dying container plants

[tjg911]

not only has this season negatively effected my tomato plants now i see my eggplants are dying. if this was sept 23 and they looked like this that would be normal but this is peak season for them.

i have 2 5 gallon pails on my driveway in full sun. there is 1 eggplant in each pail. i have done this for a few years and they do very well, i know how to do this in containers so that is not the problem. at this time of the season these plants should be very large and filled with lots of large, very large, healthy green leaves cranking out a lot of eggplants.

my plants are the right height but have about 1/2 the normal amount of leaves and they are smaller than normal. in the past week just about all the leaves have started to dry up and curl. many have dropped in the past 2 weeks. i have picked just 3 or 4 fruits from each plant, that's nothing. i have almost no flowers perhaps 1 on each plant and perhaps 1 fruit on both, 1 plant has 1 fruit for sure.

last week was cold, day time temps were in the upper 60's to low 70's. humidity was low and it was full sun. but, at night the temps were down into the mid to upper 40's. a warm night was lower 50's.

now the cool season, way way too much rain and hardly any sun until 2 weeks ago has hurt them just like it has hurt the tomato plants. i think this is why the leaves are so small and now added to that the cold weather at night has started to shut the eggplant plants down. like i said, these plants look like it is 9/23 not 8/23. they are dying and i doubt they'll live to labor day, 10 days from now.

tom