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I am new to vegetable gardening. I have had success early this season with strawberries, mesclun, and mustard greens. I just put in transplants of tomato, cucumber, zucchini and pepper. I planted these right before a heavy rain. After only 2 days, almost all the leaves on these plants turned yellow or white (see attached picture of tomato plants). The cucumber plants turned completely white, withered and are now dead - just within 4 days. With exception of pepper plants, the others plants look unhealthy and appear to be going the same route. My soil is a water-retaining clay like most in this area. I have improved by applying homemade compost and leaf mold. After putting in the transplants, I put thin layer of glass clippings on as mulch. What am I doing wrong here? Is it too much water? Is my soil the wrong ph (I did check ph today and it appears around 6)? Is there something wrong with my compost? Is it because I put thin layer of glass clippings as mulch on the garden? I don't quite know what to do next. I need some advice.
What you failed to do is harden your plants off. Green house plants, which most all storebought plants are need a week or so of gradual exposure to the sun and wind. Otherwise sun and wind burn will take them out. The result is white leaves and many times death. Tomato plants will usually recover, but cucurbits are very tender and don't like transplanting in the first place. Every thing else, the soil , the mulch etc is probably ok, although I would not add the mulch until the plants are established. It would not cause your symtoms tho. Plenty of time to direct seed cucumbers, the tomatoes should recover, your pepper plants are ok, so you should be fine down the road. Just remember in the future not bring plants from the greenhouse and set directly into thier growing environment, harden them off first.
