Sown #5 answer

The solved garden

The seeds: R1C1, R2C5, R3C9, R4C3, R5C8, R6C2, R7C6, R8C4, R9C7 (R = row, C = column, counting from the top left). Every row, column and plot holds one seed, and no two seeds touch, not even diagonally.

A hard garden: Saturday's puzzle. The hardest idea it needed was several plots that fill the same rows or columns between them.

How to crack it: the first moves

1. A seed in the square in row 1, column 2 would leave the sage plot without enough room. So it stays empty.
2. A seed in the square in row 5, column 9 would leave the pink plot without enough room. So it stays empty.
3. A seed in the square in row 7, column 8 would leave the pink plot without enough room. So it stays empty.
4. A seed in the square in row 8, column 8 would leave the slate plot without enough room. So it stays empty.
5. A seed in the square in row 9, column 6 would leave the slate plot without enough room. So it stays empty.
6. All the free squares of the coral plot and the pink plot lie inside column 8 and column 9, and they need just as many seeds as those columns do. So those seeds all come from them: every other free square there stays empty.

Plots are named by their colour in the picture (sage, sunflower, lavender, coral, sky, pink, teal, sand, slate). Every Sown garden can be solved this way, one deduction at a time, without guessing.