How to Help Your Garden Spring Back to Life

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Fulham Horticultural Society offers an action plan for April

With sunny days returing, it's time to spring into action in the garden. Here is Fulham Horticultural Society's top tips on making sure you get the most from your outdoor space - including growing our own fresh veg and salad.

1. Continue with planting out the seed potatoes; aim to complete the job by the end of April. Earth up early potatoes.

2. Complete the planting of onion sets and carry on making successional sowings of beetroot, carrots, parsnips, lettuce, spinach, spring onions, kohl rabi, radish, turnips, early peas, Swiss chard. By sowing little and often you will avoid having a glut of produce at one time. Sow in shallow drills made with a stick, watering the drills before sowing if the soil is dry. Sow the seeds thinly and cover with soil and label them. Thin out when the seedlings are large enough to handle.

If seedlings are not thinned out the plants will become straggly and wont crop well at all. The distances to thin each type of vegetable will vary and it is best to check the seed packet. The thinnings of most vegetables except root vegetables can be transplanted. The advantage of this is that these thinnings, having been disturbed, will mature a little bit later therefore extending the succession of cropping. Water seedlings before and after thinning in dry weather.

3. Sow under glass, in pots and trays filled with fresh seed compost, the seeds of runner beans, sweet corn, courgettes, pumpkins, squashes, outdoor/ridge cucumber.

4. It is now safe to transplant the cold greenhouse tomatoes in to their final positions.

5. Plant out globe artichokes, either by slicing slips off the sides of main plants or plant out bought in roots. Seed raised plants sown earlier are best planted out towards the end of the month. Water well and feed regularly to build up the crowns removing any buds that may form as soon as possible.

6. Plant out Jerusalem artichokes but don’t allow them to overrun the allotment, if left unlifted at the end of the summer they will quickly develop into an impenetrable jungle.

7. Plant up a new asparagus bed but it will take two more years to establish before producing succulent shoots.

8. Early sowings of Brussels sprouts will need thinning out this month and the soil for next month’s transplanting of sweet corn, courgettes, marrows, pumpkins and outdoor/ridge cucumbers will need preparing.

9. Put up the runner bean poles and start to support the growing peas with brushwood or netting.

10. Prepare seed beds for outdoor sowing of main crop vegetables next month.

11. Check over top and soft fruit for the first broods of aphids and take appropriate action; spray the plant with soapy water (diluted washing up liquid) or squash the flies with your thumb and finger.

12. Cut back silver leaved shrubs once the plants approach the size to which you want them to grow. If lavender plants are left unpruned, the centre of the shrub grows sparse, they don't like being pruned into older wood. So it is wise to prune them every spring to keep them bushy and compact. Other silver leaved plants that should be pruned this way are Helichrysum serotinum (curry plant) and Santolina (cotton lavender). Go over the whole plant, trimming off 2.5-5cm of growth. Use shears for speed. If you didn't last month you should now also trim winter-flowering heathers with shears.

13. Deadhead daffodils now the flowers are going over, snap the heads off behind the swollen parts. If the spent flowers are left on, the plant's energy will be diverted into the production of seeds. By removing the old flowers, the plant's energy is instead diverted into the formation of next year's flower bud within the bulb. For this to happen the foliage must be left on the plant.

For many years the practice was to allow the foliage of the bulbs to die back completely to give the plants the longest time to build up that flower bud for next year. However recent research has shown that the foliage can be cut down six weeks after the flowers are over.

April 20, 2018

 

Here are the society's top ten tips for what you should be

Fulham Horticultural Society welcomes new members and says benefits of the FHS include a monthly newsletter, free gardening advice via email, group entrances to RHS gardens if trips can be organised (volunteers welcome!) and entrance to its annual show in September.

Find out more about the society here.

April 20, 2018