April Gardening Tips

The gardeners at Jasmine Hill recommend the following tips to make your own garden a perennial paradise:

  • Plant warm-season annuals like marigolds and petunias after the last predicted frost date, generally early to mid-April.
  • Pinch back the growing tips to encourage a bushier plant with loads of flowers.
  • Leave the foliage on your daffodils until it turns yellow. The leaves nourish the bulb ensuring energy for next year's blossoms. Do, however, remove dead flowers to keep them from forming seeds.
  • Fertilize daffodils with a bulb food after they bloom.
  • Try over-planting with annuals like pansies so the yellowing foliage is not as noticeable.
  • Prune and shape azaleas after they bloom this spring.
  • Fertilize with an azalea/camellia fertilizer and follow the instructions on the label.
  • Remove all old blossoms from pansies, calendulas, dianthus and other cool season annuals to keep them blooming.
  • Feed warm-season grasses this month with a high nitrogen fertilizer like 20-5-10.
  • Apply a balanced slow-release fertilizer to soils as you plant flowerbeds.
  • Set out early tomatoes and sow seeds for bush beans.

Happy Gardening!

~

Originally published: Alabama Prime Times, April 1999

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