Hi everyone,

Our house -- our first with a decent back yard -- finished construction last year and then, a few months later, we had our backyard grassed and set up with raised garden beds, including a pair of 15x20 feet each (his and hers) veggie patches. So exciting to be able to grow something properly instead of in pots on a balcony.

My problem, though, is that our crops are slow growing and a bit insipid, so I thought I'd turn to some experienced hands for advice for next season.

Firstly, we're in Australia, so it's the height of summer right about now. Where we live, the average day is about 30 celsius which is 86F - A real scorcher here is about 100F. We get a bit of wind, but nothing too serious, although we do live about ten minutes from the ocean.

Our veggie patch was ready to plant in at the very start of December which is a bit late -- it's already fairy hot, so I know that wasn't ideal conditions for starting new plants.

Our beds are filled a bit under a foot deep with "garden mix" from a soil supplier nearby -- they have a good reputation. The stuff is described as " Composted chicken manure, crushed and graded pine bark and mill waste, blended with peat and top soil. This mix is formulated for the home garden, suitable for general purpose planting. " Underneath that we have "builder's yellow" sand for I don't know how far.

The soil was pretty loose when we planted seedlings, and we've been sort of tilling it up when adding new things ever since. My wife planted some corn seeds straight in the garden, some borlotti beans, some kale (for the rabbits -- we don't eat that stuff), I planted an eclectic array of chillies and we both planted loads of different tomatoes. I also stuck in a few cucumber seeds and pumpkin seeds on the edge of the bed.

Most everything came up quite well. The wife's corn and beans came up brilliantly. The corn now has a couple of ears each, although the leaves don't look very vibrant green, and they aren't more than a few feet tall. The beans grew to about 9 inches tall before turning yellow and losing leaves. I think this may have been from heat radiating off the ground. I've mulched a few of our plants and put sheep manure around the bases of them. I've also hit them with different fish and seaweed liquid ferts.

Most of the tomatoes were slow to start but grew quite nicely -- some better than others. SOme of them stay smallish and get loads of fruit, others were huge before declining -- not so many fruit on those ones.

My chillies get absolutely fried and stunted. Leaves are burned off -- even plants that I've purchased that are supposedly hardened off and ready for full sun and wind. Everything just looks a bit yellow and curled, although I do have fruit on most everything, I feel as though things are fruiting too early out of some sort of stress.

The kale, on the other hand, looks great, so the rabbits are happy.

Anyway - I put this down to our late start in the season -- until I bought a dwarf avocado tree to plant in one of our side beds which is currently also housing some marked down tomato seedlings which I rescued from a local garden centre. I dug a huge hole and surrounded the plant with a mix of garden-centre-bought compost, sheep manure, and the garden mix that we have in our beds. The tree had a bit of transplant shock I I regularly soaked it for a couple of weeks and now it's looking great. Then something happened......

The two tomato plants immediately next to the tree took off and are now huge and bright, bright green -- the healthiest things I could ever imagine. Plants a mere foot further to the left don't look even a quarter as good as them.

So -- they are either benefiting from the compost and sheep manure being dug into the ground, the deep soaking, the small amount of extra shade from being next to a small tree, or the extra shelter that the tree affords them. Or all of these factors.

What should I be doing?

Should all of my seedlings be planted with manure, compost around the roots? Should I be soaking the garden bed? At the moment I give it five minutes worth of watering with reticulation or the equiv with a hose in the very late afternoon most days. Is this too much watering, even at this time of year? Is my soil getting too tightly packed down? It doesn't seem rock hard, but when I dig a new hole or till the soil it does tend to come up in reasonable sized chunks that I need to break up.

Thanks for reading this novel I've presented you all with.

Any tips would be appreciated. I'm also happy to provide any clarifications.