I have started a new raised garden bed with organic soil that I bought 4 weeks ago. It's a mix with sand, native soil, bat guano, compost of different trees, plants, vegetables, etc. It's rich, loamy, etc. I also supplemented with blood meal & bone meal in mixing upon placement of soil and a light dusting on top.

The soils is easily supporting growth from direct seeding of lettuce, beets, radishes and transplants of seedlings of oregano, parsley, chives, lettuce, bell peppers, mint etc. However, leaves of many hearty tomato (16"-20") & garlic plants (12") that were doing very well (and in different garden boxes) have started turning yellow from the bottom up very quickly all of a sudden, especially the tomatoes. Various hot peppers seem 'weak'.

Soil PH shows about 7.0 on home test kit.

Watering is done by timer & dripper for 2 minutes 2 x day. Soil is moist and not muddy and seems perfectly suited to growing and other tomato plants & garlics seems to be doing okay.

No evidence of bugs, leaf deformity/disease.

I bought home testing kit for nitrogen but it was worthless (showed no nitrogen even in solution of nitrogen only fertilizer).

Long term I'm going to have soil tested but that'll take a while to get the results.

Short term, what do I do to save these plants? More blood meal? Slow release nitrogen? More Compost? Let it be for a while? Take off yellow leaves? Replant them farther into the ground? More water? Less water?

Also, the nights are cool here in Fountain Hills lately (38 degrees) could that be the culprit, they're just struggling with the temp swings from 38 at night to 70+ during day?

Thanks.

This post was edited by sqftdesert on Sun, Jan 12, 14 at 0:29