It seems like cutworms could be a culprit, as they are famous for cutting down a plant entirely at the ground. You can google them. I'm not 100% certain they attack zukes. Other than that, I will say that I've noticed pill bugs eating through the stems on my curcurbits, though they havent eaten all the way through, they are more making a hole that scars over. I always thought pill bugs were only scavengers of dead tissue, but I've seen them eating the holes with my own two eyes. I wonder if it happened because of the bizzare hot weather and lack of moisture.

Foghorn, the air temperature determines how cold a plant can get; the wind or the windchill determines how fast it gets there. That is, if the air temp is 0 degrees, a plant can cool to 0 degrees and no lower, but the plant will reach that 0 degree point much faster if there is a wind. In my garden, I think windchill is of no great consequence. My roses seldom get damaged early in the winter or late in the spring. The real damage occurs in the coldest spells which occur in late January or early February here. If the winter low is 0 degrees or above, I'll see minimal damage to most of my roses. If the winter low is -5 degrees, I start to get serious cane damage and if it goes to -10 degrees, most of the canes will die back to within inches of the ground. I think windchill is a more important factor in the milder zones. Most plants, even very tender ones, have mechanisms for dealing with mild low temperatures. These mechanisms take time, perhaps a few hours, to operate and if wind speeds up the rate of cooling, more damage can result. As near as I can figure, that's why spraying citrus crops in Florida with water, tends to decrease the damage of a cold snap. The coating of water slows the cooling rate of the plant by a few hours and the plant has time to adapt (probably by shifting water out of the cells, thereby lowering the freezing point of the cell liquid).

Dear god, I can't imagine... Why would anyone... Ugh, and I bet whoever stole them doesn't have the first clue about growing them. I hope they're returned before whomever stole them kills them with tap water or something. If he does get them back, I hope he would consider allowing someone locally to take a small cutting for tissue culture, especially of his N. Truncata var 'Black'. But maybe I'm thinking too much about it. As an aside, why is mentioning the name of that other forum taboo? I found it by Googling Tony Paroubek, but... yeah.

So sorry about the text in the OP. ;-( It was indeed a copy/paste job from one of my older posts, with a few changes. I hope you find (found?) it worth trying to figure out. Anything we add to our soils that isn't needed and finds it's way into the soil solution has the potential to limit growth/vitality. Many growers cling to the idea that a little more of this or that nutrient is better - for instance that since a little extra Fe or Mg will green up a plant, it must be good for it - true only if the plant is deficient in one or the other of those nutrients. Greener does not mean healthier when it comes at the expense of an excess of one or more nutrients. Since aquarium water contains a number of nutrients, is it necessarily a good idea to use it? So what's actually IN aquarium water - anyone know? Not with any certainty, so it's a very good bet that A) if you use aquarium water as your sole nutrition source, there are bound to be deficiencies, and B) if you combine using aquarium water with a sound nutrition program - 'because a little more of this and that is better' - you end up duplicating nutrients you don't need, which we know from Liebig's Law of the Minimum has the same potential to limit as a deficiency. If you rely on a sound nutrition program with no extra little treats, you're much more apt to end up with a lean mean growing machine. Whenever I consider anything as a supplement that my plant might need, I ask two questions. A) What will it supply that I know my plant needs? and B) What impact will it have on the soil's structure? In the case of worm castings and seaweed (other than emulsion), they supply nothing a plant needs that can't already be found in a fertilizer like Foliage-Pro, and they have only the potential to reduce aeration and increase water retention in container soils; though to an insignificant degree in the case of fish emulsion. So on two counts I would avoid them in my soils. Actually, there is a third consideration. I also tend to avoid the addition of soil amendments added for their nutritive value if I think they will promote significant growth of soil biota. I love it in the garden, but we can grow just fine in containers without courting the micro-herd. If we are going to use practices that support large populations of soil biota that break down soils quickly, why bother building all that wonderful aeration and drainage into our soils, only to have them stolen as our soils collapse in a feeding frenzy of micro-organisms? Growing in containers is well removed from gardening, and much closer to hydroponics. On a scale of 1-10, with growing in the garden being a 1 and hydroponics a 10, container culture is probably a 7 or 8, which is why a good part of what works so well in gardens (compost and organic amendments, worm castings, bone/blood/feather meals, feed the soil instead of the plant, .....) doesn't work well in containers. There's just no substitute for a healthy root system and a sound nutritional supplementation program that the grower assumes responsibility for and control over. Al