I love the weekly Gardener’s Question Time show on BBC radio, and this afternoon’s episode was made extra memorable by an older man asking how “to get my gardening-mad wife to come inside and make my dinner.” Putting the eye-watering sexism aside, it truly is difficult to be the gardener and the chief cooker of meals in a family — especially with young kids who need to eat early, as those few golden afternoon hours are just the time you need to be cooking.

I had to do some serious garden-kitchen multitasking yesterday to finish a major job, relocating and replanting sidalcea, lavender, helianthemum, stachys, alchemilla conjuncta, osmanthus davidii, and a rose that I’m giving one last chance before I trash it. Thank God for roast chicken. If I leave it uncovered and have enough water at the bottom, I can get on with jobs and only run back inside once to baste it. The lowest maintenance “proper” meal I’ve managed is roasted lamb chops with baked potatoes, since it all cooks together in a hot oven. But I need more options! Not easy when catering for a sauce-phobic four-year-old and a three-year-old hater of mashed potatoes. A Canadian friend says the only way she keeps her household together is by menu planning. I’m starting to see why.

One of the last and dirtiest jobs yesterday was moving the rose — a David Austin William Shakespeare 2000. I’m so glad I did, because I realised how miserable it was in the border. Stones had stopped its taproot, which had curled back up into the base of the plant. It had some good fibrous roots, and I root-pruned it to encourage more of these, as its new home is in a half whiskey barrel. Robert Mattock Roses has more advice on root pruning here and here for anyone wanting to grow the English roses in pots.

It’s incredibly satisfying to see autumn sown sweet peas soar into the sky as soon as early June, and I’ve tried to get organised every October for the last few years to start my seeds off in good time. During some of the televised coverage of Chelsea 2008, Derek Heathcote of Eagle Sweet Peas explained the best way to do autumn sowings. I was recording all the coverage at the time and am so glad I kept it for reference, because Derek’s method is fast and it works — no fiddly soaking or chitting of seeds, great germination rates, and very healthy specimens for planting out in spring. I’ve just discovered that his instructions are also on his website. They differ only slightly from what he said on TV, where he used cheap plastic drinking cups (with a drainage hole cut into the bottom) instead of grow tubes. Derek emphasises how important it is to get the new plants out into a cold greenhouse once they’ve germinated. They don’t need mollycoddling! I’ll be back to Derek’s website later — for cut sweet peas, he offers tips on how to get rid of the black pollen beetles that always hitch a ride onto the flowers and end up crawling about your kitchen table.

Yes, I’m doing it, though I’ve read a dozen times that I shouldn’t. But I really want to go old-style: I want the lineup to be a nod to old New England colonial front gardens, and the painted red-on-yellow of these single earlies to lend a Rembrandt vibe. They’re Mickey Mouse and I haven’t grown them before, but they’re now in a double row under my office window. (Digging a trench for the tulip lineup was also a much faster way to work — in they went, each nestled on a bit of sand.) It’s the squat gable end of the cottage, which supposedly dates to the 1600s, so the whole combo should look righteously retro. The antique rowans overhead should be blazing with blossom by the time the tulips are over and distract from their decline.

I’m going less traditional with the back garden tulips, adding a bunch of violet Passionale through the stunning orange parrot, Professor Rontgen, delivered last autumn from Rose Cottage Plants. RC is my only choice now for mail order — orders from J. Parker’s, Sarah Raven, even direct from the Dutch at Gardens4you.co.uk all got me dozens of the wrong thing, and make-goods still don’t take the edge off, especially when it’s wisteria…the wrong wisteria…that’s taken four years to flower. (I better not start on mislabeled stuff…why do so many vendors get this wrong?!)