Setting your veg patch up well in April will ensure a great gardening year (Image: Getty)
April is the single most important sowing month of the year, says garden expert Benedict Vanheems. Sow the right seeds now, he adds, and “you’ll have set up your garden for success, all summer long.”
Carrots
One of the first crops to consider, Benedict says, should be carrots. While many experts will advise gardeners to stick to growing the more expensive vegetable crops and simply rely on greengrocers for cheaper items such as carrots, Benedict says there’s something special about a homegrown carrot.
“They may be cheap to buy, but this is why you grow carrots,” he explains on his GrowVeg YouTube channel, but the intense taste of carrot you’ve grown yourself will be “so much more carroty than anything you’ll find in the supermarket.”
You should rake your vegetable patch well before sowing your carrots, aiming to make shallow trenches for the seeds that are about eight inches apart. Sprinkling the seeds by hand, ideally landing them about half an inch apart, should yield a fairly even distribution of plants.
You can always thin them out later if you find that some plants are too close together, but bear in mind that carrots don’t don’t take well to being transplanted, so you’ll be lucky if the redistributed ones grow to full maturity.
Home-grown carrots are far superior to shop-bought, Benedict says (Image: Getty)
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Before covering the seeds with a light layer of soil, Benedict says it’s a good idea to water them: “It’s been an incredibly wet winter here, but it’s surprising how much moisture carrots need to germinate, and good consistent moisture will really help things along.
“If you’re sowing later in the season and it’s dry,” he adds, “then one tip is to water into the [trench] before sowing and then sow, cover them over and water again just to make sure it’s really wet.”
You should keep watering your carrots, he adds, throughout the two to three weeks that they will take to germinate. Also, Benedict warns, keep your eye out for signs of garden pests: “Slugs absolutely love carrot seedlings, in fact, it’s probably one of their favourite meals.”
Courgettes are decorative as well as taste (Image: Getty)Courgettes
Courgette, or zucchini for your American cousins, is “the plant that keeps on giving,” Benedict says. “These guys can go from seed to sprawling plant in what seems like the blink of a horticultural eye.”
Courgette plants are so fertile that you really don’t need to plant more than half a dozen of them at the absolute most. You should sow them no more than three to four weeks before your last expected frost date, and they will be ready surprisingly soon: “I harvest them young, when they’re at their nuttiest and densest,” Benedict says, “they’re just sublime like that.”
Courgettes provide great instant gratification for the impatient gardener: “In fact,” Benedict says, “one year, I had my first picking towards the end of May from an early April sowing, they’re that fast.”
According to gardening lore, the seeds should be planted edge-on rather than flat, to prevent them from getting too waterlogged and risking mould and mildew, but in practice, Benedict says they are so fast-growing that you’d have to be very unlucky with the weather to risk that.
Cucumbers will be happier in a greenhouse (Image: Getty)Cucumbers
While cucumbers look not unlike courgettes, they need slightly more delicate handling. They germinate best in warmer conditions, so if you have a greenhouse, that’s ideal, or if not, you can just start them off indoors.
They will germinate really quickly if they’re warm enough, Benedict says, “and they’ll soon produce those floppy little leaves that tell you they’re ready for more space.”
Cucumbers are a great choice for a vegetable garden, he adds, because they’re surprisingly expensive in supermarkets, but amazingly versatile. Benedict says: “I’m always amazed at how much cucumbers cost, but when you grow them yourself, I love them blended into smoothies, and they’re meant to be incredibly good for your skin, eyes and what-not.”
Whatever you plan to do with your cukes, there are just a couple of important things to remember: “Whether you’re growing your cucumbers in a greenhouse, poly-tunnel or hoop house, or outside in a sunny and sheltered spot, the key things to remember are regular watering and regular feeding.
“Inconsistent moisture can lead to bitter-tasting fruits, and no one wants that after months of hard work!”
Apart from being a healthy food, chard is quite a decorative crop (Image: Getty)Chard
“Chard is one of my favourite vegetables for sheer reliability and productivity,” Benedict says. “Chard can be colourful, incredibly productive, and is far more tolerant of heat – and cold for that matter – than many other greens.”
Timing is everything with chard, Benedict says: “The interesting thing with chard is that you can sow it maybe a month earlier than now, but the risk of it bolting, that’s flowering prematurely, does go up if you do that.”
For that reason, he says, you don’t want to sow your chard seeds too early and it’s better to wait until Spring is well under way: “I’ll be planting my chard seedlings a little bit over a foot or 35cm apart in both directions,” he says, “and after that it’s simply a matter of keeping the area well watered and weed-free.”
Once the plant is established, you can just remove the outer leaves as needed: “By harvesting like that, little but often, I should get a harvest for many months from just the one sowing,” Benedict says.
Celery does require a little more care than some other garden begetables (Image: Getty)Celery
Celery is a slightly trickier prospect than the other plants on Benedict’s list. While it should just be planted in the same all-purpose potting mix as the other vegetables here, because its seeds are so tiny — little more than grains of dust — it’s worth sieving your potting mix to make it equally fine.
Celery needs light to grow, so you just need to sprinkle the seeds on the surface, tamping them down slightly to prevent them from blowing away, and gently watering them with a very fine-rosed watering can.
“Our celery seeds will need warmth, patience, and just a little bit of faith because they’re in no hurry to come up,” Benedict says. Starting them off in a pot with a little clear plastic over the top will give celery seeds the best start in life, and you can transfer them into their own plugs to develop further before planting them out.
Benedict warns: “Celery needs rich soil and consistent moisture throughout the growing process. If you do let it dry out, it can get a bit stringy and strong flavoured and not particularly pleasant – this is actually a bog plant after all. But keep it happy and you’ll be enjoying crisp and aromatic stems that are leagues ahead of anything you’ll find in the supermarket.”
Marigolds are excellent companion plants for a vegtable patch (Image: Getty)Companion Flowers
Alongside all that practical veg, Benedict advises planting a few flowers to keep your crops company. Marigolds, zinnias, and alyssum are excellent companion plants for gardens, combining to create a vibrant, low-maintenance, and pest-resistant landscape.
“Marigolds will help to confuse pests, while sweet alyssum forms low, fragrant carpets that attract beneficial insects of all kinds,” Benedict says.
And then zinnias, bringing with them their bold colour, make excellent cut flowers. “These should be kept frost-free and then in a couple of weeks or so they’ll be ready to plant out and offer their colour, buzz, movement and joy to the garden.”
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