Jobs for April

General;

  • Leave the door and vents open of your greenhouse on sunny days to encourage sturdy and stocky plants.

  • Mulch borders with well rotted manure or compost. Take care not to cover emerging perennials.

  • Take softwood cuttings of deciduous shrubs later in the month e.g hydrangeas, lavatory, buddleja.

  • Prune shrubs after flowering e.g forsythia, winter flowering honeysuckle, chaenomeles, to two or three buds from the base.

  • Deadhead daffodils but allow the leaves to die down naturally to feed the bulbs.

  • Now is a good time to move evergreen shrubs and trees, as long as the ground is not dry or waterlogged.


Fruit & Vegetables;

  • Potato tubers can be planted now.

  • Sow short rows of vegetable seeds at intervals of seven - ten days to avoid a glut.

  • If you have forced your rhubarb, harvest stems at eight - twelve inches long. Mulch around the crown with well - rotted manure afterwards and don't harvest again until 2024, as forcing weakens the plant.

  • Feed fruit trees in mid to late April.

  • Sow frost tender vegetables such as runner and French beans, courgettes and pumpkins on a sunny windowsill or in a heated propagator.


Wildlife;

  • If you have space for a mini meadow, sow wildflower seeds in pots, grow on, and plant out in the summer.

  • Dandelions are a good source of nectar for pollinators. Don't let them seed if you don't want more, but enjoy the flowers along with the insects that visit them.

  • Add plants that will provide valuable seed for garden birds in the autumn. Good choices include teasel, sedums, globe thistle, miscanthus and verbascum.

  • eep feeding garden birds throughout spring. Peanuts should only be given in a bird feeder as fledglings can choke on them.

  • If you haven't room for a garden pond, consider making a container pond using an old sink, stone trough or metal tank. Make sure the container is watertight and place in a sunny spot. Pile up logs against one side of the container for accessibility for creatures to reach the pond, and also create a sloping pile of stones or bricks. Fill with water and add small plants such as frogbit, water forget me not, miniature water lily and oxygenates e.g hornwort and water milfoil.

Gwennan Rees