Top Tips for the Garden in April
Finally the sun is starting to shine and we can all spend more time in the garden this month especially with the long Easter weekend. To help you prioritise our top tips for the garden in April are:
- Prune established Spring-flowering shrubs such as Forsythia and Ribes sanguineum to rejuvenate them after flowering. Remove some of the oldest, woody growth that has just flowered, to the ground. This will encourage new growth for subsequent years.
- Camellias and Rhododendrons can also be pruned hard if necessary, once they have flowered, to keep them in shape or contain their size. Remember to dead head Rhododendrons and Azaleas where practical, to stop them setting seed. Reward the plants with a liquid feed of Sequestrene and a suitable mulch.
- Purchase a general fertilizer such as pelleted chicken manure and apply liberally to your borders before mulching. This will help to condition the soil and feed all of your plants now that they are beginning to grow away.
- Your local garden centre will have stocks of Summer bedding plants towards the end of this month, but protect the plants from frost, which can still be a threat. Early plantings should be grown-on in a greenhouse.
- If you have a greenhouse and grow your own tomatoes, these can be purchased from the garden centre now, along with growing bags and a suitable liquid feed. Gentle heat will still be required at night.
- Early potatoes can be planted now and the main-crops at the end of the month. Dig a trench and place well-rotted manure in the base, followed by a little soil. Lightly dust with fish blood and bone and mix with the soil, with the tines of your fork. Plant the potatoes and cover with soil. Reserve the rest of the soil to ‘earth up’ when the shoots begin to appear.
- French and Runner bean seed can be sown under cold glass towards the end of the month, to plant out in May once the threat of frost is over. Courgettes and other squashes can also be treated this way.
- Look out for the new supplies of herbaceous perennials, fresh in from the nursery this month. These plants are equally as useful in borders on their own, or mixed with shrubs as Summer colour.
- Remember to snap the seed heads off Tulips and late Daffodils as they finish flowering. Let the leaves die back naturally and remove once they are brown.
- Snowdrops can be divided now that they have finished flowering and before they die back for the year. Gently lift the clumps of bulbs by digging deeply under them with a fork. Split off the bulbs in clumps or singly and replant at the same depth to increase your colony. Alternatively, they make excellent presents to other gardeners.