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