Swallows — those amazing aerial acrobats — are back in town, and birds both large and small are carrying nesting materials in their beaks as they fly overhead.
Trillums are blooming at Squaxin Park. Bigleaf maples are flowering. Tall cottonwoods’ buds have burst, and the slightest breeze delivers their intoxicating scent. That may cause a delightful experience called synesthesia — perceiving a color as you inhale a smell. The cottonwoods’ color/smell is a lovely pale green.
In town, flowering trees are already starting to let loose blossom rain on cars and streets. Fragrant, all-white star magnolias and the bigger, pinker magnolia trees are breathtaking. If I were the Queen, I would mandate that every city block should have a minimum of five magnolia trees.
But this is the trouble with April: To borrow a phrase, it’s everything, everywhere, all at once. The woods, fields, prairies, parks and streetscapes draw us away from home to witness spring’s ecstatic revival. But our gardens plead for our undivided attention.
Spring can also make a gardener a little compulsive. There were a few days last week when I felt the need to do everything that needs to be done in the garden without delay. But after inhaling that cottonwood scent, I’ve calmed down a bit.
Now my new month’s resolution is to maybe spend time in the garden in the morning, and the woods in the evening, and to make use of the luxury of light so much later in the day. (I just realized that putting a “maybe” in a resolution is dicey, but there it is.)
So here are just a few to-do or not-to-do suggestions for the garden in April:
If you have fence lines — and especially if you have neighbors with morning glories, buttercups and other trespassing vagrants — border patrol is an early spring must. It’s not enough to nip them in the bud; you need to rip them out by the roots. Now, when the soil is soft and damp, is the best time to do this.
It’s time to dig up, divide, thin and move perennials. In fact, if you were really organized, you probably did this in March. And if you have the imagination to predict how much room each one will need by mid-summer, you will give each of them the space they need to prosper. Otherwise they’re likely to become overcrowded.
Now’s the time to plant early crops, including peas, spinach, lettuce, radishes, onions and arugula. If you want some almost instant gratification, start with radish and/or arugula seeds, which come up in three or four days. It takes lettuce and spinach a week or 10 days to come up, sometimes longer if the weather is foul. All the brassicas (the relatives of cabbage) can be planted now, both seeds and started plants.
In the flower garden — or as a border in a vegetable garden — April is also a good time to plant the frost-hardy and fragrant sweet alyssum, which comes easily from seed. And while you’re looking at the seed rack, you might want to scan for other flower seeds that are frost tolerant.
While you sleep, slugs and snails are breeding and plotting their attacks. Be prepared to stand your ground. There is a nontoxic version of Sluggo that works well. An older tradition — stale beer in a saucer — might give them a happier death. Or you can take a nightly twilight stroll with a salt shaker and season them until they shrivel.
Lettuce and spinach planted now will mostly be eaten by the end of June — especially if the weather gets hot. Once they’ve been harvested, what will you plant in the newly unoccupied space? My second round of planting includes kale, collard greens, rainbow chard, and more green beans and broccoli. All of them will produce fine crops if planted even in early July.
The kale, chard and collards will last through the winter — even when it snows. Some people let their kale flower and go to seed the following spring. Bunches of kale stocks and flowers are sold now at the Farmers Market. Someone must like them; maybe it’s you.
I read a book once whose author said we should plant something every day until the Fourth of July, and can, dry or freeze something every day from the Fourth of July until October. Ha! Some of us have jobs, lady. And some of us are just not that ambitious.
But it’s true that you could plant something every day until midsummer or beyond. Take cilantro, for instance. Cilantro grows fast, then bolts and goes to seed when quite young. It’s best before that happens. Ideally it would make sense to poke five seeds (the seeds are actually coriander) into the ground once a week for the next three or four months.
Most things that can be done in April can also be done in May. And some things, like planting tomatoes and anything else that’s not frost-tolerant, can’t be done until then anyway.
So relax and enjoy this glorious month, both in the big blooming world and in your garden.
Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com
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