You have read a hundred of these
You’re right to assume most gardening sites are either too vague or too salesy. They’ll tell you to ‘follow the sun’ or ‘keep the soil moist’ without saying how many hours of light a basil plant needs—or how often you’ll actually remember to water it before the roots rot.
We don’t do that here.
This isn’t a place for empty advice like ‘patience is key’ when the real lesson is that your zucchini will bolt if you don’t thin the seedlings by the third true leaf. We’ve grown the plants, buried the failures, and learned which ‘tips’ are just myths.
The soil remembers what we planted—and so will you, if you read what actually worked.
The basics are the first things you’ll break—and we’ve broken them all, so you don’t have to.
Anyone can write that they test things
Testing isn’t a badge we slap on. It’s the only reason this site exists. Over three years, we’ve planted 12 batches of heirloom tomatoes—some thrived, most didn’t.
The ones that survived were grown in raised beds with 50% compost, watered at 8 AM sharp (never after noon, when the leaves burn), and pruned every 10 days to stop the suckers. The others? They fed the compost pile.
We’ve tried direct-sowing beans in May, June, and July. Only June worked—May was too cold, July too hot, and the pods split before harvest. We’ve let squash rot in the vine because we forgot to trellis them. We’ve drowned basil in ‘well-draining’ soil that was actually clay.
And we’ve kept records: pH levels, rainfall, the exact day the first frost killed the peppers. Because if you’re not tracking, you’re guessing—and guessing in gardening is how you lose an entire season.
No shortcuts, no ‘close enough’—just the hard numbers on what grows, when, and why.
About the author
Delia Ashworth is the founder and editor of *How To Grow Food*, where she writes about the plants that survive her mistakes—and the ones that don’t.
The rules we work by
- 1Grow what you’ll eat
If you won’t use the harvest, don’t plant it. Last year, we grew 50 pounds of eggplant because ‘it was cheap.’ We ate three. The rest went to the compost—and the lesson stuck: space in a garden is more valuable than seed packets.
- 2Assume nothing survives
Every plant is a gamble. We overplant by 30% because half will die—from pests, weather, or our own mistakes. The extra seeds cost money, but the empty rows cost more in lost time and hope.
- 3Write for the second time you try
The first attempt is always messy. The second is when you notice the soil was too dry, the third when you realize the ‘full sun’ spot gets shade at 2 PM. We only publish advice after the third season, because that’s when it stops being guesswork.
- 4Fail loudly, then fix quietly
We don’t hide the disasters. The year the cucumbers mildewed because we watered at night? That’s in the notes. But we *do* fix the problem before we write about it—because a lesson without a solution is just a warning, not advice.
- 5Trust the plant, not the calendar
Seed packets lie. They say ‘plant in spring,’ but spring in Maine isn’t spring in Arizona. We adjust based on soil temperature, not the almanac—and if the ground’s still frozen when the catalog says to sow, we wait. Patience isn’t a virtue here; it’s survival.
Breaking a rule isn’t a crime—it’s how you learn. Last summer, we ignored the ‘never plant marigolds near tomatoes’ advice and put them side by side. The tomatoes thrived, the marigolds repelled the beetles, and the basil between them grew taller than either. The rule wasn’t wrong; the context was.
That’s the difference between dogma and real gardening.
This will not be right for everyone
If you’re looking for quick wins—‘plant these seeds, harvest in 30 days, done’—close this page. We don’t do miracle crops or ‘no-work’ gardens. If you’d rather buy your greens than wrestle with slugs at dawn, this isn’t the site for you.
And if you believe gardening is about Instagram-worthy rows and never about the blight that ruins half your zucchini, you’ll leave frustrated.
This is for the rest of us: the people who’ve dug up a failed patch and sworn never to try again, only to find themselves back in the dirt a week later.
For those who’d rather know *why* the tomatoes split than be told to ‘check the water.’ And for anyone who’s spent an afternoon cursing a wilting plant, only to realize the real enemy was the soil—or themselves.
You could just be told what you want to hear
We could say ‘gardening is easy’ or ‘every seed grows.’ But we’ve seen the opposite too often to pretend otherwise. The truth is messier: some years, the deer eat everything; other years, the rain won’t stop.
We’ll tell you how to fight back—but first, we’ll tell you when to give up.
Worth telling us
- The exact moment you realized your ‘thumbs-green’ plants were actually killing everything they touched.
- The one crop you’ve grown successfully three years in a row—and what changed the first time it worked.
- The gardening myth you believed until you tried it, then threw the seeds away in disgust.
If there’s something we missed—or something you’d rather we stopped writing about—tell us on the contact page.
The guides are grouped by category: Companion Plants, Fertilization, How To, Orchid Care, Pests and Pests and Diseases.