IN THE spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, as the poet put it. That's as may be, plenty of time for that sort of thing in warmer weather, but in the meantime my fancy – we all have our own priorities – turns to gardening catalogues and seed firm websites.
A good morning for it too. We have had a few inches of snow while, according to a rampant media, Britain – by which they mean London and south-east England – is in the grip of the worst winter weather for a century. Or at least 18 years. Or possibly
10.
Surely snow in the Sahara would cause the locals less surprise than it does in London? A snowfall that would be treated as a mild inconvenience in Aberdeenshire or be described as "a plain sort of day" by Borders hill farmers produces metropolitan hysteria that wouldn't have been out of place during the last days of Pompeii.
Unfortunately, seed lists and garden adverts are prone to similar exaggeration. A London journalist describing an inch of snow on the M25 has nothing on a seed firm describing the exquisite pleasure a grower can expect from a new tomato variety or how, with careful management, a selection of cut-and-come-again leaf salad in a window box can feed a family of four for a year.
Swept along by the "grow your own food in these parlous times" movement that has celebrity gardening columns spreading like untreated ground elder – most of them as annoying – new gardeners must beware… Each tree in their bargain-price mini orchard won't produce the promised 100lbs of fruit in year one. Or any other year.
Gardening can be fun and satisfying. But it does not produce instant results and does not produce results at all without effort. Sometimes – I have in mind my first, failed asparagus bed and those weeks of morning inspections for signs of life before I dug it up in a fury – effort does not produce results either.
So, before parting with your credit card number and ordering 40 packets of seeds and the special offer on garlic, remember three things.
One, life seldom if ever equates with the advert. Two, caveat emptor – 'let the buyer beware' – when looking at enticing special offers. Three, think greenfly, whitefly, carrot fly, cabbage butterfly, aphids, blight, blackleg, blossom end rot… in fact, as anyone thinking of keeping sheep should study Black's Veterinary Dictionary – "Symptom of this disease: death" – the budding gardener should study a list of plant pests and diseases.
It occurs to me that what the actor Robert Duncan said recently about his profession applies equally to gardening as a hobby. His advice was never to become an actor because you thought you wanted to. Only do it if you need to.
That's how it gets us. We know the adverts exaggerate and that the miracle new varieties will not deliver what they promise, that a lot of hard work lies ahead, that there will be disappointments and frustrations… but, ah, the zing of a Sungold tomato, the first new potatoes, peas fresh from the pod…
Now to reduce this seed order by about a third and delete the two special offers.
