Gardening: Your weekend jobs, with Brian Kidd (March 13)

• There are lots of coloured primroses and polyanthus in pots at garden centres or shops. Smell the flowers and choose some with perfume. They will grow well on a windowsill in a light window. Remember what your mum said: choose those with only one or two flowers and lots of unopened buds beneath the foliage.

• Plant a row of early potatoes. Plant tubers in soil dug earlier. Make sure tubers are covered with 5in of soil. Tubers should be 15in apart with 2ft between rows. Earth them up with a ridge 4in high. When shoots arise, use well-rotted compost instead of soil for the final earthing up. Mix 1lb of sulphate of potash to a normal barrow of compost and your new potatoes will be free of slug damage.

• Yes, you can start feeding potato tubers before they are planted. Sounds ridiculous, but add a small amount of Maxicrop general purpose plant food in water and spray tubers as they begin to shoot to give them a good start.

• Short of space in the greenhouse? If you are, have a look at garden wall frames which simply need a wall as a backing. There are some types with polythene covering advertised in the gardening press and more substantial ones with glass panes. They are a good buy, especially if you have a small garden.

• Buy runner bean seeds. These can be sown indoors at the end of the month if you would love beans in early July. Summer is on the way...

• Did you have a disaster sowing annuals for summer bedding? Don’t let this get you down. There are lots of seedlings at garden centres and nurseries ready to be pricked out. Use insert cells, one seedling in each cell, for perfect plants. Much better plants than those in ordinary seed trays. Choose F1 seedlings for best results.

• It is very upsetting to see millions of weed seedlings growing on the surface of soil dug over in the autumn and winter. These can be hoed off, but walk on a plank if the soil is too wet. A spray of Weedol over these weeds will kill them in three or four days if spraying is done on a sunny day. Avoid the spray drifting on to other plants.