Please read this in a good natured tone of voice. I am not being snarky. To someone whose idea of gardening is to buy a condo and let the landscaping crew mow the lawns, a fruit tree would look complicated. Growing organic fruit can be a challenge. I gave up and I spray. The upside to that is I actually get to eat fruit. When I grow fruit trees, I am producing food for my family and I literally spend less time working on the trees than it takes me to drive to the market and buy tasteless, under-ripe, expensive fruit from the produce department. Thanks to the internet and especially thanks to this forum, all the information about how to grow fruit trees is readily available. Seriously, it is simply paint-by-the-numbers to get started. Follow simple instructions. Get a couple of easy trees to begin and then you can get fancier as you learn. I'm still not ready to espalier. My veggie garden is a lot more work. I only have to dig one time to plant the tree. Did I mention that tomato horn worms are close to being the grossest thing on the planet? I'm going to agree that berries can be easy, as long as you like feeding the birds. Pruning brambles can be intimidating. They fight back. I find grapes to be easy, but I know that they take a lot of spraying in climates different than mine. The simple truth is that some people like to garden and some don't. For those who don't, that's why they build condos.

Moving the squash to a new part of your garden should help with the wilt and disease problems but the squash bugs are going to find your plants no matter what. Just like they found your squash this year. Insects seem to show up out of nowhere. "And there is still the wilt. After pulling the vines and removing any remaining debris, what can I do to clean up if I really want to use that space for a cucurbit?" You could remove as much of the old soil as possible and replace it with new soil but that's a lot of work. I'd suggest just adding compost to the old spot, planting something other than squash there, and moving the squash to a new area next year, if it's possible. Read up on how to control squash bugs so you can have a better harvest next year. I'm kind of new to squash (only my third year growing them) and I don't have any experience with squash bugs so I can't give any tips. Squash vine borers (SVB for short) are something I'm familiar with as they were horrible this year for me. With cucumbers (I have much more experience with cukes), be on the lookout for cucumber beetles. They are a pain in the rear too as the beetles transmit bacterial wilt. Edit: I seemed to have missed the part about the plants being in a container. Changing the soil will definitely be the way to go. Rodney This post was edited by theforgottenone1013 on Tue, Nov 5, 13 at 18:16

This thread might do better on the Money Saving Tips forum.

From what I am reading, you were lucky enough to secure a contract on an unusually large home in a hot market. In circumstances like that, being in the right place at the right time gave you the opportunity to buy a desirable home. If you choose to back out, you will spend more money trying to secure alternative housing, fees and charges duplicated on the next house you find and likely pay a higher price for the replacement. If you back out now, you are guaranteed to lose money, but if you close, you have a fairly good chance that you haven't bought a problem house. Most issues found in a home inspection are not deal breakers, especially if the property was built in the past few decades. Old houses are more likely to have expensive problems but if this is a newer home, serious issues aren't as likely. In my area, most sales are as-is with an inspection clause which allows the buyer walk away if there are substantial defects found. In common practice, buyers request certain items to be fixed and sellers often fix issues to avoid losing the sale. However in a hot market, sellers are likely to refuse to fix issues unless lenders refuse to finance the purchase.