Lesson 1
Read your light and your soil
Measure the sun your spot really gets and fix the soil before you plant anything.
Most first gardens fail for two reasons: the spot gets less sun than the seed packet assumes, and the soil is compacted clay pretending to be dirt. Both are measurable in one afternoon.
Track the sun, do not guess
Look at your spot at nine in the morning, at one in the afternoon and at five in the evening. Note where the shadow line falls. Fruiting vegetables — tomatoes, peppers, courgettes — need six hours of direct sun or more. Leaves — lettuce, spinach, herbs — manage on four.
Test the soil with your hands
Dig a handful from a spade's depth and squeeze it. If it holds a solid ball that will not crumble, you have clay: roots will drown. If it falls apart instantly and feels gritty, it drains too fast to hold water. Good soil holds together, then breaks when you press it.
Fix it in one weekend
For clay, fork in a bucket of compost per square metre and leave the surface rough. For sand, the same compost but twice as much. Either way, finish with a layer of mulch you top up every spring.
Do this now
Draw your patch on a page, mark the hours of sun, and write one sentence about your soil. That page decides everything you plant next lesson.