Adjusting your rhythm

The gardening calendar in books is a guide, not a schedule. A cold April means you sow three weeks later than the instructions suggest. A warm March means you sow two weeks earlier — but only if you have watched the soil, checked the forecast and accepted that you may still lose plants to a late frost. This is not recklessness. It is calculated risk, which is what all good growing requires.

The worst strategy is to ignore conditions and sow on the 'correct' date anyway. I have seen allotments full of courgette seeds sown in mid-April because the packet said so, every one rotted by early May because the soil was still 8°C. The growers who wait until late May, who sow into warm soil under a clear forecast, harvest four weeks earlier because their plants never stall. Speed comes from timing, not from starting early.

Keep a simple weather diary — a notebook, a note on your phone. Record the date of the last frost, the week your soil reached 10°C, the day your tomatoes went out permanently. Next year, you will know whether your garden runs early or late, and you will stop guessing. This is how you become fluent in your own plot — not by reading books, but by reading your own seasons.