Sugar snap peas and mangetout

Agutka

Hubby was very optimistic when he didn't see a problem in making our vegetable patches at the back of the garden, pretty much in complete shade. The patches get sun in the very early morning, before the sun moves behind two horrid trees, leaving the poor veg in the shade, albeit stippled...
Will this have anything to do with extremely slow growth of our veg? The radishes, were fine, the lettuces are kind of big enough to eat, but the beetroot is having none of it and worst of all are our poor sugar snaps and mangetout. Actually the poorest of all are the french beans, but I've never grown them before, at least with the peas I know what they are supposed to look like.
The plants are only a foot tall (sown in mid april! - apart from the two footers which stayed in the greenhouse longer) and have already flowered and are producing fruit. Which is nice, getting such an effort from such tiny plants, the flavours are perfect. But is this the end of their growth spurt. Is there anything we can do to help them out (apart from chopping the trees down, as soon as we get the money together). Please help, harvest this year is going to be poor...

Gebo26

Yes, chop the trees down. They've no place in domestic gardens but don't forget that your neighbours will plant trees even if you don't.

Most vegetables require good light, good soil and plenty of moisture. They have been selectively bred over several centuries to grow into plants much larger than the wild versions they started off as, and to do this they need good conditions.

It's possible that they may be suffering from insufficient moisture as the trees will be taking a lot of water out of the soil, so you could try giving them a bit more.

It sounds like the beans are doing fairly well; I assume that they are the dwarf french beans and not the climbing ones. Some varieties don't get much higher than a foot anyway, and once they have set a crop they tend to give up. Once they realise that the pods have been picked they may start to flower again, but otherwise you could make another sowing.

I wouldn't give up on the beetroot just yet either. They do like full sun, but if they like the soil and have enough water their roots will probably start to swell in the fullness of time. I have five varieties of the things, all in full sun and good ground. They were sown direct in mid-April but there is no sign of any roots yet. It's early days.

Good luck.

Agutka

Trust me, these weed-trees are detested by everyone, all the neighbours have had a little chop out of them at one point. They are just outside my fence, on public land.
Hmm, interesting what you say about the wild versions they started off as. All that hard work farmers have done and I'm helping them revert! Bad gardener...
As for the beetroot I have a new crop being produced in the greenhouse, nice and healthy looking and growing fast. I'll just go back to using pots...