I put my tomatoes (Polish linguisa, Caspian pinks, and persimmon varieties) in the ground about three weeks ago. First they underwent sunburn (I didn't harden them off like I should have) but most of the leaves that were damaged have fallen off and been replaced. However, they're still not thriving and the stems are turning from green to black/purple and the tomato stem fuzz is almost completely gone. A few specimens have brown spots on the leaves. None of the plants are wilting/about to keel over, however.

I talked to a guy at work that grows a lot of stuff and his first thought was that I had too much nitrogen in my bed from too much compost. My bush beans are growing nicely, but everything I read says that too much nitrogen just causes tomatoes to make too many leaves and not enough fruit, not stop growing. His next thought was that I was overwatering, but I can't find a consensus on how often to water tomatoes. Some sources say 1" per week, others say every day. The bed isn't saturated, but cool and damp if you poke a finger into it. Another theory was that the chlorine in my tap water was hurting them (combined with my overwatering), so I set out a 5-gallon bucket filled with water and loosely lidded to let the chlorine evaporate - I'll use this to water the next time. When I brought in a specimen for him to look at, he thought the brown spots were tomato blight. However all of the descriptions of blight I've read had other symptoms besides simple brown spots and none of them explained the black/purple color of the stems.

I put the question to a gardener on Twitter that I follow. S/he looked at the pictures in the link and thinks that it might be a phosphorus deficiency from poor uptake caused by cool soil conditions. So in addition to use chlorine free water, I'm going to try warmed up water (80-90 degrees) and pulling back the mulch so the black soil can warm up better. If this doesn't help, I'll try adding some tomato fertilizer to get some extra phosphorus and potassium to the plants.

This is a brand new raised bed. I tilled about 8 inches of the original ground (Mississippi clay and some contractor's dirt) and added another 8 inches of 50/50 fill dirt and "planting mix" (dark composty stuff) from a local nursery. To that I added some lime, about 2-3 months before planting on the nursery's recommendation, and then a few bags of humus right before planting. No other fertilizer has been used yet.

Anyway, I'm posting this to get more opinions. If the steps I mentioned above don't work, I'm probably going to just pull them up and plant some more beans in their place. I've got a couple of Topsy Turvy planters and some more tomatoes started inside that I'm hardening off right now - they should be going outside this weekend.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures of tomato and pepper plants