Sounds like too much peat, which does dry out very fast and is extremely difficult to wet again. Also very acid. Soil does dry out fast in raised beds also.

Raymondv, how MUCH are you watering? Really soak the garden 2 or 3 times each week. That will be a good deal better than lightly wetting the surface more often.

I use tuna fish cans to actually measure how many fractions of an inch of H2O fall to the surface from the sprinklers. If you are using another irrigation method, consider digging down and seeing/feeling how much moisture is present for the plant roots.

Steve

If I had to guess, I would bet on a pH problem. Get yourself a cheap kit from your garden store and give it a test. Soil nutrients are all tied up and unavailable to your veges if the soil is too acidic. You need to get the pH for most vegetables to between 6 and 7 to provide a good growing environment. You didnt tell us where you are (which would help a lot).

Thanks. Yes, I think too much peat. When I realized water was just running past the roots I started to hand water soak every other day, or daily when hot. As I wrote previous the foliage looked better, but still few flowers and few or no vegetables. Almost every plant looks stunted and seems to grow too slowly. A few vegetables start to grow, but then turn yellow and fall off. Would high acid cause that? Interestingly, some of my adobe clay (I live in Southern CA) spilled into a section of my vegetable garden and those plants (green beans) are the only ones that seem to do OK. Hmmm... I'm afraid to add clay because of what may be hidden inside.

If you've got adobe, more likely that Ph not a problem. but inadequate water more like it.
When mixing peat into soil it is important to soak it first - either break open the bale and run a hose into it or, better, put it in a wheel barrow or barrel and add hot water (which is absorbed faster than cold). Keep stirring it. Once it is sopping wet, then mix it with soil. And after that use enough water to keep it moist.
Mixed in dry, it is very hard to get it to absorb water. And if you let it dry out when mixed with soil, almost impossible to dampen properly.

You did not mention anything about compost in your posts, Raymond. That's what I would start looking at. Clay adobe and peat moss do not a fertile growing medium make. Start a program of burying leaves, or any other vegetative matter, in the ground. By doing this year after year, and perhaps even more often in So Cal, you will enrich the soil with lots of moisture retention organic matter. The plants will love you for it.

I'm just north east of Bakersfield. Soil west of the rockies is alkaline. The intense heat in CA. limits vegetables here, so I use a simple drip line with 1/2 gallon per hour drippers and put a layer of pine needles on top of the soil to keep plants evenly moist(I run drippers just 10 minutes a day).
2' wide is not much, and the raised container will gain a lot of heat during the day. I put pine needles between my rows, and this helps to keep the plants cooler.
My plants do best with a soil depth of 16".

Built into a terrace... which direction does the terrace wall face? If it faces South, perhaps you simply cooked your plants in the heat? I'd be curious what the soil temperature is during the heat of the day. If you have a long thermometer you might want to check it out.

-Diggity

Ray, I'm in No CA, but also have adobe soil.
I have a raised bed that I spent a few $ to fill with soil from the soil place, but due to the gopher probs here, we try to break up the adobe in the winter (the ONLY time you can dig here)and add as much compost and organic matter as possible.
We use railroad ties with 1/4 in wire underneath for the gophers, add soil, then top dress and mix in the homemade compost. I have added aged horse and chicken manure to my compost pile for some yummy stuff next year!
HTH, you are lucky to have almost year round growing in your area!
I'm trying some greenhouse gardening this year due to our colder temps.
Happy gardening! Nancy

Thanks for all the great observations. To answer some questions, the terrace faces Northeast. It still gets very hot. The beds are not really raised, rather dug into the terrace, so the clay is about 16 inches below ALMOST ALL organic material. The clay is not mixed in, except a little where the plants are growing OK. So I'm curious about the pH. I'll test it. If it is too acidic what's the best way to correct that, keeping in mind I want to improve water retention? Thanks in advance.

This could be a multitude of problems, individually or combined.

If you dont water enough in hi heat plants can burn up.

If you water too much, especially with a dug-in bed on top of clay, you may have drainage issues causing the problems.

If everything was right in the first place, you could have problems from under-fertilizing or not fertilizing at all.

When you say soil done according to square foot gardening recommendations, do you mean:

6 cf PEAT MOSS (Bale)
4 cf COARSE VERMICULITE
3 cf SAND
3 cf COMPOST
2/3 cf WOOD ASHES
1 can LIME
1 can FERTILIZER

I think that was Mel's original recipe, and I believe it got added to existing garden soil in his old book. I think his newer recommendations may be something like 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost and maybe 1/3 vermiculite?

Yes, that's the recipe, sans lime. I did NOT mix it into the existing garden soil so maybe that's the problem. I'm afraid that if I mix in some clay I'll end up with weed seeds and disease or toxins.

I think you needed to add the lime to raise the pH of the peat moss. Also, it provides calcium. Peppers can tolerate a lower pH than tomatoes, maybe that's why they are doing better than the tomatoes. And I've learned that tomatoes like heavy fertilization with a hi-phosphorous fertilizer to get more fruits & flowers. I use something like Miracle Gro 15-30-15 to give me strong root systems and heavy flowering.

Hi temps can also cause blossoms to drop/abort so you may have a few contributing factors causing your problems with the tomatoes--not enough phosphorous, possible blossom drop caused by temps over 90, watering problems, improper pH, etc.

Mark

Why are you afraid of disease/toxins from your soil? Has there been a toxic waste site on it? Clay soil is difficult to work, but it's rich--no toxins, no diseases.