Birds and Wildlife
- If blackbirds and English sparrows are dominating your feeders, switch to pure sunflower seeds. Orange halves may attract orioles and butterflies.
- Supplement your hummingbird-friendly plants with sugar-water feeders. Use one part sugar and four parts water by volume. You do not need to boil the water or use food coloring, but neither hurts the birds.
Color
- The weather in April is usually stable enough that you can plant warm weather bedding plants such as lantanas, begonias, firebush, impatiens, portulaca, coleus and zinnias. Wait on periwinkles until late May.
- Maintain your spray program for modem roses.
- If you want to collect the bluebonnet seeds, wait until the pods are full size and some browning shows. Collect the whole plant and hang it upside down to dry before shelling the pods.
- Let your bougainvillea get root bound and stressed between waterings for best blooms.
- Hibiscus food works well for container-grown hibiscus plants or use a soluble fertilizer when you water. They are full-sun plants.
- Plant hibiscus, bougainvillea, mandevilla and allamanda vines in containers for tropical landscape color. Warm-season annual color can be planted using trailing lantanas, cosmos, zinnias, firebush, copper plant, moss rose (portulaca), purslane, Dahlberg daisy, purple fountain grass, bachelor buttons and pentas for the sunny locations. For shade areas choose from begonias, impatiens, caladiums, coleus and pentas.
Fruits and Nuts
- There is still time to thin late-season peaches, apples and plums. Thin to one fruit per 6-8 inches of stem. Yes, it’s hard to do but must be done in order to produce large, blemish-free fruit.
- Do not fertilize fruit trees after they have bloomed and set fruit. They are prone to move into a vegetative state and neglect fruit development.
- Fertilize pecan trees in early April with 21- 0-0 (1 lb. per inch of trunk diameter) to encourage good nut production. Apply thinly throughout the drip line so you don’t burn your grass.
- Webworms, army worms, and oak leaf rollers show up in April. Control them with Bt or Spinosad. Remember to get the Bt or Spinosad on the leaves surrounding the nest as the worms must eat the it in order for it to be effective.
- Fruit trees must be sprayed with an insecticide every week to ten days to keep most of the fruit blemish free. The traditional sprays are Malathion and carbaryl for insects and Captan and benomyl for fungus. Organic gardeners use Neem oil and sulphur.
Ornamentals
- Remove the pansies, snapdragons, dianthus, calendulas, kale and other winter plants when they get ragged.
- If you want to repot some plants, remove the root ball from the container and cut a I inch strip of soil and roots from it. Put the root ball back in the container and fill the new space at the edge with high quality potting soil or compost.
- Plant caladium tubers after mid-month. Caladiums are tropical in origin and won’t grow well until the soil temperature is warm.
- Impatiens, fibrous begonias and coleus are summertime favorites for shade.
Shade Trees and Shrubs
- Do not prune oak trees now. It’s too late. This is prime oak wilt season. If you make any kind of wound from a trimmer or mower on an oak tree, paint it quickly with some type of latex paint.
- You can still plant new shrubs and trees this month if they are container-grown. Use generous amounts of mulch on the surface over the roots and water as the soil dries.. .usually about once per week through the hot summer.
- In heavily shaded parts of the landscape where grass is difficult to maintain, choose one of the well-adapted groundcover plants such as English or Algerian ivy, Asian jasmine, or mondograss.
- Prune pillar or climbing roses, wisteria, and Carolina jesamine as soon as they have finished flowering. Vigorous landscape shrubs will need frequent pruning. These include eleagnus, pyracantha, ligustrum and photinia. As spring-flowering shrubs (spiraea, quince and Indian Hawthorne) complete their blooming, do any necessary pruning. Prune to retain the natural shape of the plant.
Turf Grass
- Fertilize your lawn after the second or third “real” mowing. A “real” mowing is when you are cutting lawn grass and not winter weeds.
- Use a slow-release lawn fertilizer with a ratio of 3-1-2 or 4-1-2 NPK—Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K)—-for example, 18-6-12, 19-5-9, 20-6-12. Slow release fertilizers are best because they feed throughout the growing season and do not leach (wash) into the ground water. Apply about 1 pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of lawn.. .note that it’s 1 pound of nitrogen, not just one pound of fertilizer. Figure it out. This means that, if you’re using a fertilizer that is 19 or 20 percent nitrogen, it’ll take about 8 pounds of it per If you use organic 1,000 square feet. fertilizer, use about twice as much.
- Mow St. Augustine grass at 3 inches, Zoysia at 2 inches and Bermuda at lh inches, and Buffalo at 4-5 inches. Mow when the grass is 1/3 higher than the recommended height. Never cut off more than 1/3 the height of the blades of grass.
- Don’t start the automatic sprinkler system unless we haven’t had rain for at least 2 weeks.
- If your St. Augustine is a little chlorotic (yellow), try six tablespoons of iron sulfate dissolved in one gallon of water used as a spray. It’s not a cure-all, just a quick picker- upper. Green sand is a long term solution.
- Weeds can literally take over a lawn this month if they are not controlled. Frequent close mowings, hand-pulling or the use of an herbicide usually provide adequate control. To control weeds in Bermuda grass, use MSMA or DSMA after as temperatures have risen above 70 degrees F. For weed control in St. Augustine, use Greenlight Wipe-Out or Ortho Weed-B-Gone for southern grasses. Do not mow before or for 2 days after you apply the treatment. To control nut-grass or nutsedge, use Manage or Image. Read and follow label instructions BEFORE the applications are made.
Vegetables
- April is a month to plant the gardener’s favorite vegetables such as tomatoes, sweet corn and snap beans and peppers. You can plant cucumbers, lima or butter beans, cantaloupe, okra, southern peas, pumpkin, squash, peanuts and watermelon. Protect tender transplants and seedlings with Grow-Web (Plant Guard, ReeMay, Plant Shield) for wind protection, insect avoidance and unexpected cold (3-5 degree cold protection).
- Side-dress the tomatoes and peppers with half a cup of slow-release lawn fertilizer when the first fruit sets. Tomato hornworms can be controlled with Bt or Spinosad.
- Plant eggplant, green beans, sweet corn, radishes, and carrots later in the month.
- Mulch around all the veggies with leaves, straw, or hay to a depth of 3-4 inches to deter weeds and keep the soil from drying out.
- Harvest potatoes anytime after they start blooming. If the weather is wet, do not leave them in the ground or the tubers will rot. To get larger potatoes, leave the plants in the ground and when you’re ready to get some, dig around with your hand in the soil to find the big ones. Pull them off and leave the others.
- Aphids’ populations can become excessive on new growth of trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals—-especially oaks, roses and tomatoes. Control with any contact, general-purpose insecticide, although Carbaryl is not effective against aphids.
- Snails, slugs and pillbugs can devour the tender growth of young plants. Lightly dust young plants and the area directly adjacent to the plants with an insecticidal dust. Snails and slugs can also be controlled with baits.
- Fire ants can eat young plants, especially tomatoes and eggplant. Use the two-step approach: treatments of visible mounds and area-wide bait applications. Foliage can be devoured by looping (bodies loop as they crawl) caterpillars of all types. The biological worm spray containing Bacillus thuringiensis (also known as Bt) is one reliable control; Spinosad is another. Use two teaspoons of a liquid dish-washing detergent (Joy, Ivory Liquid, etc.) per gallon of spray to help cause a uniform wetting of the sprayed surface. Remember that the worms have to eat the Bt or Spinosad for it to work; so be sure to spray the entire plant.
- Thinning vegetables is one of the most important follow-up activities in gardening. Most gardeners use more seed than necessary for a healthy plant stand. Having too many plants in an area is just as bad, if not worse, than having too few. Thin with scissors according to the directions on the seed package.
