Please help with broccoli plant problem! URGENT!!!

Hello;

I have posted this question over lots of forums and no one has been able to help me! Over the past 2 days, the medium sized leaves of many of my broccoli and cabbage plants have a terrible problem. They wilt around the edges and then the wilted area dries up like dried herbs. This travels down the leaf and the whole leaf ends up dried up and then the problem starts on another leaf. If this isn't stopped, the entire plant will die. The stem is healthy, they are growing indoors under grow lights in temps of 55-67 degrees.

Last year I noticed that if I took these out to my greenhouse, many of the plants were saved and the problem stopped. But it is still too cold here to start up the heat in the greenhouse for another couple of weeks but I don't want to lose all of these plants. Does anyone know what could be causing this? I try to let the potting soil dry out between waterings.

The plants were perfectly healthy Friday, and by Saturday night, 2 plants had this wilting on 1 leaf on each plant. By today 10 plants have this! What can I do?????? I don't think it is damping off because the stem in healthy!

My grow lights are 6 inches above the tallest leaf so I don't think they could be burning the leaves. The top leaves aren't affected yet though, just the medium sized ones. These plants are about 3-4 inches tall with 2-4 true leaves.

I really hope someone can help me figure out what this is! I lose so many broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower plants to this every year! My tomatoes and peppers growing right beside these are totally unaffected!

I have the plants growing in moisture control Miracle Grow seed starting soil. While this may not be the perfect soil to use, that is all I could get at the time I started these. What makes me really wonder is when I move them to the greenhouse, sometimes the problem goes away although I water the same and the dirt is still the same. Although I don't have lights right above them in the greenhouse. (I know 6" may be too tall but I don't want to burn my plants and I had heard you could burn them. They are the gro florouscent type bulbs that you can get specifically for growing plants under. How low can I put them without damaging the plants?

Below are some pictures of the problem. This first one shows a plant that just started to wilt this morning. By this evening when I took the photo, the top leaf was totally wilted. As you can see from the photo, it looks like the roots and stem are fine so this probably wouldn't be a damping off problem would it?

I hope this is enough info to help you figure out what is going wrong. I have been unable to grow broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage because of this problem. It attacks every year no matter what! Usually I manage to save only a few plants out of several hundred I start. Thanks for your help!

Another photo that shows the leaves that instead of wilting so bad like the other plants, the ends of the leaves just dried up. (The wilted leaves above will dry up also in another day or so. So it could be the same problem, this one didn't wilt as bad though.)

And finally, one more photo that shows the wilted leaf. (just happened this morning. Looks terrible tonight!)
-Rachel

Hi seedsandsuch, sorry no one has got back to you, especially when you are worrying yourself witless over your seedlings and you look at them dying off one at a time.
Brocoli / Cauliflowers etc are not the easiest of plants / veg for everyone to master as, IF you dont get the conditions right from the start, then you dont get a good crop or even decent starter plants. looking at your mail, you say you have had the same problem over several years trying, this would sugest that the conditions you are offering is really not quite suitable for them, maybe you are starting the seeds off too early, maybe the humidity is wrong, maybe the watering, it could be any number of things, I have never used grow lamps so really cant sugest anything regarding that as a problem, but maybe some others can give you ideas re that.
From looking at the photo's you have shown, the first one looks to have very little root system for the size of the top of the plant (greenery) I would have expected any plant with that amount of greenery to have a lot more roots, the other pictures showing the damage to the greenery look like they are suffering from too dry or hot atmophere around them, it could also be that the plants are growing too fast towards the heat or light and becomming too leggy / tall and there is not enough root to support the top growth,
Next I would check out any root deseases as all of this type of the cabbage family suffer from different types of problems that usually show up very early on as in, from the seedling / young plant stage, you would be looking for things like Club Root which shows as the bottom of the stem and root becomes warped and swollen, the plants die off very quickly in warm / hot weather or indoor conditiond.
Downy Mildew shows as whitish furry growth on the underside of the leaves and causes the death of the young plants, there are other deseases too but those two are the main problems to check for.
As said before, because it is the same problems you have each year, I would think it is just starting them off too early and the small plants are at a stage where they are really ready to go outdoors where they will get air circulating around them, rain water and a chance for the roots to spread more natural.
I dont know what your temps are, but maybe if you could wait another few weeks and restart just a few seedlings off to see how they fair, then as soon as they are large enough to handle, repot them into larger pots and put them out under cover, till they can then go into the garden, I have planted mine out several years under a closh outside in the bed and once the ground has warmed up a bit, then spaced them out to the required space needed for final growth.
Hope all this helps you out a bit as once you master there needs, they do get easier to grow, they do like a little bit of lime in the soil outdoors and this also helps prevent some of the problems and deseases I have indicated.
Good luck, hope you get good results soon. WeeNel.