April 2022

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
‘Winter is dead.’

-A.A. Milne

As I write this, April is nearly gone by, and May is just around the corner. I suppose I say this nearly every month, it is a busy month in the garden, but April is even more so. There is simply so much to do, all the winter jobs to finish, seeds to start, perennials to move and divide, new plantings to add, general clean up from winter, the list goes on and on. While we still can, and in fact did have this April, a bit of snow, hail and freezing winds, you can no longer dispute the arrival of Spring. In the course of the month, we go from a bit of green popping up here and there to a swelling of green growth, masses of daffodils and the opening of early tulips. I feel every day I am simply so excited to get up and out in the early morning, to drink in the bird song and to walk about the garden and see what grew up in the night, because that is how Spring feel, as if one good evening rain and some morning sun and the plants just spring forth. 

I love all these season, but there is something about Spring. Every flower is treasured, every bud swelling is rejoiced over, hope is in the very air, the whole world is teeming with energy. Spring feels full of magic and mystery. Spring feels so beautiful that I want to stop and drink it all in in slow long draughts, and also like a mad sprint where I feel the need to work in the garden every available hour of the day and a feeling of aways being behind, it is truly ecstasy, a rapturous madness. 

April Jobs

Moving & Dividing Perennials 

As your perennials come up in the garden, you may notice that some are very large clumps and are perhaps dying in the middle as the plant spreads, that tell tale sign mean you need to divide your plant. Now is a good time for many perennials to be divided (not grasses, wait until it is warmer) and moved around in the garden.

Use a good sharp transplanting shovel to get the plant up with a good root structure, and then decide how many times you will divide it. (Plants like Hosta, Sedums, Iris and Day Lillies can be divided many many times and will re grow fabulously) Just like pruning, you don’t want to hack away at the plant, but make strong, decisive, and clean cuts, think surgery again, which is why a sharp shovel is essential. 

Some plants need dividing at regular intervals to be healthy, others don’t, but either way, dividing is a great way to simply make more plants. A lot of plant matter we have are perennials I grew myself from seed or plants we have gotten (either bought or salvaged) and have since dived a number of times. So if you are looking to every year increase your plant stock dividing is a great method. 

Fertilize Roses

This month is the time to start feed your roses to help them grow strong and flower well. You want to wait until the leaves have opened but before they have fully opened, that way the nutrients will be available in the soil for the plants to take up. There are a number of organic rose feeds out there, I typically use Neptune Harvest products, I use their fish and seaweed at the early stages, then switch to Neptunes Harvest Rose and Flowering liquid fertilizer as the flower buds are forming.

Sow Seeds

For my same geographical region I have seen varying predictions for a last frost date, I recorded May 16th as the last frost date, from there we are just under 3 weeks until last frost. If you haven’t sown seeds yet, don’t worry, there is still time, but you best get on it! It may be too late to sow tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, but you can always try. But there are many other seeds that I am just sowing and some still to be sown in the next few weeks, so give it a go and start sowing! 

Clean up Perennial beds

As the new growth emerges, now is a great time to clear last years growth, we chop it up and add it to our compost pile along with leaves that have collected in corners around the garden. If you have a mower and it is a dry day and the materials are relatively dry, it is helpful to shred the material as it will break down fast in the compost pile. I like to wait until after I have planted things out to do a fresh layer of mulch, but it would also be perfectly fine to do so now and then just touch up  as needed. Personally, I love using the terra mulch at brick ends and I do as heavy as a layer as I can. But I have and do use wood chips as well, which can be got very economically. 

Plant Potatoes

This year, we chitted out some of the potatoes, and not others, I am honestly not sure if I have actually noticed a difference, so do our don’t, you will still have potatoes. But in either case, we will be planted them out this month and the beginning of next. We plant them in rows and make a deep trench, for planting, the ideas is  that as they grow, you keep mounding up until you have little potato hills, thus keep the tubers deep underground and away from any sunlight and increasing your yield. I love growing potatoes, it is really something else to go dig up some potatoes for dinner.

Pruning

The window is rapidly closing on the ideal time to prune, if you haven’t done so I would recommend doing it soon or chalking it up to one of those tasks you just didn’t get to this year, and you know what, your garden will be lovely either way.

Bulbs

If like me you want to relocate daffodils, or divide snow drops, or do something with any other bulb for that matter, wait to lift them from the garden until they have finished flowering. Then you can dig them up, and you can do one of two things. If you have a location in mind, you can plant them out in the garden, cut back their faded flowers but leave their foliage so they will continue store energy in the bulb for next years bloom. For bulbs like snowdrops, you can divide these clumps to spread them over a larger area. When digging these up, do so carefully as to not damage the small bulbs and then gentle pull them apart into smaller clumps using your hands. Plant them back out, cutting back the flower, but leaving all their leaves. 

Or, if you don’t know where you will plant them out, you can just put them in a pot with some garden soil and put them in an out of the way in a sunny place until their foliage dies back. This will ensure the plant gets all the energy it gets for next year. Once the foliage has died back, store them in a pot in a cool location, make sure they don’t get too wet, it is ok if they dry out, until you are ready to plant out in the fall. 

Lawn

Now is a good time to have a look at your lawn, if you have one. I personal, do not go for perfect, I go for overall green (not being vary particular to how many plants make up the green) and relatively to smooth so it is easy to walk on, kick a ball on or stretch out a blanket for reading a book or having a picnic. 

But to whatever degree you have a lawn and like your open green space, now is a good time to do some lawn repair if needed. Dead spots can be raked out, lightly dressed with compost and over seeded, topped with some salt marsh hay to stop the seed from drying out and watered in.