Big-leaved plants often get "wilty" and "droopy" during the heat of the day, especially on hot, windy days. So, that's just a natural behavior for them.

Transplanting any plant can cause transplant shock, and wilting or drooping is a common symptom of transplant shock. I never transplant any of the cucurbits once they are in the ground and growing....they just don't like it. Anytime you transplant a plant from one place to another, especially in warm weather, it is always wise to remove some of the foliage. I usually remove 1/3 to 1/2, depending on the kind of plant and the season of the year. The reduction in foliage helps the plant survive being transplanted .

If your plants were wilty and droopy before you transplanted them, they may not make it. It might just be that they were already dry and suffering and the transplanting was the final nail in their coffin.

They may recover just fine overnight OR they may need to be watered to help them recover. I always check the soil a couple of inches down beneath the surface when squash wilts. If the soil is dry, give it some water. If the soil is wet, wait and see how the plants look the next morning.

However, squash sometimes dies a pretty sudden death, and being wilty or droopy can be the first sign that this is about to happen. So, if your plants were already wilty and droopy, and they were not excessively dry, they may have been "sick".

What can make a squash "sick"?

1) Being too dry. Every plant has a wilting point that is the "point of no return". If they wilt and get to that point, they were too dry for too long and won't recover.

2) Squash vine borers. They are fat whitish worms that bore into the stem of the plant which kills it. They usually appear shortly after the squash begins to bloom. They are hard to prevent, and once you have them, it is hard to save the plant. You can slit the stem, find the white worm, remove it, bury the slit stem under the soil and water well (think of the soil as the plant's band-aid). Sometimes it saves the plant, and sometimes it doesn't.

3) Squash bugs. Ugly, flat-backed grayish-tanish bugs which seem to come out of nowhere, and in large numbers too. They suck the plant juices from the plant's stems and leaves. The loss of the plant juices causes.....guess what....wilting, following by eventual death. The easiest way to organically control squash bugs is to vacuum them off the plants with a portable hand-held vacuum like a Dustbuster. Or, lay a shingle or piece of a board at the base of the plant. The squash bugs will congregate under that board during the heat of the day. Pick up the board, scoop the bugs into a bowl of soapy water, using a gloved hand or a trowel, and drown those little pests.

Squash also can be affected by powdery mildew or downy mildew, which would show up on their leaves. If you catch it early and treat the plants with a fungicide (chemical or organic) that is labeled for use on vegetables, you can often save the plants.

If you have very sandy soil, you could have root-knot nematodes, but you'd probably be seeing symptoms on other plants too.

I think the squash probably was drooping originally because that is just how they react to our heat and you can't really prevent it. And I think transplanting didn't help.

You could try snipping off half their leaves and then giving the plants a mild plant food (any organic or chemical water-soluable fertilizer) diluted to half its' usual strength. Liquid seaweed, if you have any, is a miracle worker and often helps bring "dead" (or nearly dead) plants back to life.

Good luck,

Dawn