I have been fulfilling my primeval and natural human role this weekend preparing for this year’s harvest – well, hoped for harvest.

I have now nearly emptied my propagator and pricked out and potted on all those fragile little seedlings which should make fine sturdy and highly edible plants before long. The tomatoes and various varieties of hot or sweet peppers are looking perky as are all those half-hardy annuals which should brighten up some of the flower beds in high summer.

I have also been sowing hardy lettuce, spinach and radish seeds directly into pots in my maybe over-ambitious tiny patio potted allotment. Out there too are my chitted Jersey potatoes in the first level of my newly purchased patio potato grower – it is the green pot in the middle of the growing number of terracotta ones. Somewhere out there too are the first signs of a row of peas.

The new trellising has gone up for my newly planted espalier cooking apple tree so all I have to do until its next prune is to keep its branches tied in place. In a few years this Bramley’s Seedling tree will stretch its highly trained branches right up to the house.

My little backyard was a pleasant place to work in over the weekend with its display of tulips, daffodils, croci and various other spring bulbs.

The primroses, even though they have been flowering since the early winter, have now put on a new flush and are looking their best in their shady corners.

Miniature daffodils and the Easter Rose, helioborus orientalis, set each other off in yellow and pink under my newly planted dwarf eating apple tree which by late summer should be bearing its bright red apples.

I have now got my first batch of tulips grown in terracotta pots by the house with a patch of golden croci. When they are over, they will be replaced by their taller cousins, this year, Princess Irene.

My troughs are still rewarding too with a new set of flowering bulbs now adding a welcome touch of blue

So good luck plants, the weathermen are warning us about another cold snap – I shall be watching out for you. It is my role as natural man of the soil.

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