Too far gone to tell, but given your location and the final results, I would suspect the pickle worm.

We have bees year-round so I imagine you will too. They really are starved for something to eat in the winter and spend the whole day foraging. I try to keep some sort of cool-season flower, cover crop or weed blooming for them. Sometimes I use hummingbird feeders without bee guards as bee feeders in winter. I've noticed for well over a decade now that when I put out cracked corn for the mourning doves, the bees feed on it, though I am not sure how they do it. That's especially true in the dead of winter, but also in every other part of the year as well. Buckwheat is wonderful and clover attracts many bees and other pollinators as well. Clover also is a cool-season crop, but I have little bits of clover here and there in shady areas that survives almost year round. Sometimes it dies back in mid-summer. Some of it was blooming last week behind the barn but I haven't looked at it lately because all I've done for far too long is harvest, can, harvest, can, harvest and can. It is amazing how much changes in the garden if you are only stepping foot in it a couple of times a week to harvest. I had a volunteer plant pop up in the back garden about a month ago. It is an Armenian cucumber. The cool thing is that it popped up in the middle of a hill of summer squash plants and it is growing over them, through them and around them. Their foliage is mixed it with the cuke foliage, and these plants are producing a nice harvest. I also haven't seen a squash bug or SVB near them. (Now that I said that, I'll go out tomorrow and discover SVBs have killed them all because that is how gardening works.) Say "I haven't seen a cucumber beetle all year...." and a million show up the next day. It will be interesting to see if the squash pests avoid the squash plants growing with the Armenian cuke (which, you may remember, is a melon and not a cucumber). I've often wondered if I could hide other summer squash and winter squash plants by planting them in the middle of Seminole plants. I haven't really tried it because the Seminole is such a rampant grower that I think it likely would smother any other nearby plants. Bon, Fred often complains to me that he doesn't have bees and I just don't get it because he is less than a mile from us. I know he does have them when the fruit trees are blooming. My garden is so filled with bees and wasps that some of my friends don't want to step foot it in. I work out there in it all the time and haven't been stung by a bee or wasp in the garden in years. Of course, if I was allergic to them, their presence would be a problem. And, of course, often people who don't have plentiful bees and pollinators have brought it on themselves by spraying broad-spectrum insecticides, which is something I avoid doing specifically for the sake of the bees and other beneficials. I planted my cukes late, trying to ensure I wouldn't have to start canning pickles while trying to finish up the canning of all the tomatoes. I checked the cucumber plants this morning and think it is going to work out as planned. The tomato crop is really winding down and I'm through canning salsa, and the cucumbers are in bloom. That is, of course, assuming disease or pests don't suddenly hit the cukes. In a garden, anything can happen. Dawn

I'm not an expert but just a few thoughts since I grow in containers as well. How old is your potting mix and what is it? If the potting mix is new and something like Miracle Gro then you really shouldn't need to fertilize it right away I would think because the stuff already comes with fertilizer which lasts 3 months. If it's something else, what are you using? If it's older then it will need fertilizer but it also may be compacted which causes nutrient absorption problems for plants . Since you are growing indoors , that maybe yet another special challenge you have vs. people who grow outside. Being so light green I also wonder if it's getting enough light. Again not an expert but I have seen plants grown in lower light and they are not dark green in color when they could / should be. Silly comparison but white Garlic Chives or white asparagus are both just garlic chives or asparagus grown from the absence of light. In these two cases they are only white because chlorophyll isn't being produced and chlorophyll isn't being produced because they are not receiving light. What type of grow lights are you using? You may want to browse the indoor growing forum for information. http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/lights Here are some really informative container growing links you can browse through to see if anything is helpful. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1379073/container-soils-water-movement-and-retention-xv http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1386241/fertilizer-program-for-containerized-plants-ii http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1416115/how-plant-growth-is-limited-container-forum-version

I think you may have planted too early in cuke season. Here's a link to a planting calendar for Phx. Hope this helps. :-) Keep trying, trial and error is frustrating but works. Cheers! Mary Low Desert Planting Calendar