I hate to be critical, but your garden needs more sunlight.
Looking through the photos I notice the 'leggy' appearance of your tomatoes and Lima beans. They've been drawn up by lack of sunlight.
Nothing to worry about with the cabbage leaves.

I was thinking that over the summer, but everything in the garden gets between 5-6 hours of sunlight a day. This summer for us was extremely hot, like over 100 degrees multiple times (not usual for us), no rain (16" deficit), and I was battling some kind of disease with the tomatoes. Not sure what is was but a couple weeks after being transplanted the bottom leaves began dying and they never produced (most likely due to the heat). Of course I also did a big mistake with the tomatoes by planting them in the same spot 2 years in a row... bad idea, I know. But everything in the other pictures has been pulled up except the peppers and one tomato plant that is ironically producing 5 tomatoes currently and is easily 8 feet tall. Unfortunetly, I have to work with the space I have as I can't move the large garden and the trees can't be trimmed (although I wish they could!). But I will definetly keep that in mind when I am planning for next year to see if there is anything that I can do to increase the sunlight.
And I am glad to hear the cabbage leaves are ok. Thank You! Also, as far as fertilizing the cabbage family plants... I have 10-10-10, how much of that needs to be applied to help promote good growth??

I agree, I think the cabbage leaves look OK, but I would either hand-pick the green worms or use BT to control them. They can do some damage to the plants. Good luck!

Thanks everyone. My question still is though, what are those spots? Are they just something that appears on older leaves? This is my first time growing fall crops so I am pretty much clueless even though I have read tons of stuff online.
Also, can I use miracle gro fertilizer on these plants since they are leaf crops (I know miracle grow promotes leaf growth so maybe??)
Lastly, I know realized my garden does not get as much sun as it did in the summer. Some parts get 4-5 hours direct sun, some only 3 hours direct sun. But the whole garden gets what I think is called "filtered sun". Like the sun that peaks through the shade from trees during the day (please correct me if I'm using the wrong term.) Is this ok for these crops? I also figure they will get more sun as the leaves fall off the trees and decrease the amount of shade. Thank you for everything!!

I agree with the implication that the shade is cause of issues in garden. I suspect whatever that little leaf spot is would be cooked in sunlight; you can likely hit it with Neem for control. You can use Miracle-Gro if you want, or any high N fertilizer. But until you get some sun, you are going to be unhappy overall.

Dan

Ah, memories! your garden looks so much like my first "adult" garden... (meaning the one I had for the first time as an adult, not whatever else may pop into your mind.) From what I learned with that garden, maybe think about this: The sun now is very similar to the sun around early-mid March in strength and fading. Adding in the extra burden of the leaves on the trees making shade, and likely even your leafy veggies will struggle this time of year. Especially if those leaves don't come down until November. If you can get out and see where the branches are now that are shading your garden and get rid of them, so much the better. Otherwise, you might do better with your spring crops: then there are no leaves and the sun gets progressively stronger, so that leaf-out is actually somewhat helpful (helps cool those suddenly hot days in May). One thing that I found that sort of worked in fall was kale- I never got it big enough to eat in the fall, but it overwintered nice and was extra delicious in the spring. Cheers!

Agree with sunnibel7 re: spring crops will do better in lower light gardens, but it won't hurt to try & see what grows to harvest for you this year.

Our vegetable garden borders our gravel driveway as we live in a clearing in the woods & that's our best chance of sunshine. Spring crops always do better than our fall because of that lowering sun height reducing our sunlight significantly.

If we get our fall crops growing by mid-summer and by October they're nearly mature we can hold them in the garden to harvest through most of the winter as long as the weather is mild & on coldest days we throw over some row cover fabric.

The lower leaves of our broccoli, cabbages, & kale are yellowing & have spots, but doesn't seem to affect what we harvest up above. There are still insects roaming around the gardens as well as those baby slugs finding their way, so as long as the plants are still growing or providing a harvest I don't worry about a little bit of damage.

We can keep root crops in the ground as long as we mulch before freezing weather comes. Ideally, a hoop structure over each bed would keep off the excessive winter rain, but I don't have one built yet.

I understand your frustration with the partly shaded garden space. Just today we harvested the rest of our tomatoes & though the plants were healthy & vigorous we just don't have the volume of harvest as compared to other gardens we visit with full sun. You can still can grow food, but it's just a smaller harvest no matter what you do to the soil! If you can't take down the trees, you just grow what you can and make the most of it planting what you like to eat & see growing.

I am truly ready to give up now. After finally trimming some trees and adding some sunlight (about 2 hours more a day) and giving it some miracle grow, everything in my garden is now dying. I gave the garden some miracle grow this time last week and everything was looking wonderful and now it is all wilting. So I feared it was the cabbage root fly because everything just started wilting suddenly which I read is a sign of these bugs. Well, I went out and pulled up a broccoli plant and sure enough, no good root system to speak of. So I kept pulling the broccoli plants because they all looked horrible. On the 4th one I pulled I seen these bugs eating the roots of this one plant, so I figured I was doomed and my fall garden was done with. I went online to look up and compare the bugs to confirm my thoughts when I realized I have an infestion of all things, termites!!! The termites are eating my plants!!! I didn't think this happened, but these things were going to town on my broccoli stems and roots. So now I am at a complete loss as what to do. I took my remaining unplanted transplants and crammed them in the few raised beds I have seperate from the main garden. I am just getting frustrated now and no longer know what to do.