Twitchy fingers

Yesterday's trip to Chelmsford to guest on Ken Crowther's gardening programme on BBC Essex, revealed a nation (well, a county) desperate to get gardening. Good news that gardening is still alive & kicking in this cold spell. Possibly, bad news that we tried to curtail people's impatient, itchy, twitchy fingers to get started. Basically, for most jobs it's too early, so stay indoors and browse the seed catalogues and get your orders in. Oh, that's such a gardening cliche for this time of year.

Strangely, we had a lot of questions about pruning. A lot of people have noticed snow damage or plants growing out of control and we gave them the OK to get cutting back, but not drastic hacking as cold weather could cause further damage. Quite a few people wanted to prune cherries and other Prunus species - this is definitely a no-no as bacterial canker can get into the cuts and cause extreme damage - even death. Even more strangely, I didn't use this opportunity to promote my book on pruning. But I did use it to promote my new series of product review features in Garden News; the March Tried & Tested is on secateurs! We even had a question on how to use fleece and again I managed to surreptitiously (or not) promote the February's Buyer's Guide on fleece!

We also had a lot of questions on fruit, veg and grow your own. Not strangely, I did use this opportunity to promote my new book, the RHS Allotment Handbook, which is on sale in February. Oh, I'm such a self-promoting tart! Well, no-one else is going to do it for me.

Other questions included aphids on honeysuckle (even in this weather?), propagating chrysanthemums, flower buds dropping off orchids, clivias and amaryllis not flowering and growing lavender indoors.

Anyway, we had a good time and had a bit of a laugh with the listeners, which, after all, is what it's all about.