Plant updates

So I took my pitiful looking tomato plants out of raised bed number one and transplanted them about a month ago... which turned out to be a great idea. I moved them to a bed that had been sitting for a while and was left unkempt by the previous owners.

One of the old beds. 

What I did in the way of prep was really just scrape the old weeds and weed barrier plastic up and plant the two new plants. These are them below. The picture is obviously not from the day of. I'd say it is from maybe 2 or 3 weeks post transplant.

Same bed with a second planting of tomatoes 

 I would say about two weeks after that my initial planting of tomatoes from the raised bed decided they didn't like their home. Lucky for both them and me I had a new home available for them.

These are the transplanted plants. Probably less than one week post transplant.

The plants initially struggled but I kept them watered pretty regularly for the first week or so. I also supplied them with some mulch. Admittedly I haven't put anywhere near enough down yet but I had all my old tree branched chipped by the city (a service they provide free once a month) so those wood chips will soon become mulch and compost fodder. I will probably add another much more current pic tomorrow to show all the marvelous new growth.

It doesn't always work out like you want.

Life is one big experiment. And like all others this one does not come with a map or a guarantee of success. My raised bed went together like clock work which is great. Its just the after that is giving me a hard time. I planted it out and everything was going fine for a while. Now it seems that I counted my chickens before they hatched (before I even got them as the case is for me). Either the rain has gotten to my plants, which I doubt, or I used too much of the manure and humus mixture in combination with the topsoil I filled the bed with. This is more than likely the case as I planted some backup tomato plants about two weeks later in a different bed and those seem to be doing fine. What has caused my problems? I think that the levels of nitrogen are way to high from an overabundance of manure. This has caused my roots some problems and is killing my first planting. If this is the case then eventually I will pull the failed plants and some of the soil in the raised bed and remix it with an amendment of native soil and in an attempt to balance out the npk ratio and the percentage of organic matter. If nothing else this will be a lesson learned on my journey to growing my own food. Hopefully by this time next year all I will need to buy from the grocery store are the meats, dairy, and some fruit that I cannot grow my self (at least until I have some more land...but that is still down the road). The one thing I am certain of is that my thumb is green. The herbs that I am growing and the fruit and vegetable production class I took way back in 2013 have proven that much. That and the fact that I helped my dad garden as a kid, and even created a producing garden for his house this year are definitely reassuring. I'll have some more pictures here in the near future.

What is this?

This is pretty simple, I have some plants that might or might not be weeds. If anyone knows what they might be I'd love some help.