Am I doing okay?

Well I am a few months past a brand new newbie - but still floundering. On the good side - we've had a few full plate salads from my lettuce with a few spinach leaves tossed in there. And a handful of strawberries, and tried cooked broccoli leaves and a few spindly small pieces of broccoli. There are a few sugar snap pea pods forming - but can't feel peas in them yet. But everything seems so small and slow!!!

Then I have a few problems.

Here are my very vulnerable pics....
(ummm sorry for the crooked necks - the picture was right side up when I loaded it... [Edit by gwennifer - fixed all the pictures] )


Harvested lettuce in the front - just bolted.


Now the questions:
These are pole beans - kind of yellowish and holes and brown. I sprayed with spinosad and insecticidal soap. Anything else to do?


spindly tomato - I have three very similar to this.


peppers - this is a bell I think, but I also have a jalapeño doing the same thing - leaves are kind of curling - not a leaf roller tight curl, just the edges curled up. Is this normal?


zucchini - yellowish and small


Celebrity tomato (two pics) - several of the oldest branches, from top to bottom have gotten quite yellowish and wilted looking. There is some healthier looking new growth - but whole plant looks sickly.



Any help out there?

Hopefully someone more experienced than me will jump in, but seeing overall spindly and off-color, I am leaning toward a soil deficiency of some sort. What kinds of composts were you able to obtain for your MM? If some were bagged, did they have fillers such as extra peat to throw off the mix or possibly woody ingredients that may not have been fully composted? Incomplete woody compost will rob nitrogen from the soil while it continues to compost.

GG

Everything looks like it need a good fertilizing boost. If you have some homemade compost go ahead and top dress the beds with 1/2 to an inch of the stuff.
May want to water every other day if the Mel's mix is not dry.
Your squash loos like it is getting nibbled but insects, placing a light cover, like tulle, over it will slow the varmints down.
I would pick off any tomato leaves that are showing spots and throw them in the trash.

Lavender Debs wrote:Before you change anything.....wait for warmer days. See if a week of weather that at least comes up to room temp will bring back the color and health of your garden. Celebrate the greens and strawberries, look for the sun to fix the rest.

+1 - Couldn't put it any better than that! Thanks Debs.

Your pepper plants look great compared to mine, and I have two peppers growing regardless. I know that peppers are "hot house" plants, so I'm expecting them to green up as the temps rise. Your beans look just like mine. I never could find out what was eating them, but they grow so fast it doesn't seem to matter - they eventually outgrow the eaten up leaves. Whatever is getting them stays down low. (I don't know why but I'm not complaining!) Too cold and and too much water are both things that can cause yellow leaves on beans, so I'm waiting for warmer and drier weather before I determine if I really have a problem. You have a tomato! Cool picture of bolted lettuce by the way - what variety is that, Red Sails?

About the sideways pictures... it appears the ones that showed up sideways are the vertical ones (portrait vs. landscape). Really and truly, if you browse to that same file on your computer, the picture is upright? I thought I'd hosted portrait oriented pics in the past. I'm going to see if I can re-load the ones on this thread for you at least... We'll see what happens! Edit: Done! (Saved your pics on my computer, used a photo editing program to rotate them and re-save, then hosted them on the forum like normal.)

Yes! I have a tomato! - But have to admit in my newbie-ness that I wondered if it had anything to do with the wimpy-ness of the plant. Doesn't hurt it to have one kind of early like that, huh??

The lettuce was "redlicious" and was the one thing that grew well through the snow, then hot and dry, then wet and cold that we've endured here. It's been pest free too.

I don't have my own compost - not brave enough yet. We have a pretty busy life style - gone sometimes. I think my bought compost mix is a good one. No vermiculite/peat moss, I watched for that. In the northwest don't think you can totally avoid forest products, but I made sure that the bags seemed to have a good mixture of stuff. -- But I hear Gwenifer saying to wait a week or so - they say it is going to warm and sun up - before doing anything.

If I do decide to top dress with my compost mix - Is the drip system enough to mix it in?

[i]

Oh and thanks for fixing the pics! My Photoshop wasn't working well with my computer yesterday - kept crashing. And come to think of it, I was looking at my pics in iPhoto - where they were upright - and then loading off the original file - my bad!! Sorry

@Warbler.....The lack of sun may be the culprit on your spindly toms. I have one bed that doesn't get as much sunshine as my other beds, and the toms in that bed are spindly, too, while my other toms that get more sunshine are lush. The sun comes up over the nearby trees and hits that bed last. Lack of sun is my opinion.