On the hit and miss, I'm growing the same selection of plants in 2 locations, about 8 miles apart. One has fine sandy loam, not much organic material, I've added what compost I had last year and this, probably not enough, probably lacking iron, just from the color. I know there are gophers or similar there. The soil texture should be ideal for root crops as it's well drained sandy that goes down quite deep, and the only gravel was added during house construction. The same soil type has for years been used for many acres of alfalfa, onions, and more recently carrots.
The other, new garden this year, should be similar or have more coarse sand and/or iron, from looking at soilweb map and roadside dirt, but I think it has fill dirt from somewhere else. I added 3 inches of commercial compost. No gophers there, but lots of earwigs, doubtful anything can be done with them as they live in everyone around's lawns I think. Trying to reduce them is like trying to get rid of ants by stepping on the ones you see.
Anyway, I need some soil tests, and haven't found anything other than sending it out of state to test.
Both locations have had the hit and miss problems. Broccoli was the only thing that did real well, though I had to get some BT for the caterpillars that like it so much. The cauliflower next to the broccoli I got nothing from. Tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, squash, cucumbers, watermelons, cantaloupe, all had issues where one plant did drastically worse than another next to it.
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