April is the first month for serious outdoor gardening! Here’s a list of tasks to help get you off to a good start.
- Plant spinach, peas, onions, shallots, garlic and turnips as early in the month as soil and weather conditions permit.
- Seed bare spots in the lawn early in the month.
- Prune ornamental grasses.
- Prune your roses, except the climbing varieties.
- Remove the winter mulch from roses after the middle of the month.
- Divide summer and autumn blooming perennials.
- Rake winter debris from your lawn before mowing.
- Start celosia, cosmos, marigold, annual phlox and zinnia seeds indoors at mid month.
- Repot your houseplants; begin fertilizing them.
- Fertilise established trees and shrubs.
- Harden-off or condition transplants prior to moving them to the garden.
- Plant bedding plants of cabbage, broccoli and collards the third week.
- Direct seed beets, carrots, leaf lettuce, mustard greens, bok choy and radishes around the middle of the month.
- Plant strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, and small fruit plants as early in the month as possible.
- Plant gladiolus corms.
- Plant daylilies, delphiniums, painted daisies and phlox.
- Remove spent flowers from spring flowering bulbs.
- Sharpen the lawn mower blade. Mow the lawn no shorter than 2 1/2 inches.
- Sow hardy annual flowers like calendula, clarkia, larkspur and sweet pea.
- Turn the compost pile and keep it moist.
- Protect well-developed strawberry buds from frost injury by applying straw mulch when freezing temperatures are forecast.
- Start aubergine, pepper and tomato seeds indoors at the middle of the month.
- Do not fertilise newly planted trees or shrubs.
- Have a soil sample analyzed.
- Prune early flowering shrubs immediately after flowering and before new growth begins.
- Have a great April!
Adapted from “Seeds of Hope… Harvest of Pride!” – Gardener’s Checklist, www.bright.net/~gardens/index.html