I hear you suze9. I live in The Great PNW. About 20 miles S from Seattle. Zone 7b I guess. Where is live is about 2 weeks behind Seattle weather wise. Normal Feb temps are 40-45, night time 35ish. The drop to 18 is somewhat unusual, even in Dec, Jan. It's been an unusual year, again. Snow in Feb is rare. March, almost unheard of. This year the ?last? snow was beginning of April. Today was 75. > Larger transplants can work well for some, for sure - > but at some point it is definitely possible to start > too soon, to the point that you don't get any benefit, > or are even set back because of it. I am trying to find that point. Expense versus effort versus results weighted. This is my third year running of 'starting way too early'. This year was the earliest yet. Last year I had my first ripe tom June 6th. That's a pretty major feat around here. 'Course the weather from June through July sucked, very cold, so the benefits were minimal. LOL. Plants were HUGE, 10-15'tall by end of season, tomato count, ENORMOUS. Ripe tomatoes, not so much. My starts are not normal put in a 1 gallon pot and let them grow starts. I continually 'repot' them into larger and larger containers. I bury the stem deeper each time. They are essentially pre-trenched plants. 1' of stem or more buried by planting time with vigorous root growth all along it. Lat year the tops are 2-3' tall. The plants suffer no delay/transplant shock when put into the ground from pots. Critical for the short season here. Growing an inch a day, to growing an inch a day right after transplant. This year, I am making cloches so my efforts are not lost to the AGAIN expected cold june/july. And by starting so soon, if things go wrong, I have time for Plan B and Plan C starts.

Thanks for reposting, GG. This is just plain interesting. Don't mean to be insensitive, but it's a real who/what-done-it. There seems to be real clues, e.g. only one of the same cultivar, apparently with the same growing and maintenance conditions and the location (namely only the front one and problem focused only on one side of that one). Not to completely exclude others, but I like Ken's suggestion. So are there dog's around? It could be a pee/hit and run. It's the most accessible plant. Are there dogs in the neighbourhood and could a dog get in? Sometimes in garden maintenance you suspect, but don't feel sure about the root cause of a problem. Presumably that's because there's often not one single dramatic cause but an interaction of causes. You can also never be sure that an individual plant didn't come with an inherent weakness/susceptability, Still, in this case, what is the likelihood that that single plant would be the front one. It does seem unfortunate, GG, that the affected plant is kind of the lead plant in an attractively planted formation. Still a gardener's life is not (always) a happy one! So interesting.

Roots look ok. Your plant would MUCH rather be repotted in June (if you live in the N Hemisphere) than in the fall. "It takes a while" is too vague to help us decide how appropriate the grow medium is/isn't. I suggest you start using a "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water. See "Tell" below. The all-important question is 'what to do to save it'. The answer to that, though broad, is, examine the cultural influences under which the plant grows. At least one, maybe more are asking the plant to deal with conditions it's not genetically programmed to deal with. This Overview should help you decide what needs tweaking. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

chamaegardener..what an adorable Fire Island 💕..I have Fire Islands in 3 locations..here's a glimpse of one in this pic I took today.. Fire Island looks good with creeping jenny.. debra..yay!..your hosta are up!..