Hi Rose, its quite possible too much water. Here near chicago its been warm and i notice lowest leaves are similar as your description. In my case its the water coming out of watering can and or hose hitting the lowest leaves each day sometimes resting on top of soil thats doing it for me. Martin Chicago Ebay ID - Dieseler6z92 Member- Garden Web, Figs4Fun, Friends of The Fig Society

The fertilizer is not appreciated until there are roots.

I know this is horribly outdated, but I figure I'd post for documentation in case it helps anyone else in the future. Tawni: Your photo looks exactly like what I saw on my tomatoes. I took eileen_nv's suggestion about spider mites and looked them up. The description seems to match. Also, I'm not sure if this was present on your leaves, but I inspected my infected leaves closer and noticed many white/clear specks on them. And some of them were moving. So, I guess those were the tiny little spider mites. Some resources I found for controlling spider mites: http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/orchids/2003010242014131.html http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/brug/msg090328378869.html http://www.entomology.ksu.edu/DesktopModules/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=4173 (it's a PDF titled "Spider Mites on Tomatoes" from Kansas State University)

Yellowing of the bottom leaves - be they cotyledons or true leaves - is almost always a sign of excess watering. Too wet soil causes root rot. Given your container mix - "store bought top soil with homemade compost (leaves and grass)" - too much water/too wet soil would seem very likely. Potting soil also compacts making good drainage problematic. This the standard recommendation to use a soil-less potting mix instead. Have you fed them anything else? Compost unless it was well finished humus won't provide much in the way of nutrients. Dave