In your garden…April 2022

Well here we are again, another month gone by and didn’t we have some lovely weather in late March! Here at Thorngrove I have been very busy potting lots and lots of plugs, I’ve also sown my tomatoes and brassicas, also cucumbers and courgettes. We have lettuce plants, celery, spinach plus others. We have lots of lovely Alpines and Herbaceous plants, also a wide selection of herbs so come on down to Thorngrove and see what other little treasures you can find!

If you’re in your garden this April, here’s a few tips to keep yourself busy and make the most of this time of year!

• Keep weeds under control! They’ll be making themselves known and come back faster than you expect.
• If you have citrus plants such as lemons, you can start to feed them now with a citrus plant food (available here at Thorngrove). We have some lovely lemon and lime plants for sale too if you’d like to add your first ones to your garden space.
• Sow new lawns or repair bare patches as the ground is warming up, but there is still moisture around like rain and cold dewey mornings.
• If you have Houseplants, you can increase the watering as the plants will be drying out more because of the longer daylight hours and they will be growing. If some of your Houseplants are pot bound, now is a good time to pot them up or divide. If potting up, only go up by one pot size, especially flowering ones as they like to have there roots restricted to aid flowering. If you pot into a to big a pot they will just put up a lot of foliage and it could be a while before they come back into flower!

(we have a huge selection of houseplants at Thorngrove)

Also if you have flowering houseplants remember to keep them dead headed. You can feed your houseplant now with baby bio or any other houseplant feed we have all these available at the garden centre. We have a good selection of houseplants at the garden centre. If you need more advice please feel free to ask one of our friendly glasshouse team. Coming soon we will have wide selection of pot covers to choose from to keep your lovely houseplants in too.

• Don’t forget to tie in your climbing and rambling roses

• Its time to sow your squash, pumpkins, sweetcorn, and French beans.
• Plant your Maincrop potatoes.
• Its also time to plant your Tomatoes and Cucumbers (under cover)
• Here are a couple of Tomato variety to look out for at your local Garden Centre, shirley are a normal size tomato with lots of flavour and a good cropper one for the children. Gardeners Delight are a nice cherry type with good flavour also a good cropper.
• We also have lots of chilli and sweet pepper plants also aubergines
• Also try direct sowing some new salad leaves, Carrots, Peas, Beetroot, also Spinach you can also plant your brassicas like cabbage , Broccoli and sprouts these are generally available from your local Garden centre.
  Browse vegetable seeds here!: https://shop.thorngrovegardencentre.co.uk/shop/flower-and-vegetable-seeds/vegetable-seeds/
• Give your Trees, Shrubs, and Hedges a good start by applying a balanced slow release fertiliser – look for one with an N-P-K of 3-1-1 or 3-1-2. N stands for Nitrogen and aids green growth. P stands for Phosphorous this encourages Flowers and Fruit. K stands for Potassium which aids root growth.
• Fruit trees need a lot of Potassium feed them now so they can absorb the Nutrients in time for the growing Season, Chicken manure pellets are good for this ,use them at the rate of 100g per sqm for Apples for other Fruit use at the rate of 140g per sqm
• Its also a good time to plant your Strawberry plants we have lots for sale at Thorngrove. If you don’t have a big garden try growing some in a hanging basket or windowsill planter!