My tomato plants have me stumped!

            It has become an obsession! Seriously, I look for pictures and descriptions and walk out and look at them a few times a day. I do not see anything anywhere like what is going on with most of my tomatoes. They look like they are wilted but are firm to touch. The leaves and stems are almost fern like and they are all curled and growing down instead of out and up. I did find little black bugs that look like ants or fruit flies on them so I  sprayed a pesticide. The pesticide did not seem to do anything, so last night I blended up  3 garlic cloves in 2 cups of water then added about a TBL of oil, a few drops of natural lemon oil and eucalyptus oil. I put a 1/4 cup of the mix with about a 1/2 tsp dish soap in a 64 ounce sprayer. The plants actually looked a touch better today. I did not see as many living bugs on them. I did put a small cup of oil by one of the plants and the black nat things seem to be attracted to it and drown.  

My Utah Garden 2011

This is my second post today for my garden. I felt like the good and bad could not be on the same post.
So besides the nightmare. I am crossing my fingers we don't lose anything. I have done everything beside sing to it to help it along.

I planted 25 tomato plants, 13 peppers plants, 1 egg plant, 8 cucumbers, 1 watermelon, 1 cantaloupe, small row of Swiss chard, 3 small rows of corn, 3 small rows of beats, 4 pole beans, 2 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, 4x4 box of peas, 2x4 box of carrots and a 4x4 box of white onions.  I also have 2 4x4 boxes of  established raspberries, 1 4x4 box that has asparagus growing in it (this will be year 3).  I also have two 4x4 boxes of strawberries. That is all in my back yard. I have a huge rhubarb plant, a huge bed of strawberries and 7 fruit trees in my front yard.  I also have random herbs planted all over the place. 

Matt finished my new raised bed. The tall supports down the center are for my grapes and blackberries.

My peas are looking good! My kids favorite.

 

All my pepper plants look really good. I planted 3 yolo wonder green bells ( 2 out of the three have peppers on them already), I also planted two banana peppers , 6 jalapeno (I want to can them this year) and 2 red bell peppers.

This is one of my banana peppers. I have never had peppers this early.

This is the average size of my tomato plants. I have a few that are much bigger, but not as healthy.

  

My front bed is so full of strawberries. They look better this year than they ever have. I thinned them out so much last year I was worried I would not get much. It made them thicker and bigger.  I hear Strawberries are really hard to grow in Utah, but I tried to kill these before I decided to baby them.

Picture before I removed my covers.

I bought most all my plants about 7 weeks ago. I have kept them in my wagon in my garage and pulled them in and out everyday if the weather permitted. I got all excited and planted them almost 2 weeks ago. I was so glad I missed the big hail storm but then it got all rainy and cold. That first night I could not sleep and worried all my work and money was outside freezing. So the next night I came up with 33...Yes 33 buckets, flower pots and garbage cans. I even used my kids Easter buckets.  I have gone out and covered everything without a cage or support most every night since. I go back out in the morning and uncover them.  I covered my caged supports with a big furniture cover. I read that the tender plants will survive in the cooler temperatures but anything below 50 they put all their energy into just staying alive. In other words they won't grow much.  I am hoping I will have a record produce garden this year. A big come back from not growing one last year.
     

My Garden nightmare.

I think my yard would be a pathologists dream of bacteria, viruses and who knows what else. One of the managers at IFA said that all this wet cool weather has all kinds of stuff growing that normally is not a problem here in Utah.

                                              My Blackberries

I dug them up two days ago to look at the roots.  I had some white ones so their is a tiny hope. The water table is so high where they are planted. The roots where just in a slosh pool of water, so I raised them up . I  picked up a  Ferti-lome fire blight spray that that I have started to treat them with.

This tomato was very purple. It looks a little droopy but it is not as purple as it was.   I know that the cold  temperatures can cause plants to turn purple through the veins because they can't absorb the phosphorus.  I bought some  bone meal and sprinkled it around the base of all my tomatoes.

I could not get a good picture of the purple on my tomatoes so I took one of my marigold.   These leaves are not crispy. It just looks like the leaves are suppose to be this color.  I have found a few things that this could be. One is fire blight.  One is the lack of phosphorus.   A new disease that popped up in 2006 called TPLD.  

This Tomatillo split and looks like shoulders. It is growing out instead of up. Weird! 

This tomatillo is still tiny and not growing ...yet it is covered in as many blossoms as possible. I am trying to decide  if  I should pinch the blossoms off so the plant can grow bigger first.

                 Now on to my trees! This is making me sick!

We started off infested with aphids. This leaf is after being sprayed twice! 

Then came all the rusty colored leaves on my  apple tree. This tree looks horrible. It has fire blight and a bacterial issue.  I am thinking we will have to cut this one down. 

My pear tree looks like some one took a magnifying glass and burnt all the tips of my leaves. This tree also has fire blight and some other kind of bacteria.

I took cuts of both trees to IFA and that is where I got my information. I have also researched on line and found the same thing I was told by the IFA manager. He recommended a ferti-lome fire blight spray and also a ferti-lome broad spectrum fungicide.
I was also told to cut 6 inches below and infected branch but that would be my entire tree. I have applied the spray 2 times at this point. My tomatoes look better. I think the rest may as well. It is hard to tell ...as they still look good as dead.