I have missed dirt in the last couple of weeks away. Literary festivals are pretty devoid of dirt. Well, of the "plant in now" variety.

It meant I had to rely on tried and trusted ways to combat severe Garden Deprivation Syndrome.

Botanic gardens
These are the most reliable of cures, available in all capital cities and many regional ones. You even get to see people gardening there if you are lucky. Or pruning, if you are even luckier and it is the time of year when prunings may become cuttings. Engage the municipal gardener in dirty conversation (the soil type, not the other) and you may well get the basis for a new bed of roses, hydrangeas and even tricky-to-root natives, if you have some rooting powder. (Plant roots. Some readers, honestly… ) See a good book on the subject.

Community gardens
Community gardens attract avid gardeners; I have yet to meet an avid gardener who doesn't want a hand with the weeding or turning the compost. Look admiringly at their radishes and ask if they'd like a hand. Note: it helps to look elderly, female and harmless though, on the other hand, if you are none of those, who knows what romance may bloom among the cabbages and leeks?

Old graveyards
No, not for gardeners who have a fetish for tidiness, or possibly not for the gardening side of you at all. But if you love weeds sliding up through the concrete or heads of rare orchids that have survived between the plots, spring in old graveyards can be magic. Add the inscriptions and the stories that might lie behind them and you have a wonderful hour or so waiting for you.

Foreshore or river boardwalks

These often have interesting landscaping on the landward side, of the "this plant will never die no matter how much you neglect it nor become a weed either" kind, which are useful to know about and be able to assess.

As a last resort – and especially in resorts with landscaping – ask the hotel if they'd like their pot plants pruned and watered or window boxes planted out.

Or stay in B and Bs – ones where the owners live on the premises. B and B owners are usually delighted to have a guest offer to prune their roses, weed their vegies or trim the lavender. They may even make you lavender muffins in exchange.

Do not shilly shally with shallots
Shallots epitomise French cooking: subtle, sweet, adding the je ne sais qua to cooking and taking a quarter of your lifetime to peel enough to make a difference. Once a year, perhaps, make shallot confit with the tiny bulbs. But otherwise, leave them in the ground, forever. Plant them now, while they are still dormant; let them sprout their thin and tender green shoots, so much more delicate than spring onions; pick them once a fortnight or so, till over the years the shallots multiply and you get a great gorgeous patch of them, enough to pick every day.

Snip them with scissors – much faster than chopping; use them liberally whenever you'd use parsley or spring onions or, indeed, shallot bulbs. Gourmets swear they can tell the difference between red and yellow ones, but I can't or, rather, I can tell which ones are grown in full sun from those grown in semi-shade, or harvested in a drought or wet season. The actual variety is less important to the flavour than how they are grown.

For those in the mood to plant blobby things rather than tiny seeds, this is also the time to hurriedly plant artichoke suckers, rhubarb roots, Jerusalem artichokes and good old spuds, but do not plant the sprouting ones from the back of the cupboard that may be virus or fungus affected and so infect your soil for years. Buy seed potatoes that are guaranteed safe.

Yuck to yacon
Yacon are large South American roots, easily grown in full sun or dappled shade, which is the place to leave them, vigorously growing in the garden. They sound a delight, crisp roots, slightly sweet when cooked, but I have never met a yacon that I liked. Crisp celery yes. Crisp carrots, definitely. But crisp thinly sliced or even grated yacon looks, feels and tastes like a mutated potato or sweet potato that stubbornly refuses to soften. The chooks like them, though only if there is nothing more interesting to peck at.

This week I am:

* slashing back frost-burnt ginger lilies and cannas;

* rejoicing over the sudden profusion of red hellebore flowers;

* planting melon, cucumber and tomato seeds in seed beds above the hot spot above the paving;

* absent-mindedly hauling out spring weeds as I pass them;

* restraining Bryan from pruning the rambling roses until they have bloomed; and

* putting parsley, parsley, parsley into everything to stop it going to seed.