The April Garden

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I guess it's April, since it was raining all last week.  

The rain is watering plenty of seedlings transplanted into the garden from February and early March sowings: peas, broad beans, bak choy, some cabbages, spinach, beets, and lettuce.  Since leaf mulch sits over my garden soil, I wait to transplant seedlings until the their height reaches comfortably above the leaves.

Pea transplants

Transplants are especially useful for gardeners who mulch heavily, as mulch, of course, suppresses weed seeds --- and vegetable seeds --- from germinating. Disturbed, tilled soil, on the other hand, makes room for these seeds to germinate and grow directly out of the garden bed. Transplants also get a head start on the season when soil is no where near ready for seed.

Now some plants, particularly root vegetables, don't transplant well, and on the last day of March, I finally sowed carrots into the garden bed, along with beets, parsnips and turnips. Radishes, of course, were  seeded overtop to keep things interesting until the other vegetables germinate. 

Parsnips sown with potting soil sprinkled over top.

Seedlings can perish if they get stuck below the surface of clay soil that has caked over. For directly sown seeds, I remove the mulch, make a trench in the soil, and sprinkle potting soil over top of the seeds. Then the bed is watered when necessary to keep the soil moist. Watering is not currently necessary, of course.

Still more transplants are growing in the cold frame waiting to go into the garden: broccoli, kale, celeriac, parsley, leeks, other tender brassicas such as totsoi and chijimisai, as well as herbs and more lettuce.  When each tray is first placed outside, I add a small amount of fertilizer to the bottom of the tray; click here to view what I use. The seedlings are watered when I start to see a little dry soil on top.

Overtop the hot compost, frost sensitive peppers, melons, and other tender plants are growing under cover. So far, the hotbed has kept my frost sensitive seedlings from dying. 

Covered seedlings keeping warm sitting over hot compost  

For seed germination, I have reverted to the baggy-paper towel method. Previously, I would plant the seeds directly in trays with potting soil added. Then they would germinate near a South-facing window indoors. This works fine for some varieties, especially those that germinate on the same day.  However, some trays will have a variety where the seeds germinate over the course of several days, leaving the others to grow with poor lighting for longer than I would like. 

Seed germination with the baggy method.

Currently germinating are many flower and herb seeds, such as thyme, lemon grass, oregano, nasturtiums, painted daisy, cilantro, and purslane, in addition to more vegetables.

Soil

I decided to try something a little different for a home vegetable garden: plant a cover crop over some new beds. After tilling the soil,  Winter rye, crimson clover, and whatever radish seed that I had left this season were broadcast over the soil. Hopefully this week, I will mow down the crop, and then place black plastic over top to kill off any plant life underneath. After three weeks of the treatment, the beds should be ready for planting.

Cover crop growing between the little orchard and the strawberries.

While generally I use a "no-till" system for the soil, the fall tilling is only an initial tilling. I don't generally plan on using tilling following the initial one.

Flower beds and landscaping

Spring flowers

In the flower beds, tulips, narcissus, and hyacinths are happily nodding, despite the presence of last year's brush still imposing themselves in these beds. The brush will be removed hopefully when the rain stops.

Many baby plants have popped up as well, which have been transplanted around and about to the blank spaces of the garden beds. In particular, I moved some sage to my orchard for erosion and pest control.  Last weekend, I also uplifted three cute Japanese maple seedlings from a friend's yard and placed them in a spot behind my house which I am developing for a shade garden. 

Another landscaping project is to create some firmer boundaries between the parsonage yard and the adjacent properties. I have some hazelnuts bushes that really are lovely, which are suckering. I plan to transplant those suckers to the yard border. 

Suckers need to develop their own root system before being cut off from the mother plant.  To do that, wire is tied to the base of the sucker, and soil is mulched several inches over top of the sucker's base in the spring. By fall the transplants should be ready to move.

Addressing Garden Problems

A tenacious and invasive weed, bent-grass, is constantly invading my front yard burms. I am looking for a simple way to manage this annoying weed. Last year, I laid cardboard on top of the weeds in my burms, then covered them with mulch. This helped to stop their spread, but I still had a problem with them at the end of the year. This year I am planning to add an edge barrier to prevent the weed from ever entering the bed.

Dormant bent grass invades my burns

We have had a lot of wind this March. The mulch blew off a newly made garden path, exposing the cardboard below, so I'll need to add some new mulch to this area. I also want to add some additional  mulch or other cover at the base of a few fruit trees to promote healthy, well draining soil around their roots. 

 It's also time to re-make my compost bin. The current one is too small, and needs to be re-designed to protect against weed invasion. Adding compost to the soil each fall will, over time, help to improve the soil structure of the garden beds and add nutrition.

That's it! April showers grow May flowers. I hope you enjoy the spring as much as I do. 

Happy Gardening!

Here are some links the products I mentioned in this post. Click to learn more:

Down to Earth Organic Bio-Down to Earth Bio-Live Fertilizer Mix 5-4-2, 5 lb

Film Gard 4 MIL Black Plastic Sheeting