The tulips and daffodils are giving their best and early in the morning the birds are already singing in the garden. The warm temperatures ensure that nature is slowly waking up. Lovely blossoms are appearing and we can already get to work in our garden. It is finally really spring.
Garden chores for the month of April
Give the garden some (rain)water now and then. It can already be quite dry are, which can cause stress to young seedlings and newly planted garden plants.
Pick the first bouquets of spring bloomers: think of daffodils, tulips, fritillaries...
Sow the first spices for the vegetable garden: chives, basil, parsley.
Do you still have in the spring? Sweet pea or sweet peas sown? Be sure to remove the tops from the plants. This will make them branch out and become bushier.
Prune the butterfly bush or Buddleja back considerably. This shrub quickly produces strong shoots on which the fragrant flowers grow. If this shrub is not pruned, it will only lignify and you will therefore have fewer flowers in the summer.
Wean the tomato plantsThis way they can continue to grow nicely and they will be strong when they can be moved to the garden or greenhouse after the Ice Saints.
Hang a sturdy insect hotel up. Many insects are now quietly waking up and looking for a place to settle.
How do you pick and store daffodils in a vase?
Daffodils are a beautiful addition to the spring bouquets from the garden. They come in many different colours and flower shapes and are easy to grow. However, there is a small disadvantage to this beautiful flower: you can't put them in a vase with other flowers right away. If you daffodils When you pick them, you will notice that a slimy sap runs from the stems.Unfortunately, that sap is poisonous to other flowers and plants, which will reduce the vase life of your bouquet very quickly. Fortunately, that is quick and easy to solve. After picking the daffodils, put them in a bucket of water. After a few hours, the poisonous sap will be out of the stems, so you can confidently combine them in a bouquet.
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In this video, Angelo teaches you what to do with faded tulips and daffodils in the garden.
Be prepared for snails in the garden
The garden is full of small plants and juicy green leaves. An ideal feast for the snails, they are after all very fond of all the young green. Make a plan to outsmart the slimy creatures: think of nematodes for example. Nematodes are tiny worms that naturally live in our soil and garden. That worm is the natural enemy of the snail, because it penetrates the snail and uses it as a food source. Snails die quickly and do not pose a danger to other animals, precisely because this is a natural process. Birds and other animals can perfectly eat the snail without being poisoned. In this way, the ecosystem is not disturbed.
One of the natural enemies of the snail is of course the birds. Give birdbaths a good cleaning and set up feeding places. This way you provide a nice place for birds, who in turn help to keep the snail population in the garden under control.
The most beautiful flowers and tastiest vegetables
April is sowing month. Most varieties can now, at the end of the month, also be sown directly in the open ground. Have you already pre-sown some flowers? Feel free to sow another round, so you can extend your harvest period in the garden significantly extend. Have you already sown directly? Then you can already start thinning out the grown seedlings.For the flower garden there are many beautiful flowers that can be sown in the garden, the possibilities are endless:
- Cosmos or cosmea
- Zinnia
- Ammi majus or large field screen
- Callistephus chinensis or Chinese aster
- Helianthus or sunflower
You can also sow a lot in the vegetable garden to harvest later. Some varieties are better sown directly in the garden, others are better sown in advance. Look carefully at each variety: is it a light germinator or a dark germinator? This way you will not make any sowing mistakes in the garden.
- Lettuce varieties, such as oak leaf lettuce and romaine lettuce
- Snow peas
- Spinach
- Carrots
- Beets
- Radishes
Be sure to keep an eye on the weather forecast. It can still happen all month long, until ice saints, freeze hard. So check the temperatures regularly and cover the young seedlings and plants with a fleece if necessary so that they do not suffer frost damage.
Ground covers in the garden
The warmer temperatures and longer days also awaken the weed seeds. A weekly round of weeding is certainly not an unnecessary luxury. An easy solution to combat weeds is to plant ground covers in the garden. Ground covers are plants that quickly form a green carpet with their roots, so that the soil remains nicely covered. Plants and flower bulbs can still grow through the green garden carpet. Some well-known ground covers are Vinca minor (small periwinkle), lady's bedstraw and Alchemilla mollis (lady's mantle). Another way to combat unwanted weeds in the garden is mulching. Put a thin layer of compost or other organic material on the borders and in the beds, this improves the soil life in the garden and at the same time ensures that weed seeds cannot germinate. A real win-win so.
