April Calendar
Gardening Jobs.
Cottage garden April calendar. Thing’s to do in the cottage garden this month.
April can bring sunshine and showers and now is the perfect time to store rainwater or add a mulch layer after the rains. Slugs will properly be a problem and beer traps can be laid out this month. If you have a wildlife garden the birds and frogs may be eating them. If you need to use slug pellets try to buy pellets used for organic gardening, these are safe for the wildlife that might eat the slug or snail.
April is also the month to begin growing flowers from seeds, there are a wonderful selection of English cottage garden plants for you to choose from some of the favourites are listed below. You can add a layer of organic compost to the soil this month dig it in deep into the soil preparing it for planting.
Temperatures vary all over the country and your garden will have it’s own micro climate so take that into consideration. You may need to adjust this April calendar a little for your own cottage garden but it’s a good place to start.
Make a note of these tasks in your calendar.
April Calendar: Flowering Cottage Plants.
- Plant summer flowering bulbs such as dahlias and gladioli.
- Prune lavender, forsythias and Chaenomeles.
- Tie in and secure rambling roses and Clematis.
- Continue sowing hardy annuals and annual climbers such as roses, Clematis, Ipomoea, Black eyed Susan and Nasterums.
- Sow Sweet pea outside and create a wig-wam for support, use natural rods for a cottegy look.
- Prune back hydrangeas.
- Divide clumps of hardy perennials.
- Deadhead Daffodils, tulips and hyacinths.
- Sow flowers used for cutting such as Antirrhinum, Larkspur and Nigella.
- Lilly’s can now be planted outside.
Herbs, Vegetables, Soft Fruit and Fruit Trees.
- Harvest Time: Kale, lettuce, radishes, rhubarb, spinach and Swiss chard.
- Sow: Leeks, fennel, tomatoes, courgettes (zucchini). Sow broad beans outside.
- Pot up strawberries. Bring potted strawberries under cover if you want an early crop.
- When you harvest rhubarb pick the thickest stems and replace the forcing jar.
- Sow and plant herbs.
- Sow succession crops to have a continuing harvest and not a glut of your crops.
- Plant fruit trees in containers.
- Prune young plum and damson trees.
April Calendar: General Cottage Gardening Jobs.
- Keep on weeding and tidy up any overgrown areas, hoe on dry days.
- Remove any slugs and snails from plants and containers, set out beer on plates sunk slightly into the ground to trap them if they are becoming a pest.
- Clean the glass in the green house to let in more light and open it up on occasion to help ventilation.
- Look out for pests by checking your plants often.
- Before clipping hedges and climbers check for birds nests and leave the plant alone if you find a nest.
- Plant evergreen hedges and plant trees and shrubs, now is the time to move any shrubs to different locations if the shrub, or you, are not happy where it is now.
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