GARDENING
Cultivating with Clive
April 2025
If we get a frost the leaves on the plant or shrub will eventually turn brown so just cut off the offending damaged part of the shrub and it will recover in no time. I still try to keep a fleece on my tender plants until May just to be sure they don’t get frosted.
I always feed my spring bulbs with a tomato feed once they have finished flowering as this will help fertilise the bulb for next year’s display. Don’t forget to nip off the spent flowering heads – if you don’t this will encourage the bulb to make seeds and not concentrate in building up energy for next year.
It is also a good time to get out and prune Winter flowering heathers, forsythia, hardy fuchsias and evergreen hedges. However I tend to leave my hedges until June/July when I know all the birds have finished nesting.
If you have young children why not make a bug hotel with them? You can use some old tin cans tied together or cram them in a box, then just fill them with old sticks of bamboo for the insects to make their home for the summer.
Or just make a pile of old logs and wood somewhere out of the way and keep an eye on what happens through the rest of the year.
THINGS TO DO THIS MONTH
- Prune early flowering shrubs.
- Repot house plants that have become pot bound.
- Keep on top of the dead heading of bulbs.
- Start to feed plants – I use a home grown comfrey mix – more next month on this.
- Sow hardy veg outdoors.
- Sow under cover or indoors courgette, tomatoes and squash.