By Sally McCabe, PHS Associate Director of Community Education   

Spring is here, and it's time to give your garden the care it needs! April is the perfect month for garden cleanup, soil preparation, and early planting. This April gardening checklist will help you stay organized and set your garden up for success throughout the season. 

Start with Garden Cleanup 

Do some limbering-up exercises and then get out there and get all the limbs involved! This has been a rough winter, so there’s a lot of tree trash all over everything. Send the large pieces off to friends who have a fireplace or pit; medium pieces make great kindling for those same friends or can be bundled (no longer than 3 feet) and put out for trash. The smallest flotsam and jetsam can be used as the base for your newest compost pile. 

Assess Your Garden’s Condition 

Now that you’ve cleared away the larger visual distractions, you can start to see what’s really going on. All those branches came from somewhere—will the trees they came from need some judicious pruning to remove jagged edges and half-hanging appendages? Do the shrubs they fell on need to be cleaned up of damaged pieces? Was there enough damage to warrant removing now-dangerous trees completely? Talk to your neighbors about their woes as well; tree-removal folks will often give substantial discounts if they get multiple jobs on the same block because they only have to bring out the heavy equipment once. Then you can grab some of the resulting chips for mulching pathways! 

Take a Walk and Perform a Soil Check 

Lots of things have happened since we last communed, and it’s time to assess what’s going on out there and start making plans. Let’s start with a soil check: Take a chunk of freshly dug soil and squeeze it in your hand to form a ball. Poke it gently with your finger and see if it flakes apart. If it stays in a ball, it’s too wet and you should check again in a few days – this usually means you should have done more soil prep in the fall. If it falls apart, you’re good to go and can start to think about planting. 

April Planting Guide

Plan A: Start Planting Your Garden 

Many plants and seeds bear the caveat: they can be planted as soon as soil can be worked. So, let’s get digging and get some seeds in the ground--peas, carrots, lettuce, spinach, radishes, beets. Try some plants, too: lettuce, mustards, chard, pansies, and more! 

Plan B: Garden Cleanup for Wet Soil 

If your soil ball test says it’s too wet to dig, do some cleanup instead. Pick up sticks and everything that blew down over the winter. Rake up the flotsam and jetsam of the past season and get rid of it. But be sure to examine all the trash you collect to make sure it isn’t indicative of non-garden problems around the house, like loose flashing, renegade siding, or flying shingles. 

Plan C: Prepare for Future Planting 

If both your soil balls AND the weather refuse to cooperate with your garden urges, grab some catalogs or get online and make some lists. Then cull, cull, and cull again; statistics show that you really only need one-tenth of what’s on your initial list. So, go through last year’s seeds, or, better yet, get together with neighbors and friends to order seeds together. Bulk buying keeps the cost down and gives you more variety than your lone purse can handle. 

Get Your Seeds in the Ground 

It's time to plant NOW! April is perfect for planting cool-weather crops such as peas, greens, and root vegetables. Consider planting the following: 

• Greens: Lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, collards, kale, mustard greens, bok choy, arugula 
• Root Crops: Carrots, turnips, beets, potatoes, rutabaga, radishes 
• Peas: Plant peas as soon as the soil is ready. 

Last year’s seeds will do; or you can still order online but be patient; seed companies are getting slammed and running behind on deliveries. 

Give Your Spring Bulbs Some TLC

Take some time to rake away any debris surrounding your spring bulbs. Unless we get another spell of 20 degrees, they’ll all be fine. They are as sick of this on-again-off-again spring/winter tease as the rest of us(!) and need be released from last year’s baggage so we can fluff out our feathers, green up our leaves, and fully welcome spring in all its color and splendor.