William, Because soil friability and drainage varies, and because water percolates down into the soil and evaporates from the soil at different rates, no one can tell you how to water on a 'schedule'. Every one of us on this forum probably has to water our gardens at different rates and for different time frames because our soil and our weather varies. All I can tell you is to keep the soil evenly moist. My peppers get one good soaking weekly from a soaker hose and I water them until the soil is moist about 6" down. How long that takes will vary depending on how dry the soil was when I started, etc. My peppers are in heavy red clay that has been very heavily amended for 10 years with lots of organic material, so it is fairly ideal soil in that it holds moisture pretty well but also drains well because it is a raised bed. I would put all the peppers in the same bed because they do have similar fertility and water needs. Last year was just your 'lucky' year and either the aphids didn't find your plants, or you had 'clean' aphids that hadn't picked up any diseases yet to vector, or your pepper plants had great disease-resistance. This year, your luck ran out. If crookneck squash are falling off, that usually means pollination failed to occur, which is puzzling since the zucchni are pollinating just fine. However, there are a couple of other things it could be as well. First, if by chance, you planted your crookneck squash early and the plants were exposed to very cool temperatures for a few days, that can cause them to be stunted and nonproductive for their entire life. Secondly, it might be one of the rot diseases that sometimes appear on squash and, if it is, it likely is choanephora fruit rot. You'll see this rot in high heat, high humidity conditions. With it, you'll see immature fruit form but then shrivel, turn a very light tannish-brown and will decay or rot. Once this happens, there is not much you can do. There are no organic or chemical controls for this. I just remove and compost all the bad squash, cut back on moisture if possible, and hope that the next squash that pollinate don't have the same issues. To prevent this kind of rot on future plants, plant in raised beds which drain more quickly so the plants don't stay too wet, space the plants far apart to allow for good air circulation, and water less often, preferably with drip irrigation or soaker hoses that put the water into the soil and not on the leaves. Once again, my squash plants get watered once a week deeply and that's it. To much moisture causes all kinds of issues in a veggie garden and I go to the opposite extreme and probably keep my garden a bit too much on the dry side to avoid the diseases. To return to the pollination issue, be sure you're seeing bees and that pollination is occurring. It could be you had bees, they pollinated the zucchini squash and then something happened to the bees and they didn't come back and pollinate the crookneck. Be sure you aren't using any insecticides that might have killed or discouraged the bees. The female blossoms have tiny squash at the end of each blossom. If they aren't being pollinated, they'll turn brown and fall off. The difference in fruit drop caused by a lack of pollination versus fruit rot is that the baby squash don't enlarge and just brown/fall off if it is a lack of pollination, but the fruit begin to enlarge and grow some before turning brown and falling off if it is fruit rot. Dawn

If you have a place on the web (like Flickr) where you can put your photos, you can upload them there, then use the little field down below the box where you type your post (it says "Optional Link URL") to put in the URL for the photo. If you have more than one, you can follow the directions from one of the Gardenweb FAQs. If you can resize it before posting the link, take it down to 400x600 or smaller, so it doesn't overwhelm people on dial-up. There's a Tomato Pests and Diseases forum full of people who try to solve problems like this, if you want to try posting there... if you can get pictures up, that could make a big difference in figuring out what's wrong. Best of luck, and congratulations :) --Alison

Carolyn, Thanks for replying. I Googled juglone and tomatoes and found quite a bit of material. The problem is, the main signs of juglone toxicity are wilting leaves and yellowing of the leaves. Neither of these symptoms are present. The closest tomato plants are probably 25 feet away from the tree. Leaf drop isn't on the garden, so I don't believe it's getting in that way. There *are* roots that I have dug into in the garden. These are either from the walnut tree or a nearby elm tree, and I think it's the elm. Nevertheless, something is happening to some of the plants. I have been keeping a very close eye on things lately, so I'm going to figure out what it is this year. I contacted the local extension office and a guy said he would come out and look at my plants. We'll see what he says. I will say, though, the symptoms seem to be leveling off in some of the plants. That is, the curling and stunted nature isn't quite as pronounced now that the leaves are developing a bit more. Some part of me was thinking that maybe I jumped the gun, but in several of the plants (e.g. tigerella, purple russian, kosovo), there is clear evidence that something is working on them. I sprayed with gardensafe soap spray and that killed the aphids, although some are back again. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason it is a remote possibility that CMV is happening again (assuming that's what it was last year) is because the aphids who may have been carriers last year died and the aphids this year are unlikely to have it again? I'm just wondering why it's unlikely it would happen in successive years. Anyway, thanks for your help and I will continue to update this thread with information. It may be of some use to someone down the line. Jason p.s. Another odd symptom appears to be an excessive number of little tiny leaves all along the affected stems. They don't even appear to be true leaves, just sort of little growths of plant tissue. I don't know if this indicates anything in particular or not.

Agree that it is herbicide damage but that is some poor looking soil too and why is there no mulching around the plants? Surely by now your soil has warmed enough to mulch. maybe the city was spraying the grass? Call the city. If so then insist on a warning next time so the plants can be covered. None of my other plants are affected (cucumbers, broccoli, etc). Tomato plants are 10x more susceptible than other vegetables. Other than that both neighbours have tall wood fences so I would imagine that would stop any kind of spray from traveling? Not at all. The many other discussions here about herbicide drift problems talk about drift patterns and the long distances it travels if you want to read through them. So ask the neighbors and insist on a warning next time so you can cover your plants. if you mixed one part vinegar and 3 parts water with dish soap and sprayed it on your plant it would get rid of them. That recipe is one of the standard weed killer recipes - 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water with 1 T dish soap - not a pesticide. The pesticide recipe is 1 T dish soap in 1 gallon of water (no vinegar) although it isn't usually listed as effective for caterpillars. One needs to evaluate the sources of such info carefully before using and to test on one plant before applying randomly. Is it possible that is what did the damage? Unlikely as the yellowing pattern of the leaves in pic 2 is classic Glyphosate damage. What can you do? Keep them well watered, mulch them. Trim off the worst of the damage, do NOT feed them until you see new growth, and then hope for the best. Sometimes they grow out of it. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: 2-4D weed killer damage on tomato plant pics