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Garden Tasks For April

By Paul McCollum
 
Slugs
 
April To-Do List for Zone 9
  • If slugs and snails are decimating your plants, collect them in the evening, when you're most likely to spot them. They make good snacks for hungry chickens!
  • Plant pumpkins, summer squash, melons, and other vegetables that thrive in heat.
  • Every 2 weeks from now until late summer, plant small blocks of bush beans and sweet corn to extend the harvest until frost.
  • Thin fruits on fruit trees to increase their size and keep branches from breaking.
  • Plant summer bedding plants, such as petunias, lisianthus (Eustoma grandiflorum), wax begonias, and impatiens.
  • Sow seeds of nasturtiums, marigolds, portulaca, amaranth, salvias, vinca (Catharanthus roseus), sunflowers, and zinnias.
  • Plant perennials like ornamental alliums, bellflowers (Campanula spp.), daisies, yarrow, daylilies, coreopsis, penstemon, perennial geraniums (Geranium spp.), iris, and statice.
Strawflowers 
 
April To-Do List for Zone 10
  • Plant perennials so they can settle in before the summer heat arrives; give them plenty of water.
  • Plant heat-loving bedding plants, such as vinca (Catharanthus roseus), strawflowers (Helichrysum bracteatum), blanket flowers (Gaillardia spp.), and gazanias.
  • Plant roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa), amaranth, and Malabar spinach (Basella alba) now through August; make sure you give the Malabar spinach some shade and extra water.
  • Try some tropical edibles: Buy malanga, gingerroot, and others at the market. Cut them into pieces at least 1⁄2 inch long, and plant. Harvest from October through December.
  • Trellis tropical cucurbits (luffa, chayote, Tahitian squash, and so on) on a fence, and reap the rewards this fall.
Source: ucanr.edu

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