I am a first year gardener located in Rex, GA. (Zone 8, I believe)

I already posted this in the Disease and Pests Forum, but I'm still pretty worried so I thought I would try here. My first post is pretty long, so in this one I'm going to try and make it a little shorter. I want to try and give you

all of the information I can, so that it will be easier for you to help me. I apologize in advance if it's nothing or something simple that I have overlooked, and regardless of that I really appreciate you taking the time to look.

I have looked here on the forum, in two books, and on the internet. (I tried the "Tomato Problem Solver" from Texas A&M, "Vegetable MD Online" from Cornell University, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and what feels like about 75 non-descript pages with the same list of things that go wrong with Tomato plants.) I even went to my local Extension Service's page, because I was hoping they would have a guide or something specific to our region. They linked me to UGA's page, which has a ton of information but very tiny pictures.

I have four different tomato plants in 4 clay pots which are 14 inches in diameter, fairly deep and hold about 5 gallons of soil. The plants get moved inside every night because I cannot protect them from the wildlife and back out in the morning.

I went to a local retailer picked three that claimed to be Determinate plants and/or good for containers and a beefsteak, which I knew was probably going to have a limited yield because it wouldn't be that thrilled to be in a pot. I don't can and I basically wanted to grow some tomatoes for salads, possibly some fresh salsa and the occasional BLT. I read a lot about how every tomato has a different flavor, so I think I got a little over excited about experimenting. It probably would have been better to just get one plant or maybe two.

I picked out the following :

Beefmaster (Hybrid Tomato) Indeterminate - V,F,N.

Better Bush (Hybrid Tomato) Determinate - V, F, N

Patio (The Container Tomato) Determinate - F, A, St.

Bush Early Girl Determinate - V, F (1&2), N, T

I used Miracle Gro "Organic Choice" Potting Mix and some Hyponex potting soil.

I feed them once weekly with All Purpose Miracle Gro, and do my best to water only around the roots. (I fill a bucket and take a glass jar and scoop water into the pots.) When I haven't been home they sometimes do get watered with the

hose, and we've had a few drenching rains recently that put about three inches into our rain gauge.

I harvested about 18 tomatoes before the fourth of July.

The Bush Early Girl had tomatoes that were all Catfaced. We did have some low temps around the time it set fruit, so I assumed that was the reason. I had one that the stink bugs got, but they were pretty good.

I also sprayed insecticidal soap twice a few months back to try to keep the aphids in check, which seemed to work fairly well. They were on the Better Bush the most. I still see them from time to time, but it's nothing like it was.

They seemed pretty happy until about a month ago, and even with these symptoms they seem... okay? They set fruit and I keep seeing new growth. That's one thing that is really throwing me when I look at pictures and descriptions.

I expect my plants to start wilting and dying any day, but I only see any wilt if they need some more water. So, I have seen some BER on the Beefmaster. About 6 or 7 tomatoes have been removed, but I seem to have it under control. The first thing I saw was this kind of white patch thing going on on the leaves. All of them have it. It was the worst and most obvious on the Bush Early Girl, but it's also on the Beefmaster. It's just a little bit on the Patio and the better Bush. Mostly down on the inside. So I thought it might be from all the moisture when they've gotten rained on or when they've been watered with the hose. I am not really sure.

The other thing seems to be only on the Early Bush Girl, and it started off

as just a little yellow discoloration on the leaves. There hasn't been much change since my last post. I got one reply on the other forum saying the yellowing could be caused by beet leafhoppers. So I looked online and I haven't seen anything like it while I've been examining the plants, but we do have all kinds of grasshoppers and things so I might just be missing them. The leaves do have little holes in them. If it is that, I just need to watch out for Curly Top Virus right?

Anyway, I can't describe it so here are the pictures. I'll be glad to take any others that might be useful if you tell me what you need to see, if that would help.

Bush Early Girl:

Here's the white/grey patchy stuff and up at the top you can see some of the yellowing discoloration:

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Here's a little better picture. That stem got broken at some point, it wasn't dead leaves. I haven't had much of that that wasn't obviously just undergrowth that had passed its' time. I try to stay on top of removing that. I also have

not pruned any of my plants, and I know it's not recommended for Determinate plants but when i first noticed the grey/white thing on the leaves I removed a few branches... but it became obvious that doing that would result in almost no branches in the middle of the plant, so I stopped.

{{gwi:1298948}}Here's a scan of that same leaf (from the center of the photo) taken today.

{{gwi:1354935}}And the Back:

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Because it's so low we cut the bottom off with a hacksaw and the legs of the "cage" are only about an inch into the soil. The weight of the plant leaning on it and the rim of the planter basically keeps it in place. I thought it might support itself because it never got very tall, but we had to prop it up with something because the fruit was bending it over so badly. If you look to the bottom you can see the comparison between the "normal leaves" and the yellowing ones.

{{gwi:1298949}}It has about 12 tomatoes on it. Which may not be as many as it should have on it, but it's more than before. Which was 5, and they're bigger than before.

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Over the past week a couple have ripened:

{{gwi:1354937}}And here is some of the new growth I mentioned (which I have been surprised to see because it's a determinate and I thought it would be done soon?). It

looks pretty healthy to me though?

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The Beefmaster is the other that has a lot of the white blotches:

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It's mostly on the bottom third and towards the center of the plant. As you move up it looks more like this:

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Which is how it looks on the other two plants.

The Beefmaster has 12 tomatoes on it, and some new flowers.

The Patio has 22 and the Better Bush has 25. (I have no idea if that's good or not, it seems like a lot of tomatoes to me.)

I'm trying to figure out what I have done wrong, or if something is wrong so that I can stop doing it or treat it. (Even though, my Determinate plants should be done soon, right?)

In the meantime, I find myself wondering if the tomatoes are safe to eat? It sounds silly, probably, but I've tried to look at all the fruit issues and I don't see any lesions or spots or large blobs of discoloration. Will a problem

that's the result of a disease or insects be relatively obvious? I know Humans and plants have a different genetic makeup, but I'm really new to this and probably just making up new things to worry about.

Anyway, thank you for your time I really appreciate it.

-Sarah