New Gardener - Squash Problems?

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. =)

Pumpkin seed should be edge filed lightly, soaked four hours or longer in water with 10% by vollume H2O2 3% hydrogen peroxide. In a dark, high humidity germination box they will emerge in four days and will be ready to plant in the garden in four more days. I use gallon ice cream boxes to pot up the seed because anything smaller causes the pumpkin to become pot bound and stunted. Pumpkins like to take off and never look back. They could do this when you direct seeded. I suspect you became pot bound and stunted in the pot. If this is a fact there is no cure. Start over.

Pumpkins do not like to be grown in the same patch without crop rotation. This alone could be part of the problem.

PS............It was not your fertilizer. Pumpkins are down right hogs. They love what your gave them and more.

Thank you docgipe for your reply. Ug, I hate the idea of starting over, but at least it's early in the season. I did have them planted in the same place, but a different variety. It's weird I didn't see the symptoms until after I had them transplanted them into the ground. While they were in the pots they still looked healthy.

No squash, tomato, bell pepper or jalapeno problem yet. In fact there is not one problem except WEEDS - I aint got nothing planted yet !!!!

File the edges with an emory board but do not run the file over the little hole where the rectel root emerges. This helps the plant throw off the seed coating sometimes even leaving the two halves in the soil.

A different variety makes no difference. All pumpkins and squash use the same elements from the soil as they grow. As they deplete those elements they demand rotation because they really use up a lot of those elements. As they get weaker the pathegons and harmfull insects move in. Nature attacks it's own weak plants first.
The problem is that these plants are not to strong in the best situation. Any stress puts up the red flag and shows all that weakness is rampart.

Your field pumpkins are hard stem fruit. They are a bit easier to grow than the competition seed which is all soft vine or stem.

If you go to: Big Pumpkins.com site you may be able to find a coach mentor near you. There are some real excellent growers in the Northwest. Your soil has been proven to be generally ideal.