Jobs to do April

Its April and already Spring is well underway, the Daffodils are slowly going over, the cherry blossom is in full bloom and the magnificent display of magnolia cheers up any grey day. Now is the time if you haven’t already to get out and about into your garden to prepare for the delights of summer.

1) Sweet Peas can be sown directly into the soil now so they will flower later than the ones that were sown earlier under glass.

2) Plant out your summer flowering bulbs and tubers directly into your borders or containers such as Dahlia, Canna, Gladious.

3) On your veggie plots hoe off weed seedlings to prevent them spreading and or taking over your veggie plot and garden. However just be careful about perennial weeds such as dandelions as these will re soot from the cuttings of the hoed mother plant.

4) Re pot your houseplants that have outgrown their pots.

5) Be on the look out for aphid attacks, get them now before they multiply, remember they are born pregnant. For the non squeamish of us squish them if not use an insecticide spray or washing up liquid and water in a spray bottle.

6) Tie in new growth for climbers such as Clematis and Honeysuckle to a supporting wall or trellis.

7) Plant your potatoes, first early, second early and main crop, remember to earth them once new shoots appear.

8) Finish dividing your perennials.

9) You can now start to sow directly in to prepared drills carrots, turnips, peas, beans, beetroot, radish, spinach and lettuce.

10) Prune Chaenomeles and Forsythia after they have finished flowering.

11) From the end of the month watch out for caterpillar like larvae of gooseberry, they will and do every year defoliate our redcurrents, and gooseberrys but they also attack whitecurrents. For some reason they don’t touch the blackcurrants or blackberrys but that might just be our larvae.