Please help with cabbage plant problem! URGENT!!!

Hello;

I have posted this question over lots of forums and no one has been able to help me! i also posted this in the general gardening forum because I'm not sure exactly where it should go.

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! Please help! Thanks!
-Rachel

Another photo showing the entire plant. The roots and stem appear healthy (to me) so I don't think this is damping off is it?

Another photo showing the wilted leaves. This leaf just wilted over 4-5 hours. Once they start to wilt, it goes fast!

It could probably be a dozen things, but it looks/sounds a bit like sun scald to me. What kind of grow lights are you using? 6" is plenty for florescent lights but probably not enough for any other type of bulb.

Seeds,
How cold is it outside right now? I'm asking because I have broccoli and cabbage seedlings in milk jugs that I winter sowed on January 16th. They've come up in the jugs from seeds.

Once they were up about 2" I opened the lids of the jugs. They've been open for almost 4 weeks now and are really perking up. We've had nights ranging from the high 20s to the mid-30s on average for the past 3 weeks.

I'm inclined to tell you to take those seedlings outside and let them loose with some kinda vented protective covering (like a milk jug cloche) for the nighttime dips.

I'm no expert, and I could be totally wrong here, but I think they need more cool air. I don't even bother covering the cole crop seedlings anymore if the temps are hovering anywhere between mid-40s to the mid- to high-30s.

Right now, you're losing seedlings. If it's worth it to you, you might want to give this a try...

Please LMK how you turn out. I currently have 13 cabbages in various stages of development growing outside in self-watering eBuckets. This is only my second time growing cole crops. They're doing fine, except when the temps start rising above the 50's. Then, I pray for more cold weather to bring them to maturity. I need about 4 more weeks in the 40's to get them there.

This pic is from January 18, 2010. They're 2.5 times larger today...

Linda



This message was edited Feb 20, 2010 3:13 PM