Spring is finally here! Even though you might live in an area that’s still a bit chilly, there’s no doubt that the garden is answering its annual wake-up call. Many gardeners call this their favorite season of the year — it’s thrilling to see little seedlings emerging, green leaves pushing their way out, and the first signs of color. This is often a very busy month, so let’s organize our garden goals to keep on track.
Remember, always check with your local county extension office or trusted garden center for the best times to plant in your area.
Plan Even though April is a big action month, successful gardens are always in the planning stage. As your garden is waking up, so are the insects that inhabit it. Plan to take a daily tour of your garden to be on the lookout for pesky creatures, and be prepared to take action if necessary. Pill bugs, slugs, and snails cause lots of problems, so have your traps and baits at the ready. Continue to update your garden journal with observations, weather notes, and planting times.
Prepare & Maintain If you planted winter cover crops, cut them down and turn them into the soil two weeks before planting. Turn your compost pile, start a new one, and add compost around your plants. Fertilize veggies with an organic foliar feed to keep them healthy.
- Zone 4 can uncover strawberries and purchase seed potatoes for pre-sprouting before planting.
- Zones 7-8 can remove row covers from veggies like peas — add a trellis to support their growth! If you planted carrots, lettuce, beets, or chard seeds earlier, you can thin out the seedlings now.
Sow & Plant Indoors because spring is here, much of our indoor seeding is complete. However, if you live in chilly Zones 4 & 5, you can start seeds for tomatoes, broccoli, beets, Brussel sprouts, spinach, peppers, kales, peas, and carrots.
Sow & Plant Outdoors
- Zones 5-6 can transplant tomatoes outside, but be prepared to cover them in the event of a cold snap. Sow lettuce, carrots, spinach, radishes, beets, and turnips. Repeat plantings every two weeks to ensure a continual harvest.
- Zones 7-10 can plant okra, squash, melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, beans, and corn. Replace cilantro with basil. Seed nasturtiums, Malabar spinach, and purslane.
Harvest
- Zones 7-10 can harvest tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, kale, broccoli, cabbage, asparagus, and beans.
April Garden Checklist
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Your Garden Checklist for the month is very valuable and informative. Please continue!
I like this publication. I did see one thing that didn’t look right to me… “Zones 7-10 can harvest tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers,…” I live in zone 7 and these are summer plants that aren’t planted until May. Some may plant in April, but we are not harvesting them until mid summer. I’m hoping there aren’t other mistakes as that could cause confusion and perhaps disappointment for beginner gardeners. But again I like this publication as it helps me with the timing of things, which I find is the hard part right now. Finding a mentor in my area would help with this too.
Hi Cari, thank you for bringing this to our attention we had quite a bit on indoor and greenhouse gardening but we have been updating some items on the website so some of that may have been lost. We will look at this post and the others in our monthly garden series to make sure they are still accurate. Happy Gardening!