DYING PLANTS??? WHAT'S WRONG?

I'm new to SFG... planted a few weeks back, things were going great. We planted some plants and some seeds... EVERYTHING came up, which we were thrilled about.
Now suddenly our cantaloupe, squash varieties & cucumbers are turning yellow and dying. We are watering frequently, and if Mels book is right, you can't over water with Mels Mix.

Any idea what is going wrong?

Hmmmm.... Are there any other symptoms other than the turning yellow? Are they getting 6-8 hours (or more) of sunlight a day? No pests or cold snaps? Do your beds have adequate drainage (so any excess water can run off)? :suspect:

timwardell: Our boxes are in full sunlight all day. We have used 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite like Mel suggests in his book, so I would presume the soil drains as it should. I haven't noticed any excess moisture. Our strawberry plants got slightly eaten by aphids, but that doesn't seem to have affected the squash etc as there are not holes in the leaves. The yellowed leaves look dried out and 'hard'. I am clueless as to what the problem is.

P.S Our nighttime temperatures have been in the mid 40's lately... which is quite a bit cooler than it was when we planted a few weeks ago. Would you consider that a cold snap? Will the plants recover from a cold snap if that's the cause?

Ticky, I recently went through the same thing here in South Louisiana. It's possible that it could be a fungus, bacteria, or even a virus. Some of those thrive in cooler (especially but not neccesarily if it's wet) weather. If you could take pics, find and send them your county extension agent, he/she should be able to help. That is what I had done last week, after a couple of days of worrying, and my plants are looking great now. There are also some great websites that can aid in your own investigation until you can contact them. This is NCSU's website for vegetable disease.

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/pp/notes/Vegetable/vegetable_contents.html

AND, this is the university's co-op extension contact list.

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/index.php?page=countycenters

Good luck

Thanks everyone for your input.

I will try to take some pics later today and post them for you to see. (My 11 month old hasn't given me a chance to do that yet today. LOL)

Hopefully it's nothing serious.

Another question... possibly silly... do broccoli plants usually turn a shade of purple/red as they grow?

Hi Ticky,

You said that you used the ingredients that Mel recommends. I was wondering if you mixed your own compost from five different ingredients or if you used commercial compost.

There is another thread here: http://squarefoot.creatingforum.com/general-sfg-talk-f5/whats-wrong-with-my-pea-s-t1655.htm about a similar problem. It may help you if you check that out. I could be that you do not have enough variety in your soil. There are some suggestions there.

Hoping you find a soluction quickly.

Claire

Thanks Claire,

That's an interesting post link.
We mixed our own compost, but with 4 varieties, as that's all our local nursery had. We used a mix of cow, turkey, mushroom and cotton compost.

Carla