Gardening Tips for April 2025

Just as the avid gardener has dared to venture out into the March sunshine along comes April in its attempt to turn the perfectly pristine parterre into a bog. If a bog garden isn’t your thing and you don’t want April to make a fool of you, perhaps some of the following could be of help!

A few things almost guaranteed to get the better of the hapless gardener;

seed catalogues - works of fantasy, filled with magic and promise,

weeds – an intelligent lifeform that has mastered every survival technique with the exception of learning to grow in nice straight rows and being useful,

spade – a device for generating back pain,

the knee – an efficient device that can find hard things in the ground without having to try too hard.

Regarding the April fool, we probable have Pope Gregory XIII to thank as his new calendar moved the new year from its well established and much loved 1 st April to the middle of winter which is not the best time of year for al fresco frivolities. The populace who readily adopted 1st January as the new year subsequently started to mock the old stick-in-the-muds who continued with their 1st April tradition. However, April Fools Day was an established trqadition in England before the Gregorian calendar’s new-new year, so perhaps folk have just been fooling around in aeternum.

The Kitchen Garden

Get those chitted potatoes onto the ground if not already done so. Have you tried planting them in royal deer manure, claimed to be ten times better than peat at increasing your yield. The manure is expensive and only available from Royal Parks but is substantially cheaper than Peruvian pelican guano at £164.95/kg or Madagascan civet kupi lawak at £970/kg which is the world's most exclusive organic dung. Christmas present perhaps; you have time to save up!

Looking After The Wildlife

And now back to last year’s Asian Hornet awareness segment. Thanks to last year’s weather the poor things didn’t enjoy their sojourn to Blightly but the weather this year could be more suitable to their liking so please keep your eyes and ears open for this most unwelcome colonist and report any sightings.

Another repeat but I believe a worthy one that we can all easily adopt, a rigorous cleaning regime for our bird feeders and bird baths. The RSPB recommend cleaning a bird feeder ever week, and cleaning means a really good scrub to remove all traces of old food stuck in those hard-to-reach places. Give the bird feeder (take it apart of possible) a good soak in washing up liquid, rinse thoroughly and allow to dry before refilling, but only refill with enough food to last 2 or 3 days therefore the content stays cleaner and fresher, after a week, wash and repeat. Bird baths also deserve a good clean and provide fresh water every day. Starlings are keen exponents of the communal bath; we either have the cleanest or dirtiest starling in Rudgwick judging by their bathing rituals. Once visited by starlings a bird bath always need refilling because the content is everywhere else other than where it should be!

And lastly an upcoming event to lookout for. The EGRGA plant sale will be held on 26th April, 10:00 to 12:00 at Rudgwick Village Hall, everyone welcome, please come along and grab yourself a bargain.

Keep gardening.

Richard Haigh