Just when I was at my lowest and had become fixed on the idea that we’d entered a terrible new Ice Age, spring finally made its move. Over this past weekend, the warmest parts of my zone 5b(ish) yard here in Toronto began to thaw and by Monday at least half of the garden was muddy and gross, but no longer buried underneath a thick lake of ice. I wondered if it could be an elaborate April Fool Day’s joke staged by the Universe (nope, not paranoid), but as of this morning spring was still ON and only areas closest to the house were still frozen and buried.
Hellebore plants are still underneath ice in the coldest parts of the garden. Do you know how to identify cold spots in your garden?
It’s been amazing to track how quickly both the ice and the resulting mud has receded. I’ve been wandering the yard once or twice daily with my head to the ground, looking for signs of life. Each visit brings some tiny new thing that wasn’t there just hours before. As it stands, my garden is an absolute disaster — the worst it has ever been in early spring. But it is glorious none-the-less!
Will it snow again? Yes, here in Toronto it always snows in April, but it rarely sticks. Does this mean that I can hurry headlong into all of the season’s usual chores? It’s been a strange year. I’m taking it as slowly and tentatively as I can stand to go and am trying to find some balance between this burst of spring excitement and the feeling that anything could happen. I’m taking baby steps… if baby steps means doing air kicks and losing my mind with joy! I have your, OMG spring is finally here we’re going to make it after-all dance party song here.
With that out of the way, here’s a list of things I will likely be doing this month. As you can imagine some of these chores are already behind schedule. This is not a typical year and I plan to watch closely and roll these out when it feels like the time is right. I also need to take it easy because I have a tendency to go full throttle at the start of spring. As I get older this tends to lead to a variety of unanticipated aches and pains. One of these days I will remember to do some pre- and post-gardening stretches.
My garden to-do list for the month of April
- Apply fresh mulch to parts of the pathways where erosion has occurred. Tip: I do not apply fresh mulch to garden beds just yet. That should wait until the soil warms up.
- Prune back dead branches on perennial plants, herbs, and grasses so that the sun can reach the soil. Many are cut right down to the ground, but it depends on the plant. Tip for the birds: I rip up some of the brown grass and alliums and toss them onto empty raised beds. The birds take what they need as nesting materials.
The old, matted leaves of sorrel (Rumex acetosa), a hardy culinary herb, need to be pulled away to make room for new growth to emerge.
- Pull old leaves, mulch, matted plant matter and debris away from the crowns of emerging perennials.
- Pick up the garbage that has found its way into the yard from who knows where. There’s more this year than usual.
- Top up raised beds that have eroded with compost or manure.
- Top dress all remaining garden beds (except the dry bed) with compost.
- Direct sow poppies: This is another task that I would have done ages ago, had those parts of the garden not been covered in a deep blanket of impenetrable ice. There’s still time! I purchased some white poppy seed that hasn’t yet arrived!
- Begin to harden off hardy, overwintered pots: I overwinter my Japanese maples and a few other hardy, dwarf trees in the doorway of my shed. Now is the time to start bringing them out for short periods so they can get accustomed to the light. I am also careful to make sure they don’t get too hot inside the shed or dry out.
- Prune raspberry canes and climbing roses: With the roses I wait until the first buds appear so that I know where to cut. I usually do the raspberries earlier than this, but it was not a pleasant winter. To prune raspberries: cut canes that have previously borne fruit right down to the soil line.
- Stay on top of my indoor seed starting schedule: I’m behind due to the late spring, but plan to keep what remains on time. Tonight I will be doing my dwarf tomatoes. I usually do them in March. This chart will help you figure out your schedule for the season.
- Cut back dead growth on perennial herbs and assess which plants have been lost for good: I’m not yet sure about my sage or thyme as they tend to be slow to come back regardless. However, many are not looking good. I suspect I will be replacing several plants this year.
- Assess the state of my compost bins and freshen them up. Check for finished compost.
- Start some lettuce seeds indoors: I don’t usually do this and am normally an advocate of direct sowing outdoors. I find that the plants are healthier and more heat resistant when started in this way. However, we’re behind this spring and I’d like some fresh salad fixings sooner rather than later so I will start a few plants indoors to get a little head start and it will be business as usual for everything else.
- Install “greenhouse” covers over a few of the raised beds: I use long piping that extends across the beds and fits into slots on the insides. That is covered over with plastic sheeting and affixed with plastic clips.
- Clean up the unheated porch that I refer to as the cold greenhouse: It is normally much more orderly by now, but it was unbearably cold in there this winter and many plants were lost. Most of them were half-hardy salvias. I also do a bunch of seed starting in there, too.
- Push perennial onions back into the soil where they popped out.
- Direct sow peas, spinach, and radishes: As soon as the soil is workable, meaning NOT frozen, they’ll be good to go.
- Make more hypertuffa pots for my alpines: This has been on my to-do list for 3 years running. I should have done it last fall as hypertuffa requires months of curing before it is safe for planting. But I didn’t, so…
Hallelujah! Our snow is gone now too.
Thanks for all the timely advice.
I put my potted white fig and my Bay tree outside yesterday and today to get rained on and get some fresh air. They look much happier already.
I noticed your stash of tall bamboo poles in the shed photo. I use a recycled terra cotta chimney liner to corral my tall poles and stakes. It’s a 30″ tall tube of terra cotta with 12″ square openings at each end. It stands on its own and tidies up a large collection of poles and stakes without tipping over. I do tip it a little to pull a pole out since the ceiling of my shed is a bit low, but it never falls when bumped because of its weight.
Terra cotta chimney liners are sometimes advertised as useful vessels for mint control, sunken with a 2″ lip showing, but I found them “use – less”. They absorbed water in winter and cracked completely, stealing my time for an extensive clean up. There are enough spring chores to do without that kind of mess added to the mix.
I see a galvanized washtub in your top photo, turned upsidedown. Do you use it as a platform or do you have it there protecting something underneath? I made mine into a bubbling fountain but last fall it sprung a leak, alas it was old. But I’ll miss it.
For the last few years I have been using the galvanized tub as a summer bog of-sorts for my colocasias. I empty it out in the fall and keep it turned over for the winter so it doesn’t fill up with snow/ice and expand/break.
I have never seen terra cotta chimney liners for sale here. I’ve been looking for years.
We’ve been patiently waiting on the final few plants that we weren’t sure if they made it through our freak ice storm in early March. Those were plants that had decided to leaf out during two weeks of warm weather in late February only to be told by Mother Nature to calm themselves down. Now instead of perhaps being only a bit knocked back from a general winter, they’ll be regrowing from the roots instead…at least the ones we’ve seen sprouting just a bit of green.
I’m always amazed at how fast your garden transforms itself, from this to a lush jungle in mere months!
Do you mean my garden specifically, or all gardens in general? I am always shocked by how fast it changes, too. It’s hard to keep up with it once it starts.
RE: Your March ice storm I hate when that happens. This year there was no risk of that here because it just stayed unbearably cold!
I think I’m down to one patch of snow/ice the size of a frisbee on the north side of the house. It’s going to be cool and wet for a while and then I’m sure I’ll be scrambling to do all the things I normally would have done weeks ago. I won’t complain, though. We’ve waited for this too long. Happy gardening!
Thanks for sharing your list- it’s good to see what the experts are doing!
I am really struggling this year. I am in PA where we have had a brutally long winter, too. I have been looking forward to gardening all winter. And yet when I get out to work in the garden, I am in tears (yes, tears) about 5 minutes in. My husband has to send me inside.
I feel so overwhelmed by the clean up to do, and completely distraught about the weeds taking over my garden. I have a major bermuda grass infestation that is going to choke out life in my vegetable garden. I have tried so many things to control it and am at a loss, especially when it infests garden beds. I have this strange, deep rooted woody weed that is popping up everywhere. I have not yet figured out what it is. Last year, I saw bindweed spread throughout my garden. I feel so hopeless.
Finally, I have always counted on spring to really enjoy being outside because we have Asian Tiger mosquitoes which I have found no way to control and short of wrapping myself up completely in netting, I cannot enjoy being outside for extended periods of time in our backyard from late May until frost. I dart in and out in the summer but rarely spend much time out there. I just feel like, if Spring is distressing and Summer uninhabitable, what do I have left?
I LOVE my garden and I love plants. I have been taking classes in horticulture that have only deepened my appreciation for them. But honestly if I were a friend of mine, I would be asking why I am doing something that is making me so upset.
I’d guess that the answer to the why is because you WANT to garden. Many of us who garden need to do it. It’s just something we need to do. That’s also why it is making you so upset. The FRUSTRATION you must be feeling about wanting/needing to be out in the garden and struggling against so many obstacles. I feel your pain and sympathize. I’m really sorry that something potentially healing and joyful has been such a struggle.
I can commiserate about RE: Bindweed. The worst! Mine comes in through the neighbours’ yard, so I can’t defeat it no matter what I do… not if they aren’t dealing with it on their side too.
Have you seen this? A plant that kills bindweed. I’m still experimenting. https://www.yougrowgirl.com/heck-yeah-black-mint-huacatay/
The enemy of my bindweed enemy is my friend!
I do feel like I should update. I was having a bad couple of days, and I am still horrified by the bermuda grass situation, but I found a few things that helped and it no longer feels so dire. First, I called my mom, who has gardened since forever and said she gets the same way, so I feel like less of a freak. (She suggested focusing in on whatever tiny corner of your garden is making you happy.) Secondly, I made sure to take progress pictures, because I have a hard time seeing my progress, only everything I still have to do.
Yikes! I know I feel way behind and there is so much to do but I am going to enjoy every minute of it! What Winter? See, it was so bad I’ve blocked it from memory. I just cleaned up my dog’s toilet – that is usually the first thing on my to do list. We’ve had about two warm days and I’m like man, I need to get things done! My peas are usually in just after St. Patrick’s Day. The porch is open, though. I love how you push your plants to the limit – overwintering in cold greenhouses or the shed. I admire such tenacity and dedication! I probably have lost a few things, too. But I have crocus blooming that the rabbit hadn’t eaten yet!
I planted some Egyptian walking onions last summer. It is one of the only plants in my raised bed gardens right now… :)
When you say that you “Push perennial onions back into the soil where they popped out.” Do I just top them with soil or literally push them down into the soil?
Either/or. Honestly though they are so tough and will grow on their own even if they are just left on the surface. I have seen these things grow in a lawn where they fell. I just figure tat pushing them back in gives them a little head start and the bulbs seem to get a little bigger as a result.
Dear Gayla Trail , my name is Suzana , I am from Karlovac , a little town in Croatia.
I have a small garden for a first time, I by your book in a book store . I loved it.
it is a first time that I have a garden , so I am reading your book and I realy love your book. thank you:)