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Each month, receive tips on the top jobs needed in your garden as well as a wealth of information on a range of gardening topics. From sowing seeds to picking fruit, each month get access to information on the care and maintenance of your flowerbeds, vegetable plot and lawn. As with your own gardening diary, the journal is split into separate sections, each covering a different area of garden care.

Friday, 1 April 2022

The Vegetable Plot - April

‘Life begins the day you start a garden.’ Chinese proverb.

Watching your vegetable garden come to life by simply sowing seeds is a joy. Eating the vegetables you have grown yourself straight out of the ground is, literally, sensational. So, get sowing this month.

Working to your rotational plan (we covered this in the February issue of The Gardener’s Journal) this month you can be sowing spinach, carrots, turnips, leeks, lettuces, spring onions, summer cabbages, cauliflowers and more. 

If you didn’t manage to get onions started in March, make them your first job. Dig a good amount of compost or well-rotted manure into your vegetable beds. Chit and plant out second early potatoes in the first half of the month and maincrop potatoes in the second half. 

Get stuck in with the hoe to break up the topsoil and help stop water getting to the surface by capillary action and evaporating in times of drought. A hoed surface will also prevent water running off and keep it going down where it’s needed. And of course, hoeing helps prevent the weeds from growing.

  • Sow seed outdoors for beetroot, Swiss chard, kohl rabi, radish and pickling onions
  • Sow peas and broad beans
  • Feed spring cabbages
  • Harden off plants grown in the greenhouse  
  • Plant onion and shallot sets
  • Plant globe artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes and asparagus





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