Rembetika, what is the history of land use for where you now live compared to where you were before? Also, is the elevation and drainage different? You could look up your new and old locations on Google Maps and compare the elevations.

I am sorry you are having so much trouble with your garden crops. Many in Texas do use underground irrigation, though. Also, I have heard many in my area complain they are still having trouble with their tomatoes. Maybe there are some resistant strains out there somewhere? And maybe you could protect your worms with screening, if that is fine enough to keep out those flies. Also, since chemicals do not seem to be working for you maybe a return to full organic would be better. Have you had your soil tested???? Someone in the soils or composting forums may know just what is needed.

I know you probably tried most of these things already, but hope someone on here may be able to come up with the magic key. It does seem there must be something different in your location now than before. Good luck!

Not in Austin area, though I gardened there back in the early 90s. 1) If you moved from an area with deep blackland or alluvial soils to a shallow rocky site, raised beds may be your answer., 2) Are there things that are working well for you? If so, concentrate on those. Spend the money you would've spent on less productive garden ventures on the rich variety of high quality produce available in your area. 3) Concentrate on one or two or three things that are not working for you and find solutions. For example, what is killing your tomatoes, then what can you do about it. Or how are local market gardeners getting their fall/winter crops started.

We all go through this from time-to-time. Best of luck in getting back to enjoying your gardening.

Soil test. Do it. Don't hesitate. You really have just a couple of months to fix it. Yes, the previous occupant of your house could have dumped toxic stuff in your beds and made them into small superfund sites.

But wait, you've been there for three years, adding compost and leaves and "every season it turns to cement again and it has to be completely re-weeded and broken up again". Huh? I can take cement soil and, with liberal application of kitchen compost, composted manure, and ground up leaves, make it into a pretty fluffy bed in one year. That doesn't sound right. If you have soil that turns to cement, you're going to have a hard time growing stuff in it, even after breaking it up.

As to tomatoes, with properly V/F/N resistant varieties, it's hard to go wrong. Now, if you haven't been using those varieties, your new bed may simply be infected with those diseases. Yes, it happens to beds.

Do you have neighbors that are successful with vegetable gardening? If so, get them to have a look at your system.

It does sound like it's your soil. Testing it will indicate what additives you may need. I'm in Central Texas (east of Austin). I have a veg garden and while I have to deal with the regular pests (stink bugs, SVB, etc), I still get reasonable harvests. I built up raised beds and brought in garden soil (about 8 - 10") and mulch each spring and fall with pine needles and compost. I rotate the crops so the tomatoes are not planted in the same area each year as they are very heavy feeders. My soil has improved gradually over time. In my experience, the more you put into the soil, the more you'll get from your plants, regardless of whether they are vegetables, shrubs, or trees. I do not have an irrigation system, so I cannot address that issue, other than to state that a well-mulched garden bed requires less watering.

I am so sorry to hear your frustration. My story is very similar. When I moved to Austin I thought I was a pretty good gardener. The first few years here I felt like a complete failure.

I agree with others that getting a soil test sounds like a good idea. It used to be free or relatively cheap from the county extension office.

I have a couple suggestions:
1. Keep your worm box inside most of the year. The worms are surprisingly delicate. They can't handle the cold of winter or the heat of summer.

2. Don't believe anything the big box stores tell you. Gardening shouldn't cost a lot of money at all. The stuff in bags they call soil is really dead mulch. The pesticides and herbicides they sell will kill your soil organisms and throw everything off balance allowing pests and disease to run rampant.

3. Drip irrigation is pretty much required for veggies. The drought isn't going away. Drip irrigation will let the moisture penetrate the soil much more efficiently. It doesn't have to cost a lot. Just poke some holes in an old hose.

4, Leaf mold. Leaf mold is like astronomically better at retaining water in the soil than compost. Now -- like this week -- go around your neighborhood and beg, borrow, steal everyone's leaves that they are foolishly putting out on the curb. Don't turn the leaves into compost by adding nitrogen. You want all the carbon to grow the leaf mold fungus. It takes about nine months to complete in our climate. Just keep the bags a little moist. Incorporate that into your soil next fall. Yeah, I know. It is the long game approach. But, not only will it retain water more efficiently it will help build the micorhyzal associations that 90% of plants need not only to thrive but just survive.

5. Avoid turning your soil as much as possible. Like dig once when you add the leaf mold and then never again. Every time you dig you break those associations that micro-organisms are trying to build. Consider the stuff you have right now the sub soil. You want to build up from it.

Good luck. Austin is not an easy place to garden.

The biggets problems you face with gardening in the Austin/San Antonio area is the heat, too much sun and not enough water. Having said that, you can take some actions to mitigate those issues. Plant hot weather plants, mulch around the plants, water at least every 2 days, and plant in an area that provides 8 hours of sun mostly not in the heat of the day or use a sun screen.

The biggets problems you face with gardening in the Austin/San Antonio area is the heat, too much sun and not enough water. Having said that, you can take some actions to mitigate those issues. Plant hot weather plants, mulch around the plants, water at least every 2 days, and plant in an area that provides 8 hours of sun mostly not in the heat of the day or use a sun screen.

I think the OP wasn't saying that they just moved to Austin, and were trying to reconcile their experience here with decades of northern gardening wisdom. (Yeah, I've been there ...) If I read correctly, they had been in Austin for a long time, during which time they had great vegetable gardens. Fifteen years? The issue is that they moved to a different neighborhood close by their old one, and things changed majorly.

So it's not heat, or something Central Texas-specific. It's not about Texas versus Minnesota. It's got to be some very local attribute of the soil in their new place. I smell a superfund site.

Austin has some pockets of really truly cr@ppy soil, and some good stuff. Soil tests are our friends. Learning about the different solutions for amendment. I have heard that some people with red death clay have brought in some composted HARDWOOD native mulch and tilled 6" in and then not done anything with it for a year and let it rot. Others have loaded on 6 inches of compost and let the bugs cary it into the dirt. Sounds almost to good to be true. I used to live on clay. Not red death but a river cut bank with round river rock in it. Everytime I was out their with a shovel, I had compost from the Natural gardener to work into it. It got to be glorious dirt.

I could grow everything. I thought I was a good gardener till I moved to 30 miles west of Austin on a high limestone hill with caliche and marl with mostly not much topsoil in the area around the house.. Many natives need to have the clay worked into loam by the bunch grass roots. that have broken it down. Find native grasses that want to break down the clay. Find a way to create structure in the clay. Gypsum, expanded shale, compost . Be aware the adding sand or decomposed granite has to be done in conjunction with more than equal amounts of mulch. One has to add at least 50% sand to have the clay not go back to cement. Research research research. I live on caliche now and I created raised beds in some areas where I grow vegetables because it was easier and immediate. I recommend compost tea. Geo Growers and the Natural Gardener for soil products.

If you have a recurring bug or decease problem, step back and let the soil heal itself. I had to step back from squash because of the squash bug. I am giving my whole garden a rest this year and growing green manure. The arugala, leeks, kale and chard have not heard that I am not growing anything this winter..

When it is hot, I start vegetables in pots in the shade.

That's a good point about pockets of bad soil. In fact, the OP surprised me by saying that in several years of trying to improve the soil, it still turned to cement. So it may not even be chemical pollutant. It might just be really really bad soil texture-wise, rather than composition-wise. Heavy clay soil will do just that. You can add reams of organic matter, and it takes a long time to fix it. Clay+compost=slightly lighter clay. There is some nasty stuff in pockets of South Austin called "Del Rio Clay". Maybe that's what's going on here. Good for marine fossil hunting, bad for gardens. It's kind of grayish, I think.

I feel for you rembetika. My suggestion is to build a "keyhole" garden. Developed in Africa to produce high yield gardens with little or no monetary investment the keyhole gardens have really taken off, especially in Texas. I've included a link to the article that started the current interest but there is a wealth of information on the internet, a facebook page and Dr. Deb Tolson who started this movement is here in Texas. We filled ours with rebar, cardboard, phone books and topped it with leaf mold. Boy, does it produce! Finally had to pull out the chard because I was tired of eating it. Best of luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tx Co-Op Power Keyhole Gardening

Wow... thank you everyone for your kind & helpful replies...! I'm going to look over everyone's answers in detail this weekend... & will definitely take each point you all brought up, into consideration. Will probably have more responses/questions also..... (for anyone who is interested in this issue.)

SCott Ogden has a good book called "Gardeniing Success with Difficult Soils. It was written with Central Texas in mind. This helped me a lot. Compost breaks down in the i heat. I like compost tea also.

Here is a link that might be useful: Used copy on amazon.

I don't really have anything to add to what everyone else has said about the soil - I'm just a baby gardener - but I saw you complaining about the rocks.

DH's grandma lives up near the Ozarks, and she had similar problems with rocks floating up in her garden. She pulled them out and built a wall along her back fence. I'm near Cibolo Creek at my place and have a similar problem - lots of fist-sized or better rocks in my soil; I'm planning on using them to build mortared walls around my beds to raise them up.

Just a thought. Could help with your beds and make your rocks useful, too.

I'm in north/central Austin. Back in '89 I had some success with a variety of vegetables in make shift raised beds. I even threw a handful of mustard green seeds in the yard, I let the bunny graze and my neighbors and I had more greens than we could handle. I threw pecans and now I have a couple of nut producing trees.
Fast forward six to ten years. I couldn't get anything to grow. I bought bulk garden soil from the Natural gardener. I successfully grew grape, yellow bell and sun gold cherry tomatoes. I tried regular sized tomatoes, okra, green beans, cucumbers, squash, eggplants and strawberries. But, even with the good soil I got very little to no yield from anything but tiny tomatoes.
This year I tried self watering containers. Again the tiny tomatoes produced and one variety of eggplant and mint. I lost green beans, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, eggplant, peppers, and big tomatoes. The containers used massive amounts of water. I killed some by drought.
I’m sorry to hear you’re also facing my battle. I’m also dealing with too much shade and too many roots.
I’m interested in that "keyhole" garden concept. I wonder how many scraps it takes to keep it going. I guess I’ll surf the site for some info. It probably takes a lot of material to set it up.
I do appreciate your sharing. It’s not just me. ;-).

ldr3 -- I wonder if one source of your current struggle has to do with the pecans you have growing. Pecan roots produce juglone which is toxic to some garden veggies like tomatoes.

I live nearby Spicewood. I did have to take out a portion of bedrock in my backyard which was not easy. Next thing I knew, my Montezuma cypress went from 2 ft to over 10 ft after 2 growing season. That cherry tomato plant was insane! Tiny plant in the spring and ended up spreading over 10 ft everywhere. So many cherry tomatoes on a single plant... I did have to buy cheap bagged topsoil from big box store and even hauled in that one of the neighbors dumped in the greenbelt to fill in large hole.

To improve soil biology, I tried out this product called Jobe's 6-lb Organic Flower and Vegetable Food Granules which has microbes and organic fertilizer to help support soil microbiology establishment in the soil. Then spread compost thinly and cover them with cheap hardwood mulch to conserve moisture. Also it gets lawn fertilizer whenever I fertilize grass.

I also tried earthworm casting from Natural Gardener (supposedly they contain African earthworm cocoons) that I thought would help improve soil better than those typical canadian earthworms. I tried to look for Alabama jumpers (apparently most powerful of all for going deep in the ground) but couldn't really find them. May try again in the spring.

In your travails about central Texas soil, you may enjoy this essay (see link). Although a formal soil test is really called for to put to rest the possibility that you might have something *really bad*, you might take a scoop of your stuff in to the natural Gardener, and have them sniff it.

In your early central Texas garden, you may have just lucked out on the soil. But if you now have clay or (god forbid) "sandy loam", you need to nuke it with compost and or organic stuff -- manure or ground leaves. You may have to throw some sand in as well. But I'm not talking about a few inches on top, I mean down to at least one spade depth. This is not a matter of just salting your soil with good stuff, it's a matter of filling it with organic stuff. Maybe even replacing a large fraction of it.

Every year I dig compost, manure, and shredded leaves into my bed, and every year it gets better. This may well be a multi-year proposition for you.

"could the slightest change in soil really change everything?"
Yes, yes, and yes. It probably wasn't as "slight" as you think.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Dirt on Dirt