What to do in the Garden this Month: April

Welcome spring! Get outside and enjoy the sunshine. Here’s what you’ll want to accomplish in the garden this month.

Planning

• Contact your English Gardens landscape designers for professional advice on enhancing your outdoor living area.

• Study the garden for gaps you want to fill with spring bulbs. Purchase and plant them in the fall before the ground freezes.

Garden Maintenance

• Put plant supports in place for peony bushes, Annabelle Hydrangeas and similar plants.

• Carefully cultivate planting beds and remove weeds. Take care to avoid damaging the surface roots of existing plants.

• Apply weed deterrent, such as Preen, to garden beds once you’ve removed all the weeds.

Planting

• Add early-spring color with pansies, cabbage and kale in containers or garden beds.

• Plant deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs, as conditions permit.
• Sow seeds of peas, carrots, and radishes for an early-season harvest.
• Plant strawberries and seedlings of cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli, if soil is workable.
• Divide and transplant perennials, as they emerge.

Lawn Care

• Re-seed bare lawn areas.
• Apply crabgrass preventer to the lawn when the soil temperature is 52 to 55 degrees.
• Sharpen your mower blade and tune up lawn mower

Pruning

• Sharpen your pruners and loppers, and get your tools ready for the season. Replace blades, as needed.
• Complete pruning of diseased, weak, or crossing branches on trees and shrubs.
• Complete pruning roses to trim off winter die back. Prune climbing roses after they’ve finished flowering.
• Prune summer-flowering shrubs, such as Hibiscus
• Prune early-spring flowering shrubs once they’ve finished blooming.
• Prune Pines and Spruce by removing about half of their new growth tips. 

Fertilizing

• Fertilize trees, shrubs and perennials with Osmocote or any other slow-release fertilizer. Use Espoma’s Holly Tone for use on evergreen trees and shrubs.

• Apply horticultural oil sprays to control pests on trees, when the temperature is consistently above 40 degrees. Indoor Plants

• Start fertilizing houseplants with a balanced fertilizer. The strong sun will stimulate new growth.