Grow Your Own - April advice and gardening tips (2024)

Sowing and planting

Fruit

• Ideal time to plant pot-grown fruit trees and bushes.

Vegetables

• Chit and plant out second early potatoes in the first half of the month, maincrop potatoes in the second half.

• Sow seed outdoors for beetroot, carrots, Swiss chard, summer cauliflower, kohl rabi, lettuce, leeks, radish, turnip, spring and pickling onions, peas and perpetual spinach in well-prepared soil.

• Try sowing unusual vegetables such as salsify, Hamburg parsley, or scorzonera.

• Sow seed indoors of marrows, courgettes, pumpkins and squash. Also sweet peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, celery, celeriac, salads and globe artichokes.

• In very mild areas sow dwarf French beans and sweet corn outside under cloches or fleece at the end of April. In cooler areas wait until May.

• Sow a seedbed of brassicas to provide transplants of sprouting broccoli, cauliflowers and cabbages for planting out in June or July.

• Transplant broad beans grown in pots.

• Plant shallots, onion sets and garlic.

• Plant Jerusalem artichoke tubers.

• Plant asparagus crowns.

• Pot up tomato seedlings when they develop true leaves above the more rounded seed leaves.

Problems

• Apply apple and pear scab controls.

• Deal with aphids, apple sucker, pear sucker, pear midge, caterpillars and powdery mildew.

• Look out for red spider mite and aphids on strawberries under glass and treat accordingly.

• Start treating for American gooseberry mildew.

• Keep on top of weed control and continue through to summer.

  See Also

  When to Plant Grass Seed in Connecticut | Jonathan Green

General care

Fruit

• Liquid feed fruit trees in pots with a balanced feed every fortnight.

• Where possible, protect plum and pear flowers from frost but allow insects access for pollination.

• Damp down or mist citrus plants regularly when flowering begins. Maintain a min temperature of 14°C (57°F).

• Deblossom strawberries planted after September in their first year to help establishment.

• Pick forced strawberries under heated glass.

• Ventilate strawberries under cloches and mulch with straw or mats.

• Avoid using insecticides on crops in flower.

Vegetables

• Support pea plants with sticks, twigs, green support mesh, or wire netting.

• Thin out rows of seedlings as soon as they are large enough to be handled.

• Protect early outdoor sowings with fleece and polythene.

• Continue to force witloof chicory and seakale.

• Dig up selected chicory roots, pot them up, and position them in a dark warm place (10-13°C; 50-55°F), with an upturned pot over them.

• Prepare runner bean supports for sowing (in May) or planting out (in June).

Ready to harvest

Fruits

• Forced rhubarb

Vegetables

• Spring onions

• Radishes

• Spring cauliflowers

• Spring cabbages

• Jerusalem artichokes

• Leeks

• Overwintered lettuce

• Asparagus

• Kale

• Sprouting broccoli