April is almost over and I’ve only just looked at the list of gardening jobs on the RHS site for this month.
Needless to say, this is the first month of the year that I’ve bothered to even think about jobs: laziest garden lover ever.
- Keep weeds under control – isn’t that pretty much year round?
- Protect fruit blossom from late frosts – my pear tree has been coping quite well on it’s own for a hundred years or so (planted when the house was built) so I plan to ignore this one;
- Tie in climbing and rambling roses – my climbing roses are venerable and pretty pointless but since they keep coming back each year despite the vagaries of blackspot, I haven’t the heart to kill them off. I have planted an incredibly aggressive clematis (montana) to climb up one of them, which could usefully be tied in at this stage;
- Sow hardy annuals, herbs and wildflower seeds outside – if only they would arrive before the month ends!;
- Start to feed citrus plants – hmm, maybe I should buy a citrus plant?
- Increase the water given to house plants – my cacti, spider plants and orchids have settled into almost permanent drought with intermittent flash floods. This month will be no different;
- Feed hungry shrubs and roses – since I have a tub of bonemeal feed, and this job basically involves scattering stuff around the roses for the rain to water it down to the roots, I can really get behind this little effort;
- Sow new lawns or repair bare patches – the decision to let one of the lawns run wild has been really liberating from this kind of task. In an ideal lawn lovers world no doubt I would be required to try some backbreaking raking out of moss in the other lawns but since the moss is both green and soft to walk on, I’ve decided to rename my lawn “moss garden”;
- Prune fig trees – hmm, do I need a fig tree?; and finally,
- Divide bamboos and waterlilies – with a huge sigh of relief, because bamboos are the one thuggy invader that I don’t have in my garden.
Since some bedding plug plants have just arrived in the post, calibrochas (blue bells) then I suppose I will have to add an extra couple of jobs to the list. The plants should probably be put into plant pots and grown on for a bit before planting out, but I’m just going to plant them straight out into the London warmth. The means I’m going to have to
- dig out some Winter bedding violas, and since they’ve put in a good effort;
- find somewhere to plant them (gravel garden?) add some fertiliser to their pots; and,
- plant out the new babies.
