If luck is with us – in the guise of lovely, sunny weather—this will be one of the busiest and one of the most enjoyable outdoor months of the year.
Just to name a few of the chores:
- All hardy and half-hardy annuals and vegetables to be seeded
- Lawn feeding and reseeding to be attended to
- Roses, shrubs, trees and perennials to be planted
- Chrysanthemums divided into single-stem divisions
- In favorable years, the first cutting of asparagus may begin.
If, however, rain fails continually, making the soil unworkable, we will have to postpone these activities and combine the most important of them with our work for May.
Should this happen, it will give us a good chance to turn to our house plants—items that are too often neglected by us at this time of year with our eagerness to get out in the open.
If our houseplants are to make good growth, they should be repotted now with fresh soil and a good fertilizer. Unless cactus plants are crowded, let three years lapse between repotting.
Dahlias
We can turn to our dahlias now. Tubers can be started up for making cuttings; new shoots are cut off just above the tuber and rooted in sand or vermiculite.
Even when plenty of tubers are available, it pays to grow cuttings.
Virus diseases that live over in the tuber do not translocate upward into new shoots readily, so cuttings are usually disease-free—unless, of course, they are allowed to remain on the plant too long before being cut.
Time for Sprays
April is the month for checking our spraying and dusting equipment to see that it is in working order, for we can give our rose beds the first spray application of the year after the mulch has been removed. Captan, a good material for this purpose, will kill wintering-over spores of blackspot as well as mildew.
If lilac buds have not opened enough to show a fine of new green, there is still time for a late dormant spray to control scale.
As peony shoots break through the soil, spray the ground with a good fungicide like Captan. This will kill the spores of botrytis, the disease which causes buds to blast and turn brown.
Don’t confuse this blasting however, with buds that fail because the plants are set too deep. Diatomeacous earth around the plants will prevent ants from using the plants as a place to rear their “cows,” the aphids which sometimes cause bud blast.
Other April Pointers
Something to remember: Middle West sunshine is quite strong. If you are operating a coldframe or hotbed for the first time, be ready to provide artificial shading for the glass if the sun intensity gets too high.
This is about the last chance you will have to replace those rose plants killed during the winter with new, dormant plants. After this month, plants started in deep pots must be used.
These do not always do well, because their roots are either cut off or are crammed into too small a space.
Problem spots—those in which the grass has been killed out in the winter —can often be improved by planting a ground cover instead. Now is a good time to check where such problem spots exist, and to arrange for planting these with pachysandra, ajuga or similar low-growing ground covers.
When the new growth on evergreens is 1-1/2″ to 2″ inches long, cut off half this new growth. This forces the plant to grow two shoots instead of one at the point of cutting, making for a denser tree.
Remember, evergreens don’t carry live dormant buds for several years. You can only work on this season’s growth. No cutting back severely to force denser branching close to the stem.
Vine crops are hard to transplant, but our season is so short that it pays to try to start these indoors. Melons, squashes and pumpkins can be started in individual boxes and set into the spot where they are to fruit, without disturbing the roots, as soon as danger from frost is over.
And now is the time to decide what to do with tulips, narcissi and other bulbs after flowering.
If these are growing where they are shaded by perennials or other plants in summer, and can be left in without disturbing your plans, they are much better off in soil than they would be in storage trays.
If dug and stored, plan to keep them where the temperature will not be below 55° nor above 75° degrees Fahrenheit.
If they are growing where other plants occupy the bed in summer, so they must be dug, plan on “heeling” them in a corner of the garden until the tops ripen off.
FGR0455-44693 by RM Carleton