Darkness is not needed for blooms, so the box is not neccessary. Perhaps they need more than semi-shade; try slowly moving them out to a sunnier spot this spring. If the pots are twice as wide as the bulbs, perhaps they are overpotted. Consider repotting some in a smaller pot, and make sure the soil mix is well drained (add some perlite to the new soil you plant them in). Good growing to you!

Yeah, the picture is too small to really tell, and it would be helpful to see a partially afflicted leaf to see what the disease looks like before the leaves are destroyed. Are these last year's plants? The tomatoes are grown in USDA Zone 4? If that's the case, there are very few reasons to plant them in a new spot each year. This is usually done in warmer zones to try to avoid soilborne diseases, which isn't a big problem in the cold zones. The word "blight" is a generic word. There are 2 forms of blight that can hit tomatoes -- Early Blight (Alternaria solani) and Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans). Late Blight was virtually an epidemic in 2009 due to infected plants being shipped all over the country by one grower. Late Blight is pretty much fatal to the plants and usually kills a plant within a week. Once you see a late blight (LB) lesion, you might as well just bag up the plant, pull it out, let it toast in the sun for a few days, and put it in the garbage. Late Blight can be in the soil if infected potatoes are not removed. However, unless you have the new form of the disease on the West Coast or there have been infected potatoes around, it will NOT survive the winter in our zones. My tomatoes were wiped out by LB in 2009, but I planted in the same spot in 2010 and had a great tomato harvest with healthy plants. Early Blight is the more common and more manageable of the two and a slower-moving, less deadly fungus. Catch Early Blight early (lol) and you can keep it under control and harvest healthy fruits. Both Early Blight and Late Blight can be in the soil, but they also spread willingly by air and their spores can be deposited by wind and/or rain. Your plants can get either disease even if they are planted in a spot where no tomatoes have ever been planted for miles around. And, pay no attention to their names; Late Blight can show up early in the season, and Early Blight can show up late in the season. Really, they both can show up at any time of the season. :-) There are other diseases that could affect your plants, especially at the end of the season when the nights are cooler and the weather tends to be damp/humid. That's when septoria, another fungus, shows up sometimes. And anthracnose spores can show up and leave an indentation and a black stop in the fruits. So, it could be any number or combination of diseases. As you can see, it's hard to tell without knowing how the disease looked and progressed. Prevention is the best method of keeping healthy, productive plants. That means regular inspection and regular spraying of a fungicide containing chlorothalonil (Daconil Garden and a few other brands). If you're not trying to be an organic grower, this is the best fungicide that the home gardener can use. Anyhow, you need to spray about every 7 days and again after it rains. For organic growers, you might want to try a copper-based fungicide or check the forums for organic solutions. Again, you need to be fastidious about spraying and/or dusting. If disease pressures are high I alternate the use of both chlorothalonil and copper. But I get lazy by the end of the season, so some of my plants look like yours when the growing season is over. :-)

That's some pretty good information to work from. Let me start with the handling complaint, and work from there. A vehicle drifting to the right could have an alignment issue, a tire issue, or could simply be following the crown of the road. Roads are not flat, they are high in the center to help water run off, or they could be sloped all the way across as in a banked turn. There are specs that have a technician check for just how quickly a vehicle leads to one side. If the lead is less than a given amount, then no repairs are indicated. This is somewhat subjective, but can in fact be proven by an experienced tech. As far as why didn't they start the truck and drive it in? I have that answer right away. I can just hear someone saying, "WE TOLD YOU XXXX WAS LEAKING, WHY DID YOU START THIS UP???" You see sometimes no matter what the tech does, he/she is going to be wrong somehow, to someone. But think about it, if the tech is wrong no matter what they do, then that is not fair and if you were the tech you'd be the first to protest. I don't know what was wrong with the truck, but the fact that it had to be towed, and pushed into the shop suggests the leak was serious, and maybe the truck didn't even run. Turning the wheel without power steering assist is a hard thing to have to do. Ford knows this, and has built the system to be able to do that if necessary. Having to push it into the shop, without the engine running will NOT hurt the steering on the truck. Read this next sentence and stop for a second and think about it before you go on. "I never noticed the truck pulling to the right, before the truck went into the shop last week." Does that sound like your friends current statement? Tell me where in that sentence does it say that the truck did not in fact actually lead to the right before it went into the shop? The answer is, it doesn't. It simply says he didn't notice that it did and in that you are likely to find the greatest explanation of what is going on. Once the truck went in for the last repair, what ever it was. Now your friend is looking at the truck closer and noticed something he does not like. From there it's not a big stretch hor him to assume that turing the steering without the engine running had something to do with this percieved difference. Which brings us to the last part of the post. The steering wheel lock only applies in one position. If you want to test to see if it still works, jack up the front of the truck so both front wheels are off the ground. Now with the keys in your pocket, turn the wheels side to side by hand and see if the column locks.

Hi Geoffa, don't be too hasty about throwing away the seed pot after germination. I planted seed in individual containers, was a bit disappointed in the number which germinated, then found 2 months later others germinating. This was admittedly during late autumn and the new germination took place at the end of winter.