No you aren't alone! Slugs and snails take over the yards here especially in spring( here being Portland, OR). I stopped bothering with the "natural" solutions bc it was like trying to take out an army with a slingshot. I use sluggo (iron sulfate) it's the only thing that works that I can stay on top of. Luckily we had a super dry spring and summer so for the first time in years the slugs didnt eat all of my pole bean seedlings :) but even with that, my hostas have a few small holes as I haven't been on top of it. I only have a light green thumb though!

Unless not all of the shoots for this year are up yet you won't get any additional shoots until next year. Yes, slugs spoil these if you do not use bait at critical times.

Ilene, I think George is growing Moon and Stars, and someone else may be as well. When I have grown Moon and Stars, I've gotten large (20-30 lb) melons with a very dark green rind with the bright yellow moons and stars (many more stars than moons). The flesh has been a fairly bright red (not pink) in the case of original M&S or bright yellow that is almost a golden organgey-yellow when growing Yellow-Fleshed M&S. The flavor of the red-fleshed one is very much a true, strong watermelony taste that is sweet but not overly sweet. The flavor of the yellow-fleshed one is a bit more mild. When I grew the yellow-fleshed one, I am almost positive it had white seed. So, I am not sure if you have a different strain, or crossed seed or what, but your watermelon sounds different from the ones I've grown. The blue rind question baffles me. Every M&S I've ever seen has the rind that is a dark blackish-green with the gold spots. I have heard some people describe the dark green rind as 'purple' and I don't see that either, but assume the rind is so dark that they are seeing it as a purplish-black. One problem with knowing what to expect with M&S is that there are many strains of it around. Unless they've changed in recent years, the one offered by Seeds of Change is very small compared to other strains, and is round like a bowling ball. The one from SSE is most like the one my dad grew. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange sells several strains that are different from the original, including Amish Moon & Stars and Long Milky Way Moon and Stars which is very oblong in shape and has tons of stars and no moons, or very few moons. I believe Long Milky Way was bred by Sandhill Preservation Center's Glenn Drowns. There's also a Cherokee Moon and Stars but I don't think it is markely different from the original M&S except its flesh is pink or pinky-red. In addition to the aforementioned strains, there are some other strains available to members via the SSE yearbook, and that used to include M&S Moons of Jupiter and M&S Early. I didn't take the time to drag out the old yearbooks and look for descriptions of those two. However, I did pull out Amy Goldman's melon book to check and see what she lists for brix (measure of sweetness) for M&S and she shows a brix of 10. Here's the brix numbers for a few of the other melons she lists for comparison's sake: Carolina Cross 9, Sugar Baby 9, Fairfax 11, Blacktail Mountain 10.5, Chris Cross 8, Tom Watson 12, Orange-fleshed Honeydew (which I find very sweet indeed) 13, Old-Time Tennessee 12.5, and Santa Claus (aka Christmas) 9. Moon and Stars is a wonderful melon when picked fully ripe and I think you have either an odd strain or crossed seeds or something. Dawn

I think that you are right spidie, you can rule out cutworms. They only bother young and tender seedlings before the stems get as big around as a slim cigarette. I have seen complaints about rats and squirrels eating green and ripe tomatoes, or parts of them, but never about them chewing the bark off the stems near the soil level. I would tend to suspect fungal problems from the soil, or perhaps if you have tons of them dammed pill bugs aka rollie pollies aka sow bugs aka wood lice and / or slugs they may have developed a craving for tomato stem bark. Don't let anyone blow any smoke at you about them only eating dead and decaying matter. Just a couple of thoughts about possibilities. Bill P.