This a tomato plant leaf.

This is the yellow parsley. Thanks so much!

Marilyn, I probably can't help but I felt so bad reading this I thought I'd at least respond. Don't give up yet, sometimes it does take a bit of trial & error.

The tomato leaf looks nice & green so that's good. Maybe a little bit too much fertilizer?

The pepper might either have blossom end rot (irregular watering problem) or sunscald (not enough leaves to shade the fruit).

The parsley...I don't know. However, parsley & peppers do have different watering needs so it is possible that one is receiving too much & the other not enough.

Can we see pictures of the actual plants? That might help to troubleshoot.

Don't fret too much yet.

I built a 4' by 6' raised bed and am growing tomatoes, serranos, jalapenos, basil, parsely, and oregano

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I see one problem here; You are growing so many veggies, with different needs (water, fertilizer..) in one bed and THEN watering an fertilizing all the SAME ?!!!

For example, Oregano is all together a different plant, taht needs not much fertz, no too much water. Parsley needs normal watering and feeding. Basil need more water, but not Too much fertz.

So my suggestion is to :
Make a small division in the bed for herbs. So they can be watered ..cared , individually, separately.

Probably peppers and maters can be treated fairy alike.

First of all:

it isn't a waste of money even if you get very little from this planting. You can have a fall garden and what you have invested in the bed will pay off for years to come in any case.

Some dead leaves on plants is quite normal, IME. Especially in hot dry weather. I don't know what the problem is with the rotting peppers, but it may well resolve without interference from you (one of the main things to learn about gardening is that a lot of what goes on you didn't cause and/or can't fix).

My guess is that as is often the case with raised beds, the medium you are growing in is somewhat unbalanced. I would check into what your underlying soil is and think about expanding the garden with just some minimal amendments. In OK probably you have alkaline soil, in which case gypsum is a useful amendment, and it's cheap. Till up an area and plant a legume fall crop and see what happens. Over time you can create a large garden with very little money.

A free, safe, and under-utilized source of N is urine.

I have grown the exact same garden before..your peppers have blossom end rot I believe, the parsley you will have to harvest some everyday or they are over watered, the tomato leaves look nice!, and just a tip from what I have picked up is tilling your ground first before planting and then add the fertilizer.
-Tomato -> Keep watering unless it is going to rain
-Parsley -> Let it go for a few days without watering and trim the yellow stuff.
-Serrano -> Don't water at all for about 3 days. Peppers are usually grown in hot conditions and don't need a lot of water.

P.S.- pnbrown is correct..even if you only harvest just a little bit it is still better than going to the store. You can only learn from this!
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I wanted to chime in to agree with others to say you have certainly not wasted your family's money -- getting a raised bed with bagged ingredients to produce is sometimes a challenge, and sometimes takes a year or two, and, IME, can best be helped by mixing your bagged stuff in with the native soil (maybe in the fall, before planting some fall veggies.)

And your tomato leaves do look just fine.

I'd say skip the Captian Jack's deadbug powder -- your problems are not insects, and any poison will kill beneficials, which you need.

Also, check on the source of the straw. There have been problems with herbicides in straw killing gardens when it was used for mulch. You could test it by putting it around one tomato plant and seeing how it does first before spreading it all over.

Do you have a compost pile? Start one! Compost is really great for raised beds, and will be a way for you to add really top notch stuff to keep the soil level up, rather than having to buy more bagged ingredients (the level of the soil will sink each year in a raised bed).

I second pnbrown's idea of using your native soil -- it's free and it's right there! You could check into Lasagne gardening, and do it all without a tiller, too.

Have faith. Gardening is not a one year endeavor, and the costs go down once you're set up.

Hello all:

My tomatoes seem to be pretty healthy still. Getting eaten a tiny bit but that's okay.

I dug up the pepper and roughed up the roots a bit (they were root-bound when I bought the plant, so I thought maybe that would help). It seems to be healthier.

I have only been watering every few days, so I'm so confused as to why it seems like I've been over watering. I do use the hose to rise the leaves off more frequently (trying to control the bugs), so maybe I should stop that.

I woke up this morning and my basil appears to have a disease. I have some neem oil, which I think is a fungicide. Would that help?

I put the straw down a few days ago and this morning there were these tall, thin grayish purple mushrooms growing in one spot. Is that a bad sign?

You guys are great. Thanks again.

And another one.

And this is my whole tiny garden. I can't believe such a small thing has caused me so much heartache. It is cut off, but there's one more tomato plant in the right corner.

You probably want to remove the spotted basil leaves, and try to water (when needed) in the morning and avoid getting the leaves wet.

Forgot to mention in my other post that the serrano peppers are still edible, just cut off the rotten ends.

Glad to hear you're still hanging in there! Your raised bed looks great.

One more thing, I don't know if you like zucchini but if you do that's one of the more satisfying veggies to grow for a first-time gardener. They are huge, quick-growing plants that are usually very productive. If you could find a nice sunny spot (you don't have room in that bed), a lot of places are selling their seeds right now at 50-75 percent off. You probably still have time to throw a couple of zuke seeds & save the rest of the packet for next year. I just stocked up on some seeds at my Rite-Aid for .45 cents/pack. I won't be planting most of them until next year, but at that price!

Definitely stop wetting the leaves.
Unless you are positive you have an aphid infestation, overhead watering will only cause problems. Most insects that bother plants can be hand picked.

Basil does that (gets black spots). It doesn't affect the flavor. Just clip the leaves with the black on them and make some pesto! Also, it's time to clip the tops of the basil so that it will bush out and give you more basil.

Sounds like things are looking up!

I basically agree with all that has been said above. Here are a couple other things to consider. First, in the Deep South where I live, parsley is strictly a winter herb. It gets too hot for it here in the summer. Oklahoma gets really hot too, right? So, that might explain the parsley death.

Second, did you dig the soil underneath your bed? Tomatoes and Peppers like a nice deeply dug bed, and your raised bed doesn't look more than six inches deep. This fall, you might try double digging your little bed and then sowing red clover in it. (If you don't know how, just say so. A lot of us can tell you how.) Allow the clover to grow all winter and then just as it begins to bloom in the spring, go out and turn it under with your spade. Two weeks later, you'll be amazed at the difference in your soil, and the clover roots will have put lots of nitrogen into it too. (This technique is called cover cropping. It's inexpensive, organic, and very effective. Try it.)

Don't despair! I had rather similar results my first year with raised beds and I had MANY years of gardening experience. It just takes time to build your soil. If you do the fundamentals, you'll see a big improvement next year, and the next, and the next. It's a good idea to get a soil test since you started with bagged stuff. Look in your yellow pages for your county agriculture extension office. In my state, a soil test is $6.00. You will get a computer report that tells you how much Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium, and more your soil has or needs. Why guess?

In the meantime, it's a very good idea to go to your public library and check out a couple of basic books on vegetable gardening. Pay very close attention to the "boring" parts about soil preparation, compost, mulching, etc. There's no reason to learn everything the hard way! And if they have a book that is specific to Oklahoma, get that one! This is a big country and the differences in climate from one area to another can be crucial to your success.

Here is a simple way to know when it's time to water. Stick your finger down into the soil to the middle knuckle. Then rub that finger together with your thumb. Feel moisture? Don't water. Check tomorrow. Feel dry or very nearly so? Time to water. Pay attention to how much time has passed since the last time and before long you'll get a good idea of how often you need to water.

Oh, and if you have mushrooms growing in your soil, that's a pretty good sign that your moisture levels are high. But then, they may be only a little bit high and you just imported mushroom spores in with the straw. Keep an eye on things. Do the finger test. But don't panic.

Just to add, some problems related to watering can be from over watering or just uneven watering. If you let things dry out too much then water heavily you are still stressing the plants. If you really get no rain where you live, I would suggest drip irrigation. There are some great hose systems out there and then you can turn them on every other day for a short time. This will be more even and will prevent damage to the leaves from getting them wet when the sun is strong.

Marilyn,

Don't lose hope. Your garden looks good, and things will get better.

I'm a first-timer like you too and had a late start to the season as well (we closed in April, and I didn't get to work on the garden until well into May).

Similar to you, I couldn't afford too much and there have been times I have felt I have wasted money that my wife could have used to buy stuff around the house instead.

We ended up with two 5'x5' in-ground beds, tilled the soil 18" deep by hand, and all it cost us was back-breaking labor and bags of compost & vermiculite.

But now as I look at the garden every day with the tomatoes starting bear fruit, the squash and cucumber flowering and the lettuce getting ready to pick, I don't feel so bad at all.

Hang in there, you're on to a good thing!