How does my garden grow?

Things are coming along nicely, albeit more slowly than I anticipated. I had given up on my beans and potatoes after 3 weeks, when lo and behold two of the four potatoes I planted came up and 1 (maybe 2 - one seems to be missing its cotyledons and remains to be seen if it has enough oomph to send out real leaves) bean plants came up. I'm trying to figure out why it took so long for everything to germinate. Everything except my carrots which came up on day 15 or so. I was expecting another week before I saw signs of those veggies. I did have a gopher and still do have a gopher so I'm working on a solution for that. So the gopher *might* explain why half of the potatoes didn't come up. But why no beans? Why was everything so late? Why are my radish roots still the size of spaghetti on day 30 (with 28 days to maturity)? I think some of it may be because when this happened:

Yes, the tree workers used my vegetable garden as a staging area for their power tools (can you see the little tiny row of radishes emerging in the upper right hand corner of the bed!). And then I left the hose on for 6 hours. When I started sowing my second batch of seeds (yes, 3 weeks has passed!) the ground was very compacted. But the second sowing of seeds has come up much quicker than the first. Its been 9 days so far and everything except the cilantro and beans and potatoes (I replaced the two missing potatoes) are up. In other words radishes, onions, mesclun and two kinds of lettuce.Here's some photos I took 9 days ago when I sowed my second batch. Everything is looking even bigger today!

Potatoes

Onions

'Blue Lake' Green Bean

'White Icicle' Radish with 'Scarlet Nantes' Carrots underneath

Tom Thumb Butterhead

Cilantro

Mesclun Mix

Raised "Spring" Bed After Second Sowing

I've decided to go all the way with my vegetable garden and do 4 beds for the major planting seasons in SF and then some spaces for perennial herbs. My parents came to town and helped me whip everything into shape. But I did learn a few things since laying the first two beds. First up the gopher issue. I was just out in the garden this evening and three of my chive plants have disappeared down some holes. Grrr. Fortunately I have a few more plants that I heeled in thinking 5 plants would be more than enough but not wanting to compost the donations my mother gave me. There was also signs of burrowing in the actual raised vegetable bed with a couple of missing onions. I'm not terribly worried right now, because there's not a lot I can do. However, for the remaining three beds I plan to line them with hardware cloth. This is a bit tricky because there are lots of roots around so I can't excavate as much as I'd like and its not something I want to try to work on with my little boy around (you know wire cutters & lots of exposed metal edges). The other issue is that I would like to get my irrigation system installed before I fill the beds up. I've decided that a sprinkler head on a hose isn't going to cut it. Although my timer is now working properly. So that's the major item on my agenda right now - getting my irrigation system set up and then hardware cloth installed.

4 Raised Beds (plus 1 slated for Sandbox and new location). Check out the herbs in the little sidecar bed.