It is cold, it is wet, it is miserable, it's shocking to get down outside, but it's February already and there's jobs to be done. Springtime will be honest, before we know it and these are my top five jobs I'm going to get done this month. So the first job on today's list is to do a bit of pruning of the apple trees and this tree here is only about a year old so there's not loads to do, but on some bigger order trees there'll be lots of things to be getting on with. What a couple of top tips, first of all, your tools. When you are moving from one tree to another, please, please, please clean your tools in between. Use a little bit of methylated spirits or perhaps some rubbing alcohol on the blades. So this tree has got any disease, especially something disastrous like canker or something like that. You're not going to take it from one tree to another and cause problems further along the line. Next thing is let's have a look at what I was thinking about pruning on this particular tree. And what I want to be able to do is imagine, you're going to use your imagination a little bit here, they're in the height of summer, this is going to be covered in leaves all over it. There's not going to be much gaps, no air flow, but we need to create air flow. It's just going to cause problems for the tree later on in its life. So I'm looking at this branch here in particular, if you can see that on the camera and that one start to grow in towards the other branches and it's not a lot of air flow here and I don't know whether this is just something, whether it's an old wives' tail or something. Old and hot when TSA are what. But the general rule of thumb is you want a gap in between your branches that a bird can fly through. So you're matching a bird coming in and around your trees. You want a gap between the branches and again you could use your imagination here for the summer when this is going to be full of leaves and you want that air flow and you want that gap to be able to get through. So the only one really that needs to come out here is this one. So look, if that a quick snip, look at rid of it and that's the job done. If, however, you have a bigger tree than me and bigger branches under the top tip, if you were using a pruning saw and you've got a big thick branch like if you look at the trunk here on this one, if it's as thick as that, when you're sawing the top of your branch, what'll happen is it'll start to snap the weight of it, it will start to bring it down and then it'll peel the bark off underneath it. The cause problems, like spows, the inner of the tree and disease can get in and cause problems there. So do a tiny little undercut with your pruning saw first, then saw from the top when you meet that undercut, that branch, whatever you've pruned, it's just going to come straight off there. I job number two on the list while we're in the fruit area as that is to prune any of the autumn fruiting raspberries that you might have and I'm really going to be quite harsh with the way our prunes and I'm going to go right down to the ground so we pick this one here and we're going to come right down to the bottom of the ground and prune it all the way through. I mean that might seem harsh to take that whole thing out but that's not going to fruit this year, this one's dead, that one's done, what it's going to do is going to create space in there for all those new shoots coming up later in the year when they start up here, loads of space, lots of new fruit, top job onto number three. And speaking of job number three, here's another one to be getting up with and this one's a little bit manky compared to the others and that is having a look around for early signs of slugs, snails and indeed their eggs and they're like to hide in certain places at this time of year. Now it is a little bit, it's just temperature, start to creep up a little bit from freezing so they will start to appear but they're like to hide in areas like this. So where I've got the weed fabric down, I've got bits of wood that are lovely and damp at this time of year, it is raining, it is perfect for them. They will be under the stones, under the bricks, they will love the wood of the raised beds over there and there's only one thing for it. You're going to have to get down, have a look underneath and see what you can see. You know what we all know, what slugs and snails look like but make sure you know what their eggs look like, there's little white balls that you want to get rid of nice and early in the season that will help you later on in the season because if you have loads of slugs and snails, if they breed, if they hatch, it's going to be a much bigger problem and the slugs and snails will help themselves to all your beautiful crops like at some sort of it all you want, buffet. Thankfully for number 405 we are in the sanctuary of the greenhouse and we've got two left to go. The last one might be a little bit controversial to some people but we'll see, we'll see how that goes. So watch out for that one. First of all, potting on those plants that you sold last month, some my little chili plants are just about ready to go and the onions as well are ready to be poured on. But one thing to remember with this one, it is very easy to think, I'll make things easy for myself. I'll pick a nice big cell tray to put them in, then I won't have to worry about potting them up in the future. But that is a mistake, the plants will suffer. Do you want to pick something that's about the right size? So for these little chilies, I'll show you them, then you can see them there, they've just got their true leaves on the top there and are ready to go on. I am going to use a cell tray that is about this size you can see there. This is one of the huge container wise ones, they are absolutely marvellous for this sort of thing and potting on. It's very, very easy to pick up this big behemoth and think, yes I'll check it in there and that will be it fine right up until they need to grow. But no, that is not the right thing to do. Please do not rush, please take your time, keep your plants moving from one size to the next to the next and to the next. I'm last but not least the one that some people seem to think can be a little bit controversial sometimes and that is, should you cheat or shouldn't you cheat your seed videos? I am very much in the camp of cheating seed potatoes. It keeps me out of trouble at this time of year, it makes me feel busy, makes me feel a little sick of doing something in the garden when there is not loads and loads and loads of other stuff to be getting on with. But I just got this bag of seed potatoes, only about an hour ago, so the fresh out of the shop, B&M, bog standard, pent lead javelin, a really good solid first early. But as you can see there, they have already started the cheat inside the packet. So we might as well take control of that situation and do it properly. So we've got our friend the egg carton which is the perfect holder for seed potatoes to get them chitting. So we're just going to pop them in there like the eggs would have been, the chips are going to point upwards and this, this isn't going to stay in here, it's not going to stay in the greenhouse at the moment because it's still a bit cold in here. Temperatures are forecasting negatives next week and the week after. So this is going to come back into the house with me, it's going to go in the spare room so the heating is not in the spare room. So that's probably about 10ish degrees in there which is just about right. This is going to sit on the windowsill, the window in the spare room at the front of the house faces north, so it's not getting loads of direct sunlight but it is getting lots of natural light to get the seed potatoes chitting, get them on the go nice and early. But that is me done for today, thank you for watching folks and I will see you on the next one.