The dangerous allure of seed catalogues

In the nicest possible way, get out. For this delicate gardening manoeuvre I need perfect silence. I’ll be honest, it’s not about concentration. I could perform this anywhere: upstairs on the 134 bus, or during a rapid depressurisation incident in the International Space Station. But what I require is absolute freedom from interruption, and by this I mean, attempts to stop me.

Winter, as every addicted gardener knows, means nothing. It may be sleeting, but we’re still thinking about growing things. The question is, how? I tend towards kitchen action: niche preserving, occasional bursts of instantly regretted fermentation. And yes, I sprout mung-beans (see you in court). But all this is really a cover for my primary winter-gardening activity: fantasy shopping.

It takes two forms, each worse than the other. The first, a kind of quick-fix instant ungratification, is online, via the websites of specialist edible-plant nurseries: Edulis, Blackmoor, Ashridge and, my favourite, Mark Diacono’s Otter Farm. So delicious are their photographs, so alluring the descriptions, that I barely have to open one to fall into the abyss of need: surely it’s time I tried a pineappley Arctic raspberry? A Japanese ginger Crûg’s Zing? No idea, but I’m in. Name one good reason, other than money and space and time, I shouldn’t reward myself for having survived my life so far with an Orleans Reinette apple seedling? Plus a pollination partner: I don’t want to be cruel. Sweet chestnuts are the ideal forthcoming-Armageddon family food supply. One day Japanese pepper might keep me in, well, pepper. Luckily it’s too early even to think about tomato and cucumber seedlings from Simpson’s Seeds, but what about something hardier? It’s medically unwise to lack blueberries, and Otter Farm has a three-pack on special, plus Blue Honeysuckle, which is even better: blackcurrant-meets-blueberry flavoured, surfboard-shaped, heavy-cropping and, most compellingly of all, named Boreal Blizzard. I am as a lamb to the slaughter.

I do sometimes manage to save myself. If my ears are stopped with wax and the ropes hold firm, I can wrench myself away from my shopping basket, no poorer and only slightly ashamed. But then, by the law of something, I’ve saved money. For the cost of one intensely flavoured apricot tree of outstanding quality, say a Tomcot, which is so productive it could save me hundreds in dried apri…

No, sorry, I’m back. For the cost of a single tree, I could buy TWENTY ONE  packets of Siberian kale seeds, or lunchbox-sized cucumbers, or the greatest of all parsleys: Giant Italian flat-leaved. That’s over 9,400 plants: enough even for me.

But what’s that primal urge I’m now sensing, my ears pricking, whiskers a-twitch? I’ve done so well: only a cursory glance at Kings Seeds and Higgledy, for the most appealing-sounding flower seeds. I’ve emerged from a brush with Real Seeds, my personal Scylla and Charybdis, barely £30 down for a haul including four new types of beetroot (Kazakhstani, Swiss, Czech, the covetable Sanguina), a couple of one-off crowd-sourced guest varieties of mustard leaves, and a tomato, a “cross between Dr Carolyn Pink and Irish Gardeners Delight”, from “our late friend Tony Haig – mathematician, chess champion, astronomer”. It’s rare, well, rare-ish; I’d better hurry. I’d only dropped by for a quick look. Like Zammo in Grange Hill season nine, episode 22, I thought I could handle it.

It’s lunchtime, no, bedtime. I need to stop. I already have too many seeds to sow, and no spare soil to grow them. And yet, with that single word, “Italian”, my fate is sealed. I am drawn, like an iron filing to the Looney Tunes giant cartoon magnet, to the Franchi catalogue.

Franchi is my personal nemesis, my own private Idaho, my Waterloo. Its temptations are manifold. First, there’s the generosity: 6,000 seeds in every pack. Who cares, non-gardener may ask, but these aren’t mere theoretical salads: they’re my gateway to a perfect future, just as others imagine when they collect earrings, notebooks, trainers, wives.

Next, the varieties, with their hot Italian names: why munch Iceberg when you could stuff your salads with the Gigante di Bergamo escarole, edible pansies, leaves in cream, lime, burgundy, splotched and dappled, named after roses, orchids, monks’ beards? They have six kinds of bitter-sweet ball-shaped ruby radicchio; what monster wouldn’t want to try them all? Then how to resist their subtle and complex mixtures: Alpine lettuce; 12 types of basil? Or the prospect of interesting beans: the sulphur-coloured Zolfino noble bean or prawn-shaped yellow Anellino. A special combination of leaves selected for tortoises, all of which I’d fight them, slowly, for. These beautiful varieties are mostly endangered; it’s my moral duty to sow as many as possible. Yes, Sir David Attenborough: I’m doing it for you.

There is no escape. No walk, no café, not even the International Space Station can keep me from fantasies of growing my own coffee, wheat, chickpeas, scurvy-preventing Miner’s Lettuce. Going technology-free, completely acoustic, is my only hope. Time for a bath.

With, obviously, something to read. I’ll just grab my printed Franchi catalogue, and a pencil.