April
Hopefuly the weather will begin to get a little milder now and this is the time when you can really get going with your gardening jobs! This year we have the most wonderful display of Daffodils and now that the Tulips are peeping out of the soil, here are some other things you can be getting on with this month.
Flower Garden
- Start feeding established perennials
- Finish planting and dividing herbaceous perennials
- Take cuttings of bedding plants
- Sow hardy annuals and thin out seedlings sown in March
- Harden off violas, pansies, sweet peas and antirrhinums prior to planting out
- Harden off rooted cuttings
- Pot on container grown plants
- Plant alpines
- Deadhead bulbs
- Buy dahlia tubers and other summer flowering bulbs
- Cut back stems of summer and autumn flowering clematis
- Order summer bedding plants
- Cut down last year’s shoots on buddleia and lavatera – the video below shows you how to do this
In the Greenhouse
- Sow coleus seeds
- Pot arum lily tubers
- Plant begonias and gloxinias
- Prick out seedlings
- Watch for whitefly
- Pot up houseplants
- Take dahlia cuttings
- Open vents if it’s hot
- Order plants by post or on-line
Veggie Garden
- Start sowing Kale, Parsnip, Carrots and Broad beans directly into the ground
- Finish planting new fruit bushes
- Put up your bean poles
- Transplant tomato seedlings to individual pots. Still keep them inside
- Plant out Peas grown in guttering, sow more as you do and draw soil up around them as they grow
- Sow succession crops such as lettuce, radish, rocket, spring onions, peas etc every two weeks
- Sow some winter green such as Winter Cabbage and Sprouting Broccoli
- Clean up the strawberry bed; remove any dead or dying leaves
- Plant Brussels Sprouts and Spring Cabbage and Asparagus Crowns
General Advice
- Sprinkle fertiliser like sulphate of potash around fruit trees and bushes to promote better flowering and more fruits
- Cover beds with cloches to warm the soil before sowing seeds, and replace them after sowing to encourage germination
- Feed clumps of spring bulbs
- Fork over borders
- Tie in climbers
- Check that your lawnmower will start
- Trim winter flowering heathers
- Plant conifers and evergreen shrubs
- Tidy rock gardens and replace gravel
- Divide Hostas
- Sow hardy annuals in beds outside
- Repot houseplants