Pacific Northwest Gardening: Squash Trouble - New gardener, 1 by CharityS

CharityS wrote:
(I posted this message by mistake on Northeast Gardening forum, reposting on Northwest in case there is something that is climate specific to the problem. One person did reply to my thread on the Northeast forum saying it might possibly be caused by the plants being root bound.)

Hello all,

I am a new gardener and new to this site and am really enjoying being a part of this community. I've never posted anything before but I'm perplexed by a possible problem I seem to be having in the garden. My squash and pumpkins seem to be suffering. As you can see from the picture, the stalks are yellowing and are split in some places. The oldest leaves are dying away, but the new growth seems to be ok. New growth is only affected on one plant, and it looks burnt, which might be over fertilization.

I grew these in the greenhouse, and transplanted them about two weeks ago. I fertilized them with organic fertilizer, but I'm thinking now I might have over did it. I used "Sweet Earth" fertilizer, and stirred in about an 1/8 of a cup to the soil that I used to refill the hole around the plants. I was successful in growing Jack-O-Latern pumpkins last year, but I planted those from seed in teh garden, they were not transplants. What do you guys think? Are these plants suffering from shock? Is this normal? Did I over fertilize? Thank you so
much for your help on this. =)