Tomato Garden in LaBelle, FL

A few months ago I somehow got interested in growing a vegetable garden. I searched around the internet for a few days and found a book called Square Foot Gardening. It seemed very easy and I thought it would be a great project to do with the kids. I ran out the next day and bought everthing that I thought I needed to start a SFG. I also came back with a few young plants and 10 packets of various seeds. I planted everything and within a week my wife went out and started a 4x4 SFG for herself. Now we have a bunch of vegetables growing in our back yard that are starting to grow fruit.

We have corn, green peppers, yellow peppers, beans, brocolli, lettuce, radish, jalapeno pepper, okra, yellow squash, zuccini, cucumbers, and a bunch of other herbs. I am amazed at how everything is growing. We have even ate fresh cucumbers, squash, zuccini, green peppers, and jalapeno peppers in the past week. But my tomato plants keep dying on me.

I keep getting strange spots on my tomato plants which starts at the bottom and works its way to the top of the plant. I am not sure what is causing it. I do know that my plants are not producing tomatoes. Tomatoes are the single biggest reason that I started a garden in the first place. I want to make home grown tomato sauce.

So I have decided to start a tomato project. I am going to attempt to grow 13 different varieties of tomatoes in my back yard to see what grows good down here in LaBelle, FL. I am going to start everything from seed and grow each variety in its own 2x1x10 raised beds. I have about two months of vegetable gardening experience. So I am sure that I will run into many problems.

Any advice would be great.