APRIL is a busy month, but much of the garden will be set and growing nicely by the time the month ends.
Keep sowing, potting on and planting as the weather permits. It’s important not to hold anything back in these early stages of growing.
If you delay sowing by a month, a plant may not reach maturity at the right point and you may not get the rewards for your work that you expect.
Try to give each plant the best chance. And if you miss the best sowing point, then you can always buy some small plants.
Plenty of peas
Early varieties can be flowering and producing pods now. Keep soil watered if you want to get the best crop. Outdoor plants will be shaken by the wind to allow pollen to reach where it is needed in these self-fertile flowers. If your plants are growing under cover, then run your hand along the row to give a gentle shake.
If you have grown a mangetout type, then these are the first to come ready – pick the pods while peas are very small inside. The whole pod will be juicy and sweet when eaten fresh or cooked lightly. If you let the peas grow too big, they may be starchy and you run the risk of tough stringy pods.
Sugar snap varieties should be left to swell medium sized peas in the pod. You still pick and eat the whole thing, but the pea to pod ratio is higher.
You eat the peas and discard the pods from shelling varieties – the pods are too tough and stringy to eat.
Keep sowing more rows of peas every three weeks, until June, if you like to pick this crop all summer long.
Note: my dog is very fond of peas and will pick and eat pods from the plants. This can mean plants are pulled up or broken, so you may need to fence around your pea rows if you have this problem.
Protect small carrot seedlings from slugs. (Photo: Ben Russell)
Look after carrots
Carrots do best if they are sown direct where they will grow. Having said that, you can transplant if needed, provided you keep a good ball of compost round the roots of each plant.
Seeds can take between 10 and 21 days to germinate. Old seed may take longer and may give poor germination rates. I like to use new seed each year – by the time you find out your old seed hasn’t worked you may be a whole month behind on sowing.
Keep the bed clear of weeds and be super vigilant for slugs and snails as the seedlings emerge. You can lose a whole row overnight without ever knowing they had popped up. Carrots are most vulnerable to slug attacks in the first few weeks.
Once plants are about 10cm tall, the problem is less. Some people use a biological control before sowing seeds in the bed. Others use organic slug pellets ( the ferric phosphate ones work best.) You may still need to go out and remove the odd pest after dark to keep seedling loss to a minimum. And it’s worth sowing more seeds than you want. You can afford to lose some seedlings while the others grow strong. Thinning plants out is an option later.
Flowers and pods on mangetout peas. (Photo: Ben Russell)
Beautiful blossom
Flowering cherry trees put on a fabulous display over the next few weeks. Different varieties blossom at different times, so if you are planting a few in your garden be sure to aim for a spread of flowering times.
Fruiting cherry trees are flowering too and these need a little more attention than their decorative cousins. The flowers (and fruit) need some protection from birds – if there isn’t much else around to eat, the blossom is a very attractive option. This is easy enough for a wall-trained tree – drape a net from a gutter or pegs in the wall and spread it out so the tree is fully covered and protected. A freestanding tree is harder to net – the twigs will snag and blossom can get pulled off as the net is put in place. Aim to use twirling and glittering scarers in the tree instead. And you can always make a scarecrow if you fancy the task.
Cherry blossom can be damaged by frost. A wall-trained tree will have some protection, but you still lose less blossom if you cover the tree with a blanket, tarpaulin, or dust sheet when a hard frost is forecast.
Sow some brassicas
Many winter brassicas should be sown in the next couple of weeks. Try curly kale, red winter kale and nero kale, if this leafy vegetable is a favourite.
Sow purple sprouting broccoli to crop next year. Cauliflower and Brussels sprouts can be sown too, as can autumn and winter cabbages.
