Quick guides

Why morning watering suits vegetables best, when evening watering is just as good, how to water in the evening without inviting disease and snails, and what midday watering really costs you.

How to check a pot or a garden bed with your finger or a trowel, what dry, damp and wet mean at depth, and two quick checks that back the test up.

Which shade cloth percentage suits fruiting crops, which suits leafy greens, why heavy shade-house cloth is too dense for most food crops, and how to rig cloth above the plants.

Keep a bought or home-raised punnet healthy for a week or two with bright shade, bottom watering as the mix dries and a weak feed, and know when to pot on and how to plant out.

Sow two or three cucurbit seeds per station, pick the strongest seedling at the first true leaf, and snip the rest at soil level so the keeper has the space to itself.

Decide whether to sow through a hot spell or wait, and if you sow, do it in the evening into a watered drill under shade cloth, with a fridge trick for sown lettuce punnets.

Tell when a seedling has outgrown its cell, then move it up one pot size without damaging the stem, so it keeps growing until the garden is ready for it.

Help tomato flowers set fruit under cover or on a still balcony with a tap on the truss stem around midday, and learn when heat or cold nights mean shaking will not work.