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Gardening Tips for April

By Joe Daniels

Seasonal tips:

• Determine if your soil is ready to work by taking a handful and squeezing it. If it crumbles, then it is ready to plant. If not, wait several days and try again.
• Cut and remove weeds near the garden to help prevent plant virus diseases. Clean out hiding places where slugs live.

Houseplants:

• Rinse and dust off leaves with a gentle spray of room temperature water.
• Time to repot any plants that have outgrown their pots. Generally, pot sizes are increased by a 1" diameter at each repotting.
• Rather then continually increasing the size of the pot to accommodate an even larger plant, sometimes it makes more sense to divide an overlarge plant into several smaller plants and pot them up individually. Now you are thinking what to do with all the new potted up plants...some hints....give them away to your friends, donate them to a library, post office, retirement home, school - or save them for the Delaware County Master Gardeners May plant giveaway.
• Begin fertilizing plants again.

Bulbs:

• After flowering, fertilize bulbs you are naturalizing, dig up ones you are growing as annuals. Do not cut the foliage of spring bulbs for arrangements or even after flowering, let the foliage die naturally. Please do not tie up the foliage with rubber bands or braid the foliage.
• Start tuberous begonias and caladiums indoors for later planting outdoors.
• Label areas where bulbs are overcrowded so that they can be dug up and separated in July. Overcrowding will reduce flowering.

Vegetable Gardens:

• Fertilize the vegetable garden before planting.
• Plant asparagus and rhubarb now.
• Start sowing cool-season vegetables (peas, carrots, beets, radishes, lettuce, spinach).
• Set out transplants of cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli and collards.
• Start seed indoors for summer crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant).

Lawns:

• Seed bare patches.
• Cool season grasses can still be seeded. Keep the seeded areas moist to allow germination. (The mix recommended for this area is 70% Kentucky bluegrass, 20% perennial ryegrass, and 10% fine fescue).
• Before you begin cutting, replace the blade on your mower. An old mower blade is going to tear your grass and put a lot of stress on it.
• Never cut more than a third of a blade of grass (in one pass). That means if your lawn grows to a small jungle in the spring, trim the grass slowly until you get it to the length you would like.
• It has been suggested to use four step fertilization products available at most hardware stores. But remember to follow the directions.

Perennials, Biennials, and Annuals:

• Fertilize as growth begins.
• Gradually remove winter mulch.
• Continue to divide and transplant.
• Plant cool season annuals (pansies, sweet peas, snapdragons).

Roses:

• Prepare bare-root roses for planting by pruning damaged growth and shortening healthy canes by a third and trimming roots by half. Soak plants in muddy water overnight and plant as soon as possible. Water and mulch after planting.
• Prune rose bushes (usually when forsythia are blooming).

Enjoy your time outside, put an energy bar in your back pocket and keep going!

Additional April Tips:

Plant pansies, if you haven't already.

Pull those first weeds as you see them. By cultivating the garden you bring more weed seeds to the surface, so be diligent about pulling those early spring weeds.

When soil is dry enough, prepare your annual flower beds. Turn the soil and add organic amendments, such as compost.

Cut off faded tulip and daffodil flowers before they go to seed.

Sow grass seed early so it develops before the heat starts. Perennial ryegrass is the best grass for spring sowing.

Prune roses when daffodils bloom.

Prune your butterfly bushes back to 4-6 inches.

Mulch to a depth of 2-3 inches and fertilize established shrubs.

Remember some trees prefer a spring planting (e.g., oaks and birches).

Keep in mind that cut tulips will last longer if the flowers are wrapped in newspaper and allowed to stand up to their neck in water for a few hours.

Soak flower seeds in scented water and dry them in the sun. When the plants grow they will retain their borrowed perfume. (Old wives tale).

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