Hi,

I think I've done something terribly terribly wrong. :-( Sorry in advance for the long post, but I'd love any advice you can offer.

First off, my zucchini is NOT growing. At all. I don't know if it's the mix I used, or the cool temps we had last month, or maybe my watering, but it's been in the ground a month, and hasn't done ANYTHING since then. Not. An. Inch. There are seedlings in the nursery bigger than what I have now, and I'm seriously contemplating yanking this one out and replacing it. What would you do?

The seedling (bought as a 4" pot at the nursery) only has a few leaves, and a cluster of tiny things that look like little flowers starting to develop. It's about 7" tall and only about 12" in diameter. The biggest leaf is the size of a deck of cards. And the leaves are yellowish and only one or two are actually green.

And even though we've had mild-ish 65-70 degree days in May, it's in full western exposure sun from 9 am to 5 pm. And the really hot weather arrived a week ago or so, and even that hasn't greened them up. My mom says zukes grow like weeds and should have put on more new growth in that time.

Secondly, my radishes also planted around May 15, didn't develop beyond the little germinated sprouts. They've been in for a month, and are still just the first 2 leaves. It may now be too hot for them to do much more, so I may yank them. But I'm not sure why NONE of them went beyond germination.

And my maters, don't even get me started on that. After a month in the ground, most hadn't even put on a single sucker or new leaf or most were "curling" closed. They looked awful, so I yanked them and replaced them. I now realize it was probably user error there... I made the rookie move of pruning and transplanting on the same day (and may have handled them a bit roughly when I did the "lay down" thing). Luckily the warm weather is here and the 4 that I replaced them with have all, in just a week, started to grow rapidly.

So, I've had my garden a month, and I'm very very underwhelmed by the results. (I know, I'm not the most patient of people, but I know enough about gardening to know that somethings NOT working here.) Just don't know enough to say what's actually wrong.

For my compost component, I used a commercially mixed compost amendment with mostly composted wood bark/forest humus with added chicken manure, worm castings, etc. Like something recommended by Snibb but I couldn't find the "Gardener & Bloome" brand but it was almost the same as that one. Otherwise, I did the compost, peat, and vermiculite exactly in the 3:3:3 ratio. I have come to realize the stuff I used may have been a little lite on the nutritional stuff, so I also applied some liquid Dr. Earth 3-3-3 at 50% dilution over the weekend.

I will also add that mine are in "raised" beds, with plywood bottoms above a concrete patio. I'm wondering if I'm watering too much, or not enough, and I can't figure that out because it's sort of like a very very large container. One is 4'x4'... the others four are 2'x4'. And they're 10" deep.

Thanks for any ideas or moral support you can offer.

-Kristi