was my SEVENTH BIG MISTAKE.

Now I have about 40 superhot baby chilies, the next season is going to be very hot season for me. I will avoid the mistakes I have made before and prepare for the new problems. Please do not make mistake like me. You may say I am foolish and crazy, that's OK :))

Thanks
Caelian