Carry on up the garden path...

We are having an early harvest this year. Apparently it’s something to do with all of the sunshine and warmth we’ve had. I know, I know, it feels like we’ve had a lot of rain but in reality we have had far more warm sunny hours, than cold wet ones.

Do any of you listen to ‘Gardener’s Question Time’ on Radio 4? I do sometimes. I listened to it this afternoon. This week’s came from Hampshire. There was a question about getting rid of fungus on Quinces, another asking how to improve the foliage for a potted Camelia, even a tip about it being a good time to scatter Aquilegia seeds around. It was the usual kind of informative, slightly eccentric mix of speculation, advice, pitiful humour and ridicule of the audience - all very reassuring and cosy.

I must have been listening most of life, since I was a boy on my granddad’s knee (no – there were no Werther’s back then). I’ve heard all the greats – Bill Sowerbutts, Professor Alan Gemmel, Daphne Ledward, Franklin Engelman, Geoffrey Smith, Clay Jones – and for some reason when I hear their names, in my mind, I see them seated behind a long cloth-covered table, panel-style, on a tall wooden stage, dressed in tweed and smoking pipes – every one of them… even Daphne.

These days the chair is the wiltingly unfunny Eric Robson with panelists - Chris Beardshaw, Matthew Biggs, the organic wonder that is Bob Flowerdew, Pippa Greenwood, the cute and deadly boring Bunny Guinness (she does have the best name ever though), the ever so slightly punky (in a well-groomed way) Carol Klein, Roy Lancaster, Anne Swithinbank, and the incredibly terse, needlessly sarcastic, very rude, and even more incredibly annoying John Cushnie – only Cushnie wears tweeds in my mind these days, the rest wear jeans and tops from Fat-Face (Cushnie’s tweeds are starched and itchy and he has black electrical tape over his mouth to SHUT-HIM-UP)!

Today’s GQT is lighter than in the past, not as seriously educational or earnestly botanical, they make so much effort to be funny and sometimes come so close to almost succeeding that it’s easy to forget that they are talking about the noble science (or is it art?) of horticulture.

I listened to an episode back in February that was… well, it was like listening to a cringingly bad sitcom from the early seventies. The BBC ended up apologising for running it, although they did run it twice, and did have a chance to edit, after all the show is pre-recorded.

See what you think: The listener asked for some advice on the Rhodochiton volubilis, the purple bell vine. Native of Mexican woodland, it’s an attractive plant that winds through undergrowth and produces dark purple tubular flowers that droop down from a lighter hood. I’ve grown it quite successfully from a cutting that I ‘borrowed’, but this listener was having problems getting it to stand up straight, he also said that the purple bell vine was also "commonly known as the BMW, or black man's willy".

BMW? Ooo-errr- missus… No, listen… I’m serious. That is really what he said – check it here if you think I’m deviating – LINK.

The panel immediately proceeded to giggle and snort their way through a discussion about the plant. Organic guru Bob Flowerdew said that he’d "only ever seen one close up - and not that colour", Ooo-errr… Gardener’s World presenter, Anne Swithinbank, commented that she’d "never seen one in (her) life. They don't really like the cold, as you can imagine. They shrivel up and look very unhappy." Ooo-errr- missus!

…Shrivel up and look very unhappy! I ask you! Dr Stephen Buczacki would have turned in his nicely landscaped grave (if he weren’t alive and well and living in Stratford-upon-Avon. Well… where else?).

What do you think - harmless innuendo, or deeply offensive jeer?

Anyway, we are having an early harvest this year and in my garden there isn’t a BMW in sight. I’ll just concentrate on keeping my globes safe, thank you very much (I’m growing globe artichokes this year). Just look at my potato basket, don’t my spuds look lovely and round in it. Which would you prefer - a long, firm cucumber or my thick, curly courgette? I keep my cucumber warm in a plastic frame, I don’t want it wilting in the cold… and whatever you do, don’t put my chilli pepper anywhere near your mouth, it is red hot… arf, arf, arf!