No, this was not lagging growth, this was zero growth, period. And I do have chunk grids on in REI's minimap so that's not the case, but even in the worst case there will be some sporadic growth.

It is directly above a block of farmland. If the farmland is removed or reverts to dirt, the wheat crop will be broken.

The light level above it is at least 9 (doesn't have to be sunlight)

There is at least one block of empty space above it (transparent blocks count as empty)

The player (any player in SMP) is within 7 chunks (~120 blocks)

Also, bonemeal ftw.

There have been reports of other servers running the same customized build of craftbukkit that we are also experiencing this issue; We're looking into it.

Odd, I noticed that melons and pumpkins are growing exceptionally fast since the introduction of 1.3.1