April in the garden and the nursery:

What to do in the Garden:
- Autumn is the best time to plant most Australian native trees and bushes.
- Make compost
- Start preparing your garden beds for winter, either by covering everything with a thick blanket of compost and mulch or plant winter crops
- Watch out for caterpillars - take them off the plants or if necessary spray with Dipel or Success
- Cut asparagus ferns to the ground as they fade
- Spray deciduous fruit trees with copper hydroxide after all the leaves have dropped to prevent leaf curl. Another spray will be needed in spring at early bud swell
- Prune stone fruit trees as fruit is harvested
- Clean up strawberry beds
- Mulch all fruit trees and berry fruit plants
- Reduce watering of house plants as temperature falls
- Apply dolomite lime to fruit trees, vegetable garden beds and flower beds. Avoid acid loving plants such as rhododendrons, azaleas, ericas, camellias, daphne, and most Australian native plants
- Prune apricot, maple, birches and walnuts if they need it
- Transplant trees that are in the wrong spot
- Pick pumpkins, making sure to leave the end. Don’t carry the pumpkin by this tempting “handle” because it will surely break
- Prune berries
- Side-dress vegies with potash
- Prune hydrangeas as soon as the blooms begin to look a bit weathered - only prune branches that have flowers, and prune right back, nearly to the ground


Sow (from seed):
Broad beans, Lettuce, Onions, Raddishes, Garlic (bulbs), Green manure crop

Plant (from seedling):
Broccoli, Cabbages, Cauliflower, Leeks, Lettuce, Onions, Silverbeet,