Hi there, i'm not an expert, but you should lay down some Tupperware (or tuna cans) and measure how much you are watering instead of just the length of time. You may be watering too much or too little, and if you can see how much water you are putting down, you maybe be able to make some better decisions. The yellowing could be a fungus caused by over watering. If that's the case, you'll want to put a fungicide on the lawn. I would wait for an expert opinion on that though because, like I said, i'm no expert. This post was edited by cmccarty on Fri, Jun 28, 13 at 14:50

I like that little glass plate! Would you believe I have one JUST LIKE IT! I don't know where it is right now or I'd grab a picture, LOL! Anyway. Not to go against the common wisdom here but I swear those little seedlings look UNDER watered to me. If you wait 'til the plants droop to water, they are already stressed. The point is to avoid stressing the plant. In future I would recommend against using that mix for seed starting - I believe I read it was compost, coir and sand. For one thing, never in my life have I ever bought a bag labeled "compost" that actually was. So whatever was in that bag - it almost certainly was NOT anything one would normally think of as compost. My seedling mix for decades was peat and medium grade vermiculite (I used coarse for potting, but medium for seeding). I can actually get medium grade vermiculite still, but I used to sift the fines out of coarse for my seeding needs and since I haven't been able to get the coarse any more, I've virtually stopped using any vermiculite whatsoever, just because I have no use other than seeding for the smaller grades of vermiculite. I may reconsider that. But here are some of the seeding mixes I typically use: 1:1 peat and vermiculite (medium is ok for seeding, but not potting) 1:1 peat and good quality bagged SOIL such as Miracle Grow (again, of limited use as anything other than a seeding mix or single season container mix) 1:1 peat and very fine pine fines - I'm concerned this may end up too moisture retentive but we'll see. 1:1 peat and Scott's Turf builder - this is very finely graded pine bark with a teensy bit of fertilizer - 1-1-1. I think this could be a good replacement for my old mix of peat-vermiculite. I don't know if you can get anything like it in Australia. I've also successfully seeded in any halfway decent bagged soilless potting mix. I do try to avoid coir because results with coir tend to be so variable. Also, for all the bad rap peat gets for being "hydrophobic", the few times I've worked with coir I've found it to be next to impossible to rewet if it dries out. If you went 4 days without watering that could be an issue. What I would do at this point in your position is get some seeding paks or small pots and "repot" those seedlings. Try just a couple at first and see how they do, but they look stressed enough to me that I don't see a lot to be gained by waiting any longer than you have to. BTW - purpling of LEAVES is not anything normal for pepper seedlings. I have never seen that. Maybe I read that wrong. What I HAVE seen is that the stems of seedlings will sometimes darken to a kind of dark burgundy or purplish colors. I tend to see that on seedlings that have gotten leggy. It fades after awhile. I have some basil seedlings right now where just ONE seedling got leggy because it sprouted before all the others, I had them in a south-facing...

Mini update: Everything was going along swimmingly and then the counter people truck broke down. I didn't get my counter installed on Tuesday (moved to saturday) and not getting my appliances today (moved to next tuesday). At least the handles came and they are lovely, DH didn't like the two handles on the 33" drawer cabinets so I returned the 5" ones and got more of the 6" ones for those cabinets. Ameroc Kane in ORB. The hood company received the damaged hood and working on a replacement. I hate this part of the remodel, just waiting for the last big stuff. GC is doing little things here and there like finishing up the closet and molding - he rescued the original crown, put up original molding from the door opening around the window and cut down some recovered molding to put around the door (we needed an extra 2") so it looks like it belongs. But he can't do the backsplash or painting since I have no counters to pick stuff out. GRR!! House is so dusty and I just want to be done already so I can move on to finish other things before this baby comes and have the house cleaned from top to bottom. Oh well, it can always be worse.

Nancy, Gold is better than plain brown. Honestly, anything is better than plain brown. Around Thursday or so I noticed green leaves falling from some trees---they didn't even turn brown first. I think our trees are confused. Why wouldn't they be? Every week they are exposed to lows in the 30s and highs in the 90s. How they even know what season we are in at this point is beyond me. Currently it is 90 degrees at our Mesonet station and 89 at our house. There's reports of haziness and smoke in the air, but none of us are spotting any plumes of smoke, so I think that, as the rumored cold front moves across the state, it may be pushing smoke, fog, haze, smog, dust or whatever ahead of it. There was a 1,700 acre wildfire in the county west of us yesterday and it looked like smoke was hanging over the river this morning, so maybe it is that. Our gold foliage peaked around Thursday or Friday and is going to a dull golden brown today. I believe the hard freeze we had a few days ago has really impacted the tree foliage. Further south in Texas where the freeze didn't happen or at least was not as prolonged as it was here, they have better foliage color than we do right now. At least 3 or 4 of the red oaks in the yeard near our house have some red, and our big red oak near the road, which is my favorite tree, is beginning to show some red. It probably will peak next week though it is hard to tell in this weather. We turned back the clocks at bedtime last night so at least we'd be in sync with the rest of the area when we woke up today. It didn't matter what time the clock was showing---I woke up at the same time I do every single day, even if the clock showed it was an hour earlier. My body clock gets pretty firmly set on a time and doesn't really care what the clock says. It takes me at least a month to adjust to a time change and then before you know it, we're springing forward or falling back all over again. Jennifer, I'm glad you feel a little better today and hope you didn't cough your way through making the announcement at church. Hot and windy, hot and windy, hot and windy. It feels more like earliest September than early November. Chris sent me a text about a half-hour ago---a shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, near San Antonio, TX. Word is several people were shot, including children, before police arrived and took out the shooter. He said he had heard 15 people were down, but I haven't seen any firm number on any media yet, and often early report are erroneous. It just seems to me like the world has gone mad---it is sad when people are not safe in church. And, in a state like Texas with open carry, it is unfortunate someone in that church wasn't armed because perhaps they could have stopped the shooter. It seems wrong to carry a gun to church, but we cannot kid ourselves---these shootings can happen anywhere any more. I'd like to be working in the garden, but all the swarms are still out there---Asian lady bugs, wasps, bees, yellow jackets....so I'm indoors. Oh, and the fire ants and harvester ants all are out and scurrying around. I guess maybe they are busy storing up provisions for winter. Dawn