Feed the garden
Feed beds and borders with any good general fertiliser such as blood, fish and bone or another organic alternative. Sprinkle it on by hand all over the soil, applying it right underneath shrubs and round the base of climbers, perennials and clumps of bulbs. Trickle a line of fertiliser along the base of all your hedges – they’ll be feeling fairly starved after this winter and spring is the perfect time to feed them.
It’ll make them grow greener and stronger – which may mean a little more clipping than usual, but it’s worth it for the general improvement in condition and the “thickening-up” effect. In the kitchen garden, fruit trees, bushes and canes also benefit from a good start-of-the-season feed, so use the same general fertiliser for those too. But since they need extra potash to encourage flowering and fruiting, also give them sulphate of potash (at half an ounce per square yard). If they are growing in beds, sprinkle the feed evenly all over the surface of the soil.
But where you have individual trees growing in a lawn, apply their feed in a circle, covering the area underneath their entire canopy of branches. This same “cocktail” is a good late-spring feed for clematis, which is a greedy plant and also appreciates extra potash.
You could use the same mixture for roses if you want to keep costs down, but it’s worth using a special rose feed with added magnesium, which helps bring out the best in the flowers and toughens up the foliage.
A specialist feed is also advisable for lime-hating plants such as rhododendrons and camellias – this contains the extra iron they need, and liquid formulations are available for plants grown in pots. If you grow fruit or all-year-round shrubs in containers, they’ll also be ready for a good feed. In this case, it’s best to use liquid tomato feed and apply as liberally as you would with a normal watering.
If you really want to give plants a treat, on top of their normal April feed give them a dose of diluted liquid seaweed extract, which provides all sorts of trace elements. It’s an optional extra, but it makes the perfect start-of-the-season tonic to perk plants up after a bad winter.
Handy tips:
Sit plant “cages” over floppy perennials and tie tall kinds such as delphiniums to stakes or canes for support.
Clear out ivy, weeds and seedlings of sycamore or brambles etc from the base of hedges.
Don’t worry about the sudden flush of greenflies on fruit trees and roses – bluetits will soon clear them up, and any crinkling of leaves will soon grow out.
Clear netting from ponds to allow waterside plants to grow up without snagging.
Tie in the new growth of climbers.
Fully grown summer bedding plants often appear on sale in nurseries and garden centres several weeks before it’s safe to plant them out. Only buy them if you have suitable facilities to grow them undercover, where they are protected from cold nights and late frosts.
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