Courtesy of the RHS, here are a few things that we should be getting on with this month. There is always something to be done in the garden!
Fruit
- Protect fruit blossom from frost, but make sure insects can access the flowers or else hand pollinate them.
- Apply a nitrogen feed to plums, cherries, cooking apples and pears as they’re hungry feeders.
- Switch to a summer feed for all citrus trees.
- Increase the watering of citrus as growth resumes.
- Pollinate strawberry flowers under glass by brushing over them with your hands.
- Mulch raspberries, blueberries, cranberries and lingonberries with well-rotted farmyard manure (not mushroom compost as it is too alkaline).
- Apply a high nitrogen feed to blackcurrants.
- Apply sulphur chips to beds of blueberries, lingonberries and cranberries if needed.
- Apply a mulch around fruit trees, nuts, and bushes as long as the ground isn’t frozen.
- Repot or top dress container-grown fruit if needed.
Vegetables
- Cultivate and prepare seedbeds, covering them with clear polythene or fleece to warm up the soil before sowing.
- Protect early outdoor sowings with fleece and polythene.
- Feed crops that have been standing all winter.
- Continue to force chicory.
- Put supports in place for peas.
- Start preparing runner bean supports and trenches for sowing (in May) or planting out (in June).
- Prepare celery trenches.
- Try to avoid digging in wet weather, but if gardening on wet soil, work from a plank of wood, to avoid treading on the bed and compacting the soil.