I wouldn't be surprised if the recent wet weather caused the roots to be saturated for a period, which in blueberry can kill off many roots. This would certainly explain your issues. Blueberries are not just sensitive at the time roots are too wet or too dry, it actually kills roots that they have to grow back. This can cause long term reduction in yield. You may have to accept the occasional set back if your soil occasionally saturates and you are not willing to dig them up. Personally, I did dig them up when conditions weren't right in my garden where they were, and although a pain at the time, my blueberries have been growing and producing great with no setbacks after creating a raised bed with proper conditions. My issue was different then yours though. I had sandy soil with a ton of compost in it, that I couldn't get the pH to stay down on, and tended to dry out. I created a raised bed, mixed my native sand with peat and sulphur and when pH got low enough, I transplanted then covered with several inches of pine bark, sawdust, spruce needles and chipped cones. Blueberries bounced back with incredible growth. It was worth the effort.

Please be patient with me as I really know nothing about gardening. In my last house I learned that tomatoes did well in this bed but lousy in the other bed and like that, and that was the extent of it. I have piled my grass and weeds in a pile, but there's a bunch of stuff there (branches) that isn't rotting fast at all. I do have a black compost bin that you turn but it really doesn't hold all that much. Besides, I never have put anything in it but grass and weeds. When they say "add the brown stuff" I shrug. I did just read up about the leaves and shredding them in a trash can with a weed eater and I can do that. :o) What is barn litter? I figure this would be a great time to shovel horse manure as it's been so hot and dry and there are people around here with horses who would let me. For a truck I have a Chrysler Sebring convertible. Is there some way to haul manure in that wihout hurting my car? Like in black trash bags in the trunk or something? Or should I just give up on this idea as one of my stupidest? I do like the price tag of free! And I don't want to shovel it when it's all wet with rain, which is when I'm going to need it, come fall. Right now I'm tempted to let my poor garden keep going. Maybe I should just give up now and stomp it down. Dunno. The corn is the tallest plant in there, maybe a foot high, and the neighbor just told me the raccoons steal all his corn. Figures! The rest of my plants are only about 4-5". Pretty sad, huh? I did start my winter sowing on the late side, because I learned about it late, but this is ridiculous. I'm also a bit concerned about my whackadoodle Wheaten tearing up anything I put down in the back yard. I sure wish she would understand if I would explain to her why she musn't do that! I had put up a fence of sorts but she tore that down too, darn her. Lucky for her I know that beating her senseless wouldn't teach her not to dig there -- she would just think humans were crazy. So no point in that even though that's what I feel like doing when I discover she has killed the three blueberry bushes I planted, or dumped over and desimated two long planters of veggies (I figured the planters would stop her from trampling them). No sense yelling at her after the fact... but I need a punching bag! That dog alone is enough to make me want to either give up the dog or the gardening. I did winter sowing for the first time this year. I was thrilled with all the plants I got. But then the trouble started. I had a HUGE double-trunked tree (fir and hemlock) fall over in my yard a couple of years ago. A stump grinder guy came out and ground it up and left me a mountain in the middle of my lawn. So I wheelbarrowed that dirt to where I now have my garden because it could use a little building up, I thought. Stupid idea. The bad news is that last year my garden didn't grow/flourish at all in that spot (yeah, I've figured out why). So this year I carefully put peatmoss and compost in the holes for each plant and it still didn't grow/flourish. So I got so disappointed and told my neighbor to quit saving milk cartons for me as I apparently can't garden in my garden patch to save my soul, so no sense winter sowing for me. So yesterday I phoned a nursery and asked the guy what to do and he said shovel out all that bad dirt and shovel in good topsoil. I'm too old for that. So I called a topsoil place and they wanted a fortune to take my old bad dirt that has the root chips in it, and also to bring me new dirt. I'm too poor for that. I had never heard of "lasagna gardening" until today. Um, yes I'd heard something about layering, but they always seemed to want something I didn't have and didn't know how to get, so I didn't pay too much attention. I put down newspaper in my old garden once and it stuck around forever and I thought it was supposed to disappear and it was hard to dig a hole through to plant, so I didn't do it again. I just googled it and read up on it. Now I feel a glimmer of hope but I have questions. So now are you telling me I can newspaper over my bad root-chipped garden soil and put layers of good stuff on it and next year I can plant in it and my plants will do well? In just the stuff I added? And they won't send roots down into the old bad soil? Okay, that's in the back yard. Now, in the front yard the grass is a little higher than is the flower bed under the house overhang. So are you saying that if I put newspaper over the grass and add stuff that the grass and roots underneath would decay enough so that I could rake that area to blend it in? I think that's not what you're saying. I think what you're saying is I would have to add enough stuff to raise the whole bed up higher than the grass to the point where I could rake it out to be flat? Then I'd need some kind of retaining wall around it, right? Also, I don't understand using the tar paper. First, I thought tar was toxic? Second, are you building a whole garden on top of the tar paper? It looks like at least in part that's where your grass ended up. (Does it drive you nuts to mow that curve?) Or are you taking the tar paper off later? This post feels like it should be in a "gardeners anonymous" meeting. Come to think of it, it kind of is. lol! Okay, off to google "Euonymus." I'll be darned if I know what that is.

For the Okra with the ants, I had a similar problem with ants farming aphids on my Okra and they would also chew on the pods as well. I simply put some petroleum jelly around the stem of the plant, the ants don't like to cross anything gewy like that. You might have to repeat the process every few weeks as the jelly wears away. There is also a product called tree tanglefoot that can be used the same way but it is really sticky and hard to wash off your hands. Anyway, I did the petroleum jelly thing on my okra last year and managed to get some good pods. This year I have not bothered with the petroleum jelly and there are still lots of ants working the okra but I'm still managing to get plenty of good pods. Just be careful as you pick so you don't get bit by the ants. As to the squash, the powdery mildew is very common among all plants of that family (cucumbers, pumpkins, zuchini, mellons etc.) I have actually tried out the milk/water to battle it but found out that the baking soda or the milk water cures are actually meant against downy mildew which will be stopped by the change in pH. For help against the powdery mildew, you would be better off spraying with seaweed extract (something like Maxicrop perhaps) because powdery mildew tends to attack potassium deficient plants. I have to admit that this summer/fall I have had a horrible time with all plants in that family and not gotten more than a couple cucumbers and no squash. I'm dealing with leaf footed bugs, stink bugs, squash bugs, squash vine borers, and lots of little green caterpillars that eat the leaves off the seedlings. I'm about to give up on them and try for an early crop in the spring when hopefully there won't be so many pests. (I've not sprayed anything this summer/fall and I'm not really planning to.) Spraying with neem oil may help some for either of your problems since it is an organic way to battle scale and it is supposed to help some against powdery mildew. Here is a link that might be useful: TCLynx

Thank you all for the responses. I went out there this morning to get a closer look. The caterpillars are Bordered Patch (so I will tolerate them). However, I looked at the bottom of the leaves and found some white residue (kinda fuzzy). The link below will have more pictures of it. I haven't found any insects on it (though that doesn't mean they aren't there). But I'm now leaning towards this being a fungal disease. This all started after we got a lot of rain at the end of June and beginning of July. Plus, this is in my backyard, where there is less wind due to the fence. Plus, my zexmenia are planted in a raised bed (excellent drainage), so the border acts as an additional barrier for wind. And, the underside of leaves are affected on the mature leaves while the top side of the leaves appear normal. But then again, I could be wrong. Do these new pictures help anyone identify this problem? Here is a link that might be useful: More pics of my Zexmenia on Flickr