I ALWAYS delay pruning certain fruit trees until they are in full bloom.

This allows me to cut off surplus or badly placed branches, which after trimming, are ideal for indoor decoration.

Most fruit trees overproduce, forcing us to thin fruit clusters to ensure a decent-sized and much tastier harvest.

Blossom time pruning is also when the first leaf buds are sprouting, so it effectively reins in over-vigorous growth at a crucial time.

Right now, all pruning wounds heal rapidly so help keep diseases at bay.

Fruit trees that flower profusely in spring include Japanese and European plums, apples, pears — especially nashi fruit — and peaches.

I do have a preference for nashi blossom because it is so intensely white, dense and young, heavily laden branches last well in heavy vases.

Easy-bleed trees such as walnuts are best pruned in late summer while non-productive male kiwifruit vines can be pruned hard in late spring, ­always after flowering.

Spring is a great wake-up time in all parts of the garden.

We can just about plant or sow virtually any plant because the soil pulsates with warmth and life.

Start thinning apricots while still very small to avoid overload and crop failure next year.

Spray apple tree foliage with a weak mixture of hydrated lime and water to control scab disease.

Hang pheromone traps from apple trees for codling moth control. Tie down those upwards-reaching, still-flexible branches on Granny Smith apple trees.

I hang weights — bags of stones — close to branch tips and over the next few months these wasteful, often barren branches bend down and start forming fruit spurs.

In the vegetable patch, every seed sown or seedling planted over the next few weeks will be up and cropping through most of summer and autumn.

Why not seize this opportunity to grow the most nutritious food of all, the organic vegetables produced in our own backyards?

Bush and climbing beans thrive in sweet soil with lots of decomposed organic matter forked in.

Don’t bother using high-nitrogen bird manure or pelletised chook droppings because these legumes can extract it from soil atmosphere.

When the initial growth of bush and climbing bean plants become checked by low temperatures, they remain half-stunted and poor producers over summer.

So in cool districts where the soil is still cold, delay sowing summer beans until well into November when warm conditions give them the flying start they need.

Don’t waste money buying punnets of bean and pea seedlings because these weak, lanky plants hate being transplanted and are a waste of space. They either crop poorly or, if too big, just collapse and die.

Tomato seedlings always thrive in soil enriched with sheep or pulverised cow manure but make sure the soil is warm enough before planting.

The main killers of young tomato plants are chilly night winds and overwatering.

Add a good pinch of sulphate of potash to the soil around each seedling.

This firms leaves to provide disease resistance and encourage better flowering for earlier fruit production.

If sweet corn seeds are directly sown into well-manured, sweet, well-warmed soil, the first green shoots will be up and growing in 10 days.

Don’t be tempted into buying overcrowded punnets of sweet corn seedlings: these also transplant badly and crop poorly.

Sow seeds or plant out very small seedlings of pumpkin, zucchini and winter squash into soil heavily enriched with ancient, fully-rotted manure, especially chook droppings.

Directly sow seeds of carrots, parsnips, turnips, beetroot and swedes for best results, always in preference to those risky seedlings on sale.

Spring onions, celery and kohlrabi seedlings grow best in well-drained beds, which were manured for other crops last spring.

Sow seed or plant small seedlings of brassicas, lettuces and silverbeet into highly-fertile soil.

To keep leaf vegetables moving, treat them to monthly feeds of extra-weak fish emulsion.

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