Jackie French: Perfect roses in six steps

2. Ignore black spot and any other rose problem, except the ones that can be solved by the finger squishing method above. What are you, a rose obstetrician? Let them have their offspring (i.e. the roses or the seeds that might follow) all by themselves.

3. The more tucker you give the bushes, the more flowers you will receive. (This works for writers too. Feed all writers large amounts of chocolate and mangoes and iced watermelon for the most lavish over-production.) Mulch roses, then feed every fortnight while the bushes have buds on them. Elderly chook manure is excellent – i.e. well-matured chook manure, not necessarily but also including manure from elderly chooks, who earn their keep with their rose-feeding droppings even when they stop providing eggs. If you have no chook manure, try the pelleted variety, or even artificial rose food, which may help turn the soil into concrete but probably won't if you only ever put it over lavish layers of mulch. Pea straw or lucerne hay are excellent, but so is sugar cane mulch, with less chance of new weeds being added to your garden. It has fewer nutrients but that won't matter if you scatter plant food over it. Scatter according to directions on the packet, or if they come directionless from the chook, pretend you are scattering icing sugar on a cake. Little and often is best.

4. Humans gobble with our mouths. Roses get their nutrients from their roots and, to a lesser extent, their leaves. If you want to cosset your roses – which will give you extra sniffing the roses time – spray them with a seaweed-based foliar fertiliser (which has the added bonus of helping your rose bushes keep the fungal curses like black spot and rust at bay).

5. Just like dogs, roses fit their owners. If you have a small neat garden, you need small neat roses. If your greenery is large and rambling, go big. I mean massive. We mostly have big roses, rambling up trees or over the chook shed, or giant hybrid musks, whose scent can fill the living room, wafting down on a hot day.

6. Prune. Not today, not next month, except by picking roses and if they have then, their long stems. But in winter take your secateurs in one hand and a pruning guide in the other – or a cup of tea if you already know how to prune – and give them anything from a light haircut to removing two thirds of their growth, to promote more growth and so more flowers the next year. I've only pruned our Climbing Albertine once in 30 years and that was because it collapsed over the gate's arch and we needed to hack it back so visitors could reach the house. But hybrid teas respond to regular and expert pruning, and all roses need the dead wood trimmed out. There's still a lot of dead Climbing Albertine tucked away behind the greenery that I'm not even going to attempt to get out, but the bush would be better for it, if I did. But with our large garden we can afford to let our ramblers ramble, covering up the brown stuff. The smaller the garden, the more you need to prune and weed and feed. And not just roses.

This week I'm:

* watching the early planted parsley go to seed… bother!;

* enjoying the first red dahlias and the first agapanthus (non-seeding varieties) blooming;

* realising that the possums have left us some loquats!;

* worrying about the golden whistler singing around the house all day, without sign of a mate – anyone know a single female golden whistler?;

* eating peaches, peaches, peaches; and

* muttering that none, repeat none, of the melon seeds have germinated so I have bought new seed and crossed my fingers.

Scent is one of the most profound human senses. Say 'the day smelt of dust and snake' and the reader sees the world beyond the page.

A room that smells of flowers and spices feels comfortable, which is why most people who visit our house after I've just ground up the cinnamon bark say, 'What a lovely room', ignoring the cobwebs and the holes in the sofa.

I first tried to make scent when I was six years old, soaking rose petals in water. It turned into a squalid mess (lilies that fester really do smell ranker than weeds). There are many methods to extract fragrance, from distilling to layering/curing in rock salt These are the easiest.

NB: Do not try soaking in water. Even scattering rose petals in the baths causes a mess in the plug hole and slimy bits on your towel.

What to use: You need very, very perfumed roses to capture their scent. Rose geranium (Pelargonium spp) lemon-scented geranium (ditto), rosemary, English lavender (other varieties can be a bit camphor like) and lemon verbena are good plants to begin with. I love a mix of rose petals, lavender and lemon verbena leaves.

Wine glass distilling – used in Good Queen Bess' time. This only works with plants with a high oil content (like rosemary or lavender). Fill a wine glass with herbs. Cover with a plate. Turn over and leave in the sun all day. Wipe the (very) thin film of oil from the glass with a (new and unused) sponge. Keep the sponge in a glass and repeat for a month. By the end of the month the sponge should be fragrant and you can soak it in oil, alcohol, melted clarified dripping or even water to extract the scent.

Scented oil: Cover scented petals or perfumed leaves in almond oil. Leave in a warm place for 2-24 hours, then repeat with more and more fresh petals. You may need between six and fifty repeats of the process for a good scent, and will lose most of the oil to soggy plant material in the process. Use within a month as the scent may change without a fixative.

Scented alcohol: Try the procedure above but this time with vodka. Again use within a month and keep the scent in a cool dark place.

1. Roast lemon chicken

Time taken to cook: about 40 minutes, but add another half an hour the first time you make it. You'll get quicker with practice.

Serve with: Mashed potatoes, salad.

This looks complicated, but once you have done it once it's easy (which is the case with almost any meal).

It won't taste quite like mine, as I use home-grown herbs that you can't buy, like winter savoury and garlic sage, plus home-grown lemons that have lots of flavour and fresh garlic that tastes a bit different to supermarket garlic too. I also use organic, free-range chicken (or more likely roosters) that have more flavour than supermarket birds. But it will still be very good.

I have changed the recipe slightly to make up for the things you won't be able to get unless you are making it here.

You need:

1 small chicken, fresh or frozen, i.e. size 10-12. If you are using size 14-22, use twice as much of everything else (but cook a small bird before you try the larger one).
1 large carton Campbell's chicken stock, not salt-free
juice of three large lemons, but have another three on hand in case it doesn't taste lemony enough
2 heaped tablespoons of brown sugar
1 bunch fresh thyme (you can buy this at the supermarket in the herbs section) and 1 bunch summer savoury if you can get it
1 bulb garlic, each clove peeled – at least 10 cloves
1 tablespoon of cornflour

Defrost the chicken in the sink overnight or during the day if you're using a frozen bird.

Turn it on its breast – the meaty bit – and cut it in half along the backbone. You can do this with a bread saw or other serrated knife or kitchen scissors or even poultry shears… or ask a large male to just bash its backbone for you till it snaps.

Spread the chicken out in an oven pan, with the skin on the outside. It'll now be a large flat chicken. This helps it cook much faster and be more tender and not as dry. It also allows the flavour to seep in.

Lift the chicken up again and put all the cloves of garlic under it.

Put the oven pan with the chicken and garlic in the oven. Turn it onto the highest setting.

Cook for half an hour.

It should now be darkish brown on top. If it isn't, cook till it is. If it's black I'm sorry – you have a very hot oven and it may only have needed 15 to 20 minutes.

Turn off the oven. Use an oven mitt or a tea towel to lift the pan and chicken onto the top of the stove.

The chicken will have stuck to the pan with brown burnt-like bits. Don't worry. You want this – it gives flavour.

Put in the other ingredients except the cornflour and the water.

Put the whole pan, chicken and all, onto low heat and stir every minute or so, trying to scrape up the chicken from the pan and all the crispy bits. They'll gradually get loose as they soak in the liquid.

Keep stirring and simmering for about 20minutes. If it goes dry at any spot, add more stock or water. It should be at least as deep as the first joint of your thumb.

By now the garlic should be soft; it more or less dissolves in the gravy. Don't worry if it's not quite dissolved – a few distinct bits taste good.

When the chicken is loose and about twenty minutes has passed, mix the cornflour into the cold water and stir to dissolve. Add it quickly to the sauce, stirring fast. This will thicken the sauce. You can now fish out the bunches of thyme and savoury, or leave them there.

Turn the stove as low as possible.

Add the juice of another lemon if it's not lemony enough.

When the white from the cornflour turns transparent and the sauce is thickish, it is ready.

To serve, put in a casserole at 200C and heat for 20 minutes. Otherwise serve it as it is: or turn off the heat, keep the flies off by putting it back in the oven, then turn the heat on in an hour or two when everyone is ready to eat.

1 chicken, thawed
2 onions, peeled
1 bulb garlic, unpeeled
1 spud per person, peeled or not
1 hunk pumpkin per person, seeds removed, peeled
1 parsnip per person, peeled
½ sweet potato per person, peeled

Put the onions and garlic inside the chicken. Put the chicken in a roasting pan. Arrange the veg around it. Put the roasting pan in the oven at 200C.

Cook for an hour. Wiggle the leg with tongs. If the chook is browned and the leg feels like you can pull it out, it's done. If not, cook longer.

When cooked take pan out of the oven. Pour off any fat – not into the sink or you'll block it. I pour onto stale bread to give to the chooks. Otherwise pour into an old mug, let solidify and throw away.

Mix one tablespoon of cornflour into one large carton chicken stock. Put the tray on the top of the stove, pour in the stock, stir a bit so the flour doesn't sink to the bottom. As it boils, stir up the bits from the bottom. When the gravy is thickish and transparent – you'll see what I mean – serve out the veg and cut up the chook. Pour the gravy over it and the veg. Or just pile it all onto a giant platter and let everyone help themselves.

Note: This all reheats well in gravy.

As above, but put two big bunches of rosemary at the bottom of the oven. Their fumes will flavour the meat and veg. Don't add them directly to the dish – too strong.

Place chicken in a deep oven-proof casserole.

Place chicken in a deep oven-proof casserole dish. Place in oven and roast for one hour.

Put pot on stove and bubble till the stock is reduced by half.