We’ve had a few chilly days and even chillier nights lately in Cornwall and I worry about my baby plants – so much so that I carried a lot of them indoors on the coldest night.

But the sun’s shining today and it is April after all so wrap up warm if you need to and get out in the garden! These are some tasks you may need to tackle in the April Garden.

Care and Maintenance:
Remove any unwanted weeds or moss trailing close to, or in, your planting areas. Although we are surely in Spring now, there will still be wet days to contend with. When you’re in tune with your garden though, you tend to listen to your intuition a lot more. So nourish the gardener in you!

All mulch should be removed by now to give the plants some fresh air. If the soil is particularly dry, water existing plants if necessary. But only if it’s dry. Don’t waterlog the ground or the roots could perish.

Preparation and Plans:
Finish preparing your beds and layer on any well-rotted manure or compost, if you haven’t already done so. Dig in gently. It MUST be well-rotted or the strong chemicals, although natural, will burn small plants.

Keep notes of when and where you added compost.

Plants:
There isn’t much you can’t plant by now. Although, with climate change comes weather changes so again, use your intuition to help you get the best from your garden.

Asparagus crowns can be planted. Many seeds can be sown and many young plants will be able to go outside. Always check on your seed packet for further growing instructions. Or, if the instructions aren’t available, do a quick search online to make sure your particular variety of seeds or plants can be put outside this month.

April can be a month of pots and dirty fingernails! Make sure you have enough pots and/or seed trays before you start. Sow seeds in an organic seed compost rather than soil straight from the garden. Planting outis easiest if you’ve used degradeble pots. But if not, soak the pot first and ease out the plant. Avoid touching the roots and then pop it into prepared hole. Gently ease the roots out if the plant was pot-bound for some time, then fill in the hole with crumbly soil or potting compost, gently firm in the plant with your hands and water gently.

This is probably the planting month generally. Keep lots of notes and remember to put plant markers in all seed trays, pots and lines of seed in the garden. So easy to forget which brassica is which, especially when they look very similar.

Lawn:
If the Spring is dry, you may have to make your first lawn mowing expedition of the year. Keep grass clippings to put on the compost heap. Layering lawn clippings in your compost helps keep the heap warm and working.

Happy Gardening!

Linda x

P.S. This text was taken from My Garden Journal – a printable you can ( and should!) use every year. Find it at Gran’s Choice on Etsy.

My Garden Journal

This handy garden journal is printable and usable every year. Although buying expensive journals in bookstores is delicious, printing out just what you need when you need it can be a great help to your pocket and also the resources of the planet. Not all journals you buy are recycled or recyclable after all.

A simple document folder is all you’ll need to keep your pages safe.

Every month has some gardening job suggestions for temperate climate dwellers. Adjust to your region and weather conditions as you need to. Gardening has to be a flexible hobby simply because we can’t control the weather!

There are also a few handy gardening tips and resources you may find helpful. Keep the journal on your desktop or whichever digital space is most easy to access and print out the ‘notes’ pages as and when you need them. In busy months, print out more of the same! My Garden Journal