In the Vegetable Garden - Things to do this Month - April
You’ll be thankful for the longer days, and hopefully spring will eventually arrive to warm up the soil. Many people’s usual planning plans are well behind this year due to the unseasonably cold weather, so there’ll probably be even more work than usual this month to catch up! Refer to the
Vegetable Planting Diary – Month by Month.
- Keep up weed control; 5 minutes with a hoe now will save hours later in the season, and hoeing also exposes slugs’ eggs for the birds to eat!
- Be wary of further cold snaps and keep fleece or cloches on standby to protect tender crops as necessary
- Continue to sow crops of peas & broad beans for successional cropping
- Easter is the traditional time to plant out main crop seed potatoes, but as this came early this year when some still had snow on the ground, get them in as soon as the weather allows this month
- Sow runner beans, French beans and borlotti beans (for drying) in pots in the greenhouse or cold frame – protect from frost (wait until May in the north)
- Plant out shallots and onions; sets or grown from seed
- Continue to sow salad leaves, spinach, chard, radishes, beetroot, turnips and carrots
- To protect carrots from carrot root fly, plant alongside the traditional companion herbs: Rosemary, Sage and Chives (all members of the allium family are said to repel the fly). Alternatively, you can cover with horticultural fleece, but I think the herbs both look and smell nicer and are more useful!
- Indoors, or in a heated propagator, sow: Tomatoes / Cucumbers / Peppers / Aubergines
- BE VIGILANT FOR SLUGS – see our tips for beating slugs here
- Make this the year you become self-sufficient in herbs (and never have to buy a packet of dried herbs again!). Make a list of all the herbs you use in the kitchen and get sowing – once established, you can allow some to go to seed for sowing in the following year. This month, you can sow the following herbs: chives, fennel, basil, rosemary, parsley, marjoram, coriander, borage, dill, and chervil
Source:
www.smallholderseries.co.uk
