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My vegetable garden needs help?!?!?

Ok this is my first ever vegetable garden and at the moment things have just gone from bad to worse and I have no idea what to do about it. My soil was mostly clay so I conditioned in with mushroom compost and water crystals like suggested and then I planted all my veggies. Less than a week on 3 out of 4 of my crops look to be heading down hill at a rapid rate. For starter my broccoli plant has little whit bugs all over it and in places small silver patches. There are is what looks like grey eggs on the under side of leaves and its getting more and more wholes by the hour. My Celery which is at the seeding stage seems to be turning a yellowy colour. And finally my capsicum/pepper plants are getting holes and look slightly 'cinged' on the tips of my leaves put at this point I cant Identify a pest. If at all ppossibleI would like to find organic sSolutionsand I am hesitant to put pesticides on plants I intend to eat one day, god willing. My tomato plant seems to be doing the best of all of them but I am slightly concerned and there is now a great deal of bull ants in my garden and I ddon'tknow why. Please help or my garden may be dead my the weeks end.

Public Comments

1. EVERYTHING I TOUCH DIES!
2. us a bug killer thing that is not poisonous to plants or humans!
3. i was planning to have a garden, starting from pots of vegetables... and planning and planning... but i end up renewing the plans that i made... i starting at square 1 again... i love TOMATOES...
4. its november? throw in some organic manure and top soil and mix it good next time. i really need more info about your garden, but chances are your watering in the late afternoon or night, wich is bad and bringing the bugs not familar with bull ants, but try the baking soda trick and maybe it will work, just pour baking soda around where they roam, its suppose to be nasty for them in the long run
5. First of all, not all crops can be planted together in the same plot. Secondly, different plants have different watering requirements. Different soil types and plot preparation. Thirdly, some plants grow best during certain seasons. I see you are a first time gardener, so the mistakes (and the frustrations) should teach you a thing or two. I have been gardening rather long, yet there are a lot of things I still need to learn. If you are serious about vegetable gardening, buy a book on the subject. Now there are lots and lots of books, so please choose the one that you think suits your geography, as well as your location. Farming in tropical wather is always different elsewhere. Happy gardening!
6. I'm not sure of organic gardening. but some seven dust will help run the bugs off. As for the cinged plants. Sounds like they may be getting water at a hotter part of the day. The celery probably requires a little more water than what it is getting. Gardenig requires quite a bit of tinder loving care. Ihope this helps. Oh yeah the bull ants won't hurt the garden they will actually make it so the roots can get a little air.
7. I don't know why someone suggested water crystals! You have clay soil that retains moisture so you want plenty of compost (mushroom or otherwise) to dig in and amend the soil so that it drains well. The water crystals only help retain the water and that would explain yellow foliage (over-watered or holding too much moisture). You might start with backing way off on the water. One thing ants are attracted to is aphids. The aphids submit a honey-like substance that the ants love to eat, they actually farm the aphids and harvest this aphid "honey." If you are not seeing aphids on those tomatoes, then the ants are otherwise harmless. "cinged pepper plants" my only guess is frost. When any plant from the nightshade family gets below 55 degrees (F) they can get a burnt looking tip. The plant will become stunted and take much longer to produce mature fruit. My advice is do the best you can this year and use it as a learning experience. You can't "fix" soil and have a perfect garden in one year. Keep adding compost every year and keep trying new things. You'll be a pro in no time. Most of all, good luck and keep asking questions.
8. learning to garden well take years and you will make many mistakes during that time so don't worry. I am assuming you are in OZ or NZ if you just put in plants. you need to get some fertilizer. i really like water soluable kelp, Maxi crop is the best known brand in N. America. I believe it is sold in your part of the world as well. Fish emulsion is also good but does small like fish. You will need a 1 gallon or smaller pressure sprayer for this kind of fertilizer. For the white bugs on broccoli. make up a soap spray of 1TBL dish soap to 1 litre of water (the water needs to be soft water). Spray this on the broccoli getting all surfaces. The soap will dessicate the white fly on your broccoli. The eggs you remove with your hands The peppers sound like they are getting sunburned, they should grow out of that. Don't worry about holes in the leaves unless more than 75% of the leaves are gone. the plants should grow okay even with some insect pressure. As other have said different plants take different conditions. Don't worry much about insects and your garden. A big part of organic is achieving a balance between good and bad insects and for the good insects to show up there has to be a good population of pest insects already there so they have something to eat. This means your garden can look pretty bad before the beneficial insects come in and control the pests. but more often than not you will get to eat from your garden. Get a couple of books on growing organically. Jeavons has a great one on square foot gardening
9. With clay soil, sometimes the only real solution is to build a raised garden bed, and pour soil in, and plant everything that way. I really don't think mushroom compost and water is enough to break down the soil, if it's hard enough. Upside of a raised vegie garden: your vegies won't be trying to root down into rock hard soil, and it will also be a little bit warmer than the earth itself, so you might even be able to plant things a little bit earlier in the spring.