Hi everyone.

I'm new to gardening and one of the first things I wanted to try was growing pumpkins. I saved and stored the seeds that I took out of the pumpkins I bought last year and planted about 11 of them on July 1st. 8 of the 11 sprung out after only 7 days (pretty surprised considering the seeds have been stored for almost a full year). Anyways, after a few more days, the remaining seeds germinated and I pulled out the smallest ones leaving the 5 biggest, healthiest looking plants. I realized I had planted them to close together so I transplanted some of them and they just exploded. After 30 days I had leaves bigger than a catchers mitt and vines 3 feet long.

I fertilized with higher nitrogen to make sure I had good growth and the plants just seemed so green and growing fast. About 2 weeks ago I finally started to see the first female buds on the vines and counted 1 on each of the 5 plants. Up until a week ago the plants were fine but then I noticed the leaves were starting to change from green to yellow and some started developing yellow/brown spots. It started with the older leaves, but the new ones on the vine were green and healthy. Fast forward to today and all of the older leaves on all five plants are suffering from this something bad. I did start to notice some powdery mildew but I used the milk/water mix to try to control it, only to go to Daconil a few days ago.

I have well draining soil but I did use wood chips as mulch during the first few weeks to keep the water from evaporating (here in So Cal it's been very hot and the area where my pumpkins are planted get 8 solid hours of direct sunlight per day.) Unfortunately we had the remnants of a tropical storm move in and the humidity rose to 90% and higher, forcing me to prune some leaves and removing the mulch to prevent more fungus from growing. Even at night the temps stayed in the 70's with over 90% humidity. Luckily that went away and now we are getting a dryer heat (high 80's with humidity between 50-60%). Anyways, I have attached some pictures to show what I'm talking about. Can somebody tel me what's happening to my leaves?

I water early in the mornings with a hose making sure to only water the area near the base of the plant and not wetting the leaves, every 2 to 3 days. I've switched over to a 4-10-10 fertilizer mix instead of a higher nitrogen mix to fertilize every other week and 2 days ago I used some Alaska 5-1-1 fish fertilizer so give my plants a "boost", only to find out that the affected leaves are now curling and turning more brown and paper-like (I used the ratio of fish emulsion to water that was on the instructions). I also sprayed the leaves with the mixture in the morning around 7:00AM. Did this stuff burn my leaves? Well sorry for the long post but any help or suggestions would be appreciated!

(Female flower taken 1 week ago)

PS, I've checked for pests and haven't found any borers or squash bugs, but I do have dozens of bees on the blossoms every day, so I'm hesitant to use any chemicals if I do get an infestation. Mainly just black ants all over the the inside of the blossoms.