Learning Hub
Grow guides, short lessons and honest answers for Australian gardens, from the people who grow and pack the seed.
Grow guides
All guides A to Z
Fix a problem
All symptomsChoose what you can see. Each symptom leads to its likely causes and the lesson or guide that deals with it.
Lessons
All ten lessons
Stop burying your seeds.
Most seeds that never come up were sown too deep. The twice-the-width rule, and which seeds want light.
Stop blaming yourself for bolting coriander.
Warmth, long days and dry soil send coriander and lettuce to flower. How to keep picking for weeks.
Your zucchini is not broken.
Its first flowers are male and fall without fruit. Tell the two apart, and hand pollinate in one sunny morning.
Stop planting by the calendar. Start planting by the soil.
Tomatoes go out when the soil holds about 16Β°C, whatever the date says. The kitchen thermometer test.
Growing skills
Practical guides for the jobs between sowing and harvest: spacing, mulch, supports, seed saving, and what to do when a crop will not form.
When a crop will not form
Cabbages that will not heart, onions that will not bulb, forked carrots, tiny cauliflowers and damaged tomatoes.
Why Your Cabbages Are Not Forming Heads (and How to Fix It)
Onions Not Forming Bulbs? Day Length, Timing and the Fixes
All Top and No Bottom: Why Radish, Beetroot and Carrots Do Not Form Roots
Carrot Growing Problems: Forked, Hairy, Green or Missing Altogether
Cauliflower Head Problems: Buttoning, Ricing, No Head and Browning
Tomato Fruit Problems: Cracking, Blossom End Rot, No Fruit and More
Plan the patch
Spacing, the common mistakes, lettuce in every season, crops that store for months and the hygiene habits that stop problems carrying over.
Vegetable Spacing: Why Plants Need Room, With a Guide for Common Crops
Twelve Common Vegetable Gardening Mistakes (and the Easy Fixes)
Lettuce All Year Round: How to Keep the Salad Bowl Full in Every Season
Storage Crops: Vegetables That Keep for Months Without Preserving
Garden Hygiene: Simple Habits to Reduce Pests and Disease
Beds, mulch and water
Build a bed without digging, choose a mulch, water from below and get crops through a heatwave.
Train, prune and overwinter
Supports for climbing crops, pruning vine tomatoes and keeping chillies alive through winter.
Seeds and saving
What the words on a packet mean, how hybrids work, saving your own seed and microgreens on the bench.
Latest articles
All articles
Morning or evening: when to water the vegetable garden
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...
A firewise vegetable garden: growing food on a bushfire-prone block
Where vegetable beds sit on a bushfire-prone block, what to build and mulch them with, how to water them, what to clear before the season, and what fire...
The finger test: how to tell when a pot or bed needs water
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...
Fertiliser burn: how to spot it and fix it
Brown, crisp leaf edges and a plant wilting in wet soil a few days after feeding point to fertiliser burn: salts pulling water out of the roots. How...
Shade cloth for vegetables: which percentage, and how to rig it
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...
Keeping a punnet of seedlings alive until you can plant
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...
The people who pack the seed answer questions at support@happyvalleyseeds.com.au on weekdays, 9am to 5pm AEST.