Monday 3rd & Tuesday 4th April 2023 – Free afternoons!!

Half past the March you start to feel the excitement of working in the garden and from the beginning of April, gardening season perks up and mood uplifts for summer. To enjoy your garden, whole season–it’s important to do certain April gardening tasks. What are they? Find them out in this article.

Many gardening apps are available for download in app stores but finding an accurate one is like finding a needle from the haystack, that’s why we have checked some of the best apps that are free and worthy to download. Let’s take a look.

For the last few days I have been envisagingthe creation of a vase of red blooms for today, which we duly have, although I am far from satisfied with the end result. Sadly, there weren’t as many of the small decorative Dahlia ‘William Kent’ fully open as I would have liked, and seeing the photographs I regret not cutting the stems shorter, to allow the blooms to hug the rim of the vase more. But at least it is a bountiful vase of red blooms, which was my overall aim, so that’s a positive!

The jewel-like colours of the dahlias were calling me today, but having featured ‘brights’ in recent vases I decided to go for more pastel shades instead. Although I started with cosmos (not as tall as some years, not a bad thing, and certainly bushy and reasonably floriferous, which they weren’t last year), cutting a few stems of each variety, they have largely disappeared amongst the other contents. Having discovered another Double Click variety, I have grown all four this year: DC Cranberries, Snow Puff, Rose Bonbon and Bicolor Rose, the latter being the newest one.

When I popped blooms into the test tubes of one of the stands we had for sale today at our open garden, it made me think straight away of ‘three little maids from school’. The original picking was of three different calendula – Indian Prince, Sunset Buff and Snow Princess – but the latter two were looking a little fraught after a day in the sun, so for my IAVOM contribution I replaced them with more Indian Princes, in a move that made me think of some oriental magic show, transforming Indian princes into schoolgirls (or maybe it is the other way round?). The schoolgirls are certainly of the undisciplined sort, refusing to stand up straight and smile for the camera.

The title of this post is more of an afterthought than anything else, but if you are wondering why I refer to golden arrows when the arrows are anything but golden, all will become clear in due course!

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Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.

To celebrate Spring the team from Bale Breaker’s Yakima farm is bringing 6′ hop plants sell at our their Ballard Taproom. We’ll be here selling our new Freyr trellis, our friends at Beyond Peat Professional Organics will have some of their latest soil to sample, and Ecolibrium Farms will also be in house selling plant and flower starts for the spring season!

I seem to have all my April seeds finally sown in the greenhouses and I’ve also pricked out everything that I can. I’m sure in a couple of weeks time there will be loads more to do. The greenhouses are filling up very nicely and the weather is getting warmer and the days are getting longer so all is good in the world.

This year I’m getting compost as and when I need it (which at this time of year is frequently). They have a special deal at our local independent garden centre on compost when you buy 3 bags, so I’m buying 3 bags at a time. However with so many seedlings to sow and especially prick out, 3 bags doesn’t last long, as I’m sure you can imagine. Maybe when I go tomorrow I’ll buy 6 bags.

Use macrame cord to make a crochet plant hanger. Even if you are not introduced to crocheting, you can learn the simple chain stitch. The tutorial is available here!