Yey, it is April again and you now need to be shifting yourself up a gear as spring starts to find its stride. The frosts are few and far between, the temperatures are slowly rising and the ground is nice and soft – perfect for weeds so time to get ahead of the little rascals and set out your stall for the season.
Things to do:
- Now is a good time to get onto deal with any issues with the lawn so scarify, feed, seed, roll and mow.
- If you are wanting to plant an evergreen hedge then the next couple of months are good for this project.
- Re-pot (take out, replace surrounding compost, put back in), pot up (move on to a bigger container) or top dress (replace top 2-3cm of potting compost) shrubs in containers to give them a boost.
- Divide clump forming perennials (e.g. geraniums) to (a) keep them under control and (b) give to friends and neighbours!
- Re-plant your Dahlia tubers if you took them up at the end of last season. Be sure to check them for mould discarding any that aren’t firm and or are furry.
- Think about your pest defences – slugs, snails and the like are forming their battle plans so you need to be several steps ahead of these devious marauders.
- Plant those early potatoes you have been carefully chitting for months taking up valuable window space – or just buy a bag of seed potatoes and plant them.
- Dead-head bulbs that have flowered – this helps focus their efforts into building themselves up for next year.
- Get your vegetable sowing started – tender (e.g. courgettes, cucumbers) are started indoors as it is still a bit cold for them whilst the tuftyer ones (yes “tuftyer” is a real word) such as onions can be planted right now.
- Take a moment to stop and admire the Forsythia and Magnolia flowers which you can spot on almost every street.
What others suggest
There are plenty of other things you can be doing this month and below are links to a few of those with suggestions:
- What to do now (April) – Gardener’s World
- What to do in the garden in April – Thompson & Morgan
- April – RHS
- What to do in your garden in April – Suttons
- Fruit & Vegetable Growing Guide for April – Allotment Garden
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