It's odd, but every year some things get better and others get worse
with respect to my backyard vegetable garden.

This is indeed a slow way to learn. So I ask your advice.

For the past two consecutive seasons, my tomatoes and cucumbers for some
reason have not flourished as I know they could/should have.

The transplants just kind of sit there -- and do nothing!

Sure, I get a flower or two here or there, but not the abundance of
fruit that I once had.

And that's the kicker -- when I started five years ago I did nothing but
turn over a patch of lawn and set the transplants in. They thrived.

Now that I'm a "gardener", they're suffering. Crikey! I must be reading
too many gardening books.

Nowadays, four and five years later, the tomato/cuke plants just sit
there. Sure I water them. But here in July they're not much bigger than
the transplants I set out in mid May.

They ain't dying but they ain't growing neither.

I've set up a watering system, amended soil with peat, lime, straw, or
other organic matter, but ....


The corn and beans are doing well -- better than they've ever done --
but the tomatoes, onions and cukes are languishing, the asparagus is
just as fern like as it has always been, and the lettuce/mustard patch
is just so-so. All plots of soil in this raised bed garden have been
handled/treated in the same way over the years -- a dose of 10-10-10 in
Spring, set out plants, grow plants, cover with grass/mulch in winter,
start over.

Zone 5b, NY, 20 miles due north of NYC. I see blooming fields all
around, just not mine.

Any suggestions?

J.