Gardening is a survival skill right? HELP!

Just a note on your tomatoes: As someone mentioned upthread, unless you have bush toms which you leave alone, you need to rigorously remove the sideshoots. These are new stems that grow in the angle between the main stem and a leaf. They start off as a tiny rosette of leaves and before you know it are as big as the main stem. Check and remove daily!
 
Neem oil for spider mites. All natural and food safe (in small amounts). That would be the quick method. The best method is just water with a normal garden hose spray from the top. Even though the water will not kill them it destroys the web so that they can't move around to feed or multiply. Also remember at least 8 hrs for good light for food plants.
 
I'm trying to kill the mites, hopefully I can save the plant.
I know the plants need more sun, but I since the yard is where it is I can't do much about how much light I get. If I could cut down my neighbors bushes it would help.
 
i'm going to go against the grain here and tell you that you are over watering your plants and they are going to end up with diseases and blights. even here in the summer where we went almost 40 days with no rain i only watered 4 times. just once a week. you want the roots to grow down in the ground to look for water not up towards the top of the soil, which is probably whats happened and the reason your plants aren't getting all the nutrients they need. if it doesn't rain in your area water deep once a week, if it rains in your area you don't really need to water. get some organic fertilizer and get it on the plants as soon as you can and then stop watering lol. if you have blossom end rot miracle grow makes a specific one just for blossom end rot. as stated its a lack of calcium. if you cheap or poor like me you can make a mixture of epsom salt and water and that will help out a lot. good luck. i wish our growing season went into November lol. my tomatoes all have blossom end rot now and most my plants except peppers, tomatoes and cabbages are dead. though i did have a great year in the garden so I can't complain
 
It basically does not rain here. The average rainfall is around 12" and that's almost entirely in the spring.
I figured that I'd want to water a little everyday and keep the roots in the top 8" of soil since that is the soil that has the nutrients in it. I built raised beds because the soil here is poor. Maybe I am wrong about this. But all of my other plants (aside from the water melons) are doing very well. The squash are all starting to bloom, the peas are blooming as well, peppers have peppers and the cucumber is growing like a weed with lots of blooms and little cucumbers starting. Even the basil and cilantro are looking healthy. My carrot sprouts are going crazy and the onions are starting to grow as well.
I'm thinking that the mites may have been the big issue with my big tomato. I cut off all the dead and dying leaves and it's looking better already. I saw a few mites this morning, but I sprayed them with the alcohol mix and then sprayed the plant down with water a couple of hours later. I also caught a tomato worm eating one of my little green tomatoes. I diced him up and fed him to the ants.
 
mulch.
water like every 4 days!!
composted chicken shit.
garden looks great.
try mixing some minced garlic in water and spray it on
to deter bugs.
cheers.
 
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Update.

The Tomato isn't doing great. I thought I got all of the Mites. But then the other day I bought a bag of lady bugs to release in my garden so my son could watch them and have some fun. guess which plant they all migrated to the next day? The big Tomato. I still have a few lady bugs hanging around but most have left.

Also, I was weeding today and found a mess of June Bug larvae. So I kept digging around and ended up spending about a 2 hours digging them up all over my garden. I kept a ton of them to maybe use as bait when I go fishing. These little pests were all around my big tomato too.
Anybody know a good way to deal with these things? I'm not going to spray chemicals all over my food.

On a positive note, I have a ton earth worms in my garden. I can't pick up a hand full of dirt without finding a worm or two in it.
 
Here are some pics of the Garden. Sorry for the low quality, I took them on my phone. The squash, zucchini and cucumber are doing great. The peas have pods but they're still real small


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