It's Been Awhile....And Things Are Not Going Well

Well, I guess I started off this year with a bit of an inflated sense of my own gardening abilities.

I've been greatly humbled trying to start plants from seed. I bought a grow lamp, made sure they were in a good south-facing window, I got peat pots and started them at the right time, I watered them as instructed. Still, all my plants became very "leggy." Long and spindly with no way to support themselves, they just flop over. I transplanted into larger peat pots, with more dirt, but this didn't seem to help.

The ones that did the best were the squash and cucumber plants. The tomatoes are weak and sickly looking (could this be the dread "damping off" I read so much about?), the nicandra didn't even come up at all, the broccoli died quickly.

So once some of those squash plants were looking good, I put them outside to "harden off." I did this just as my instructions said, too. Increasing hours of sun exposure, less water, etc. I actually had ONE that was looking good enough to put in the ground! So I planted it in the garden a few days ago (yes, I'm getting a late start which is just another sucky thing about this year's garden). It was actually doing pretty well and growing! Then yesterday I went outside, and all the leaves were GONE! All that was left was a scrawny little base stalk. I looked at my other plants, and they looked the same. Some voracious critter or bug had chewed off my leaves!! I have never witnessed this problem before (I realize I've only been gardening for four years, but I have seen a lot of bugs and diseases). So I am on a mission to figure out what the heck is eating my babies.