April, north of the equator

April is the busiest month of the gardening year and the one where most is lost to a single cold night. Everything is growing, the soil is warm enough for direct sowing across most of the country, and the frost has not finished. The whole month is a negotiation between those two facts, and the gardeners who lose least are the ones who keep a roll of fleece by the back door.

In the garden

Sow directly: carrots, beetroot, chard, spinach, lettuce, radish, spring onions, peas and the first main crop of anything hardy. Sow cosmos, calendula, nasturtiums and sunflowers where they are to flower once the soil is warm to the touch rather than merely unfrozen. Plant potatoes, first earlies at the start of the month and main crops by the end of it, and draw the soil up over the shoots whenever a frost is forecast.

Plant out the hardy transplants that were raised under cover, but harden them off first over a week or so. Dahlia tubers can go straight into the ground from the middle of the month in milder areas, and agapanthus goes in now, in the sunniest and best drained place you have. Delosperma and other succulent ground cover can be planted once the risk of a hard frost is easing.

Keep sowing under cover for the tender crops. Courgettes, cucumbers, pumpkins and squash all germinate fast in warmth and are better sown now than in March, because a plant that has to wait for the frost to pass turns into a leggy disappointment in its pot.

In the house

The plants are in full growth. Water on a shorter interval, feed at full strength, and expect to be doing both more often than you were a month ago. A monstera in April makes a leaf a fortnight in decent light, which is the whole reward for the winter of doing very little.

Take cuttings. Almost everything roots more readily now than at any other time: pothos, tradescantia, pelargonium, philodendron, string of pearls. A cutting taken in April is a plant by August, and it costs nothing but a jar of water and a windowsill.

Give anything that will be going outside for the summer a gradual introduction, in the shade first and only for a few hours. A rubber plant moved straight from a living room to a sunny patio scorches in an afternoon.

What not to do yet

Do not plant tomatoes, courgettes, beans or any bedding outside without protection. Do not stop hardening off halfway, because a week of fresh air followed by a night back indoors teaches the plant nothing. And do not sow everything at once. Four lettuces a fortnight is a supply, and forty lettuces in one weekend is a glut followed by nothing.