it Have you planted anything else in the manure? Maybe something like peas or beans or corn?

It could be one of two things. One is fairly easy to solve. The other is more difficult to solve in the short-term. So, here goes.....

1.) It could be the manure was too hot and had not broken down enough. With any manure, that is always a possibility. However, based on your description of the texture and appearance of the cow manure, I don't really think this is the problem. If you had described the manure as more....clumped or lumpy and obviously not broken down from its original, fresh-from-the-cow state, I might buy into the theory it was "too hot".

2.) It could be the manure is contaminated with herbicide residue from a particular class of herbicides commonly used to kill broadleaf weeds in hay pastures, grassy parkland, golf courses, etc. Back in the early 2000s, it was discovered that herbicide residue from a particular class of herbicides (I hate to list the brand names because nowadays there's so many, but the one I first became aware of way back then was Grazon and its active ingredient was picloram) had contaminated animal manure and found its way into commercial and community compost. The problem that was discovered was that the active ingredient (and now there's more than just picloram---there's others like clopyralid and aminopyralid) which had been spread on hay pastures survived on the hay, then it survived passing through the animals' digestive tract, and then it survived being composted at a high enough rate (measured in just a few parts-per-million) to still be toxic to plants planted in garden beds enriched with the stuff.

You can Google and find a lot of info about this issue, often referred to as herbicide carryover, or more causually as "killer compost". You also can find photographs of tomato plants affected by the herbicide residue and compare the way they look to the way your plants look. I'll link one article about it. There are tons more.

Before we get too deeply into this topic, why don't you read a little online about the issue and compare your plants to photos of damaged ones to see if you think this might be the issue you're dealing with. If it is, then we can talk about mitigation methods.

If the herbicide residue carryover/killer compost issue doesn't seem to be what you're seeing with your plants, then we all can put our heads together and try to figure out what the problem is.

Also, we shouldn't jump the gun and assume the worst. Your plants problem could be as simple as some sort of 2-4-D herbicide damage caused by herbicide drift via the air when someone who lives near you was spraying. Tomato plants, in particular, are very susceptible to herbicide drift.

The info I've linked below is a good introduction to this issue. Another member of this forum is quite knowledgeable on this subject, having experienced it himself and I am sure he will have lots of helpful suggestions for you, if indeed it turns out that your have a herbicide residue issue that came into your garden with that cow manure.

Dawn

Info On Herbicide Carryover From NCSU

Well, I also put the manure in my flower beds, but maybe not as heavily. I've planted annuals, flowers etc in there, and they are fine. With the manure, there were a few clumps here and there, but they were old, dried, etc.

Don't think it could be any spray drift, too far from anything like that going on. We live on a farm/ranch, and I've sprayed nothing, neither have neighbors. Now, we did have a dip down to 38 degrees within 2-3 days of planting, maybe that did it? Out at the garden it may have been even a degree or two cooler. The plants were not covered. Its about 50% of the plants that are looking ill. The annuals are close to the house, and would have been warmer than these tomatoes. The tomatoes in the chicken pen were also better protected.

If it isn't affect annual flowers, maybe it isn't herbicide carryover, which is a good thing, because mitigation can take longer than a growing season.

It might have been the cold weather. Damage from above-freezing but cold temperatures could be spotty like that. I've had frost damage before at 38 degrees and likely at 39 degrees, but don't think I've seen any at 40 degrees. Official NWS-affiliated weather stations record temperatures at 1.5 meters (5') above ground, and plants growing lower than that often have damage that is worse than you'd expect (based on the official record temperature) because they are growing at lower than 5', and warm air rises, so the lower to the ground the plant, the more likely it is that it got slightly colder and may have been damage. The damage I've seen at anything above 32 degrees has been spotty damage---hitting some plants and not others, etc. At or below 32 degrees (but above 28 degrees) the degree of damage was more consistent, but still varied a little---with plants that already had had some prior exposure to cold being less damaged than younger plants that had not had any real cold exposure.

If it was spotty environmental damage from cold temperatures or a touch of light frost, new growth will grow out undamaged. It it is herbicide-related, whether from drift or from herbicide carryover in the manure, some plants can outgrow it but others continue to show damage on newly growth.

Maybe a week or two from now, your plants will have made a full recovery from whatever it was. It happens.

Some years I don't have herbicide drift damage at all. Last year it hit 4 or 5 times, and I figured out where it came from on at least 3 of those occasions. Knowing it is one thing, and proving it is another. I'm surrounded by ranches, and lots of other groups use herbicides for various reasons---the county road crews spray it alongside the road in areas that drop off too sharply to be mowed, the railroad sprays it alongside the tracks to keep brush and weedy growth back from the rails, the local utility companies spray it to kill vegetation beneath power lines. I was really aggravated last year, but expect it is likely to happen at least once this year. The newer herbicide formulations seem to drift more readily because we get more drift damage these last few years than we used to.

A friend of mine who is 92 years young and still farming and ranching once had herbicide drift damage here in Love County (as did everyone else) from some improperly performed crop dusting (on what was apparently a really windy day) that was done in Sanger TX. He said he and everyone else received cash settlements to cover the crops they lost. He said it was many decades ago--maybe the 1950s or 1960s, I cannot imagine anything being sprayed at a high-enough concentration to drift that far and cause that much damage. As I recall, he said a lot of people were very angry. I would have been too.

This sounds all too familiar. I hope it's not persistent herbicide. You might take a look at the photos in this topic for comparison.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2059620/persistant-herbicide-progress?n=24

Sounds like you used too much manure and it "burned" your tomatoes. Especially since you planted the same group of tomato plants somewhere else and they are fine, and you used the manure in a flowerbed but maybe not as heavily. Too much nitrogen is just as bad as too little.