Peter’s Gardening Tips for April
A magical and spectacular time of year, Spring has definitely arrived and I heard my first Chiff-Chaffs last weekend.
Spring flowers to please the eyes, nose and senses, an explosion of colour, leaves and life! Daffs,Tulips and now bluebells all in flower together with Camellias, Rhododendrons, Pieris etc.
Willow Warbler, Blackcap also back from Africa to breed here. Orange tip butterflies hatching out, bees galore. I absolutely love it!
Pieris
Laurels are stunning this year covered in candle-like flowers, I have never seen so much flower. These flowers are great for the bees. The Laurel berries fruiting in early autumn are great for blackbirds, thrushes and for foxes, badgers, mice and voles and roosting birds. A great hedge – plant instead of a Leylandii conifer. They can be cut to the ground and will regrow nice and bushy. Good for regenerating a leggy tall hedge.
Lawns
Lawn care
Perk up your lawn with a feed, weed and mosskiller. Aerating the lawn is a must after the dreadful winter. This can be done by standing on a fork in a lawn and gently pulling back on the fork – not breaking the handle! The ground will lift abit and crack the surface so improving drainage and critically getting more air to the roots of the grass. This will help the grass to grow and reduce moss and algae. If your lawn is large forget doing the above by hand and hire a Lawn Aerating machine, either with solid tines or a slitting machine. After scarifying or aerating, any bare patches can be over-seeded with new grass seed lightly covered with fresh soil, and keep watered. If the whole lawn is looking thin, then over-seed the whole area, one handful of seed to the square yard/metre. A lawn spreader can be hired for using on larger areas.
Vegetables
This is THE month for seed sowing, check out the packets of seed and veg planners, pretty well most can be sown, direct sown into the ground.
Clear weeds, tickle over the surface with a fork, rake out lumps, break up with the rake head laid flat with the ground and tamp up and down crushing the lumps. Then rake to a fine crumbly texture or tilth. A wooden scaffold board is now great to work off. Create a straight edge where you want the row of the seeds to grow. Stand on the board and use a trowel or the back of the rake and draw this along the side of the board edge creating a shallow furrow in the soil. Now you can seed sow, there is so much choice from carrots, lettuce, radish, beetroot, and spinach. Sow peas, broad beans, white cabbages, and broccoli. Plant out onion sets and shallots. Cover where you can with Enviromesh to keep bugs off.
spinach
In the greenhouse, plant courgette, marrow, squash, tomato, cucumber, and pumpkin seeds. Always use fresh seed compost and warm it up, avoid using cold, wet compost! If you have a heated propagator you will achieve better and quicker germination, a great investment.
Plant out potatoes, remember to plant at least 6” deep, adding potato fertiliser or growmore. Potatoes are hungry plants. Once the leaves come through be prepared to cover with horticultural fleece for frost protection.
Others for seed sowing include cauliflowers, brussel sprouts, cabbages, purple sprouting, broccoli – these all need a lot of room to grow, read the packets! Celery, ridge cucumber, parsnip, climbing beans, runner beans, French beans leave until the end of the month and sow indoors, this very wam weather is very temporary!! A shock to the system and some nasty frosts for next week, be prepared!
Jobs to do
Flower Garden – Sweet peas can be planted out into the ground or a large planter. Put in bamboo canes or string supports to support and climb up. Use a good quality compost for containers with John Innes No 2 and combine with multi-purpose compost 50/50 split. Pinch out growing tip if plants are too tall back to 4-5 leaves.
Sweet Peas
Bulbs – Take off faded flowers and the seed pod on the stalk especially daffodils. If you want Snowdrops and smaller bulbs to spread leave them on. You can dig up large clumps of Snowdrops and split them up into smaller groups. Re-plant where you want to move them to straight away.
Dahlia Tubers – Time to check and pot up into fresh compost. Any soft or rotten tubers need to be cut off and thrown away, water and place in greenhouse or a light windowsill.
Begonia Tubers – These can be started up again. A tip I was given years ago is to place the corm on fresh damp compost upside down, convex upwards! Leave like this for 2 weeks , and when you lift off the corm and look at the concave side there should be several buds – 3 or more. Now you can plant them the right way up as usual, do let me know how you get on?
Garden Lillies – If you want scent go for the oriental and longiflorum types. Great for summer colour, and plant in containers a handful of gravel under each bulb. John Innes/multi-purpose mix again, placing it 6” down in the plot or plant in the ground again with gravel or coarse grit under the bulb.
Water and feed plants in containers, and any newly planted plants. March has been particularly dry and it looks like April too.
RHS Wisley
Please make sure you get out and about and visit gardens open under the National Garden Scheme, RHS gardens, National Trust and historic privately owned, be inspired and use your senses. Stop, look and listen and sniff. Have a good inhale of Viburnums burwoodii, Narcissus/Daffodils, and some Magnolias. Sit on a park bench, lean against a tree and watch nature around you – a queen bumble bee looking for a mouse hole in the ground to start her brood. Birds nest building or feeding their young, listen to the birdsong, look out for butterflies, and check local ponds for tadpoles. Spring is over in a flash so its good to make the most of it when you can, enjoy it and explore beyond your neighbourhood.
If you have a window take a trip to your local garden centre and purchase some herbs from seed, parsley, chives, coriander, dill, basil and rocket.
Don’t forget Silversurfers can get 15% discount on seeds, bulbs and plants, from Crocus.co.uk until the end of April. On-line purchases only.
Weather Stories and Foke Lore
‘A dry March and a dry May portend a wholesome summer if there be a showery April between’!
‘April showers bring forth May flowers’
‘Rain on Good Friday and Easter Day, a good year for grass and bad for hay’
’When April blows his horn, It’s both good for hay and corn’
From Two tramps in Mudtime by Robert Frost
‘The sun was warm but the wind was chill you know how it is with an April day, when the sun is out and the wind is still, you’re one month on in the middle of May. But if your so much as dare to speak, a cloud come over the sunlit arch, and wind comes off a frozen peak, and you’re two months back in the middle of March’
Happy Gardening to you all from a frustrated gardener Another 6 weeks on crutches!
Kind regards, Hop Along Pete.
Please feel free to make any comments or leave any questions below …
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