Gardening Calendar

Browse our monthly calendar for advice on what to plant, prune, and feed each month. 

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Gardening calendar April 2024

It's the middle of autumn and the best time to plant pretty much anything (but tropicals) while the soil is still warm and rain is supplying moisture. Autumn is also particularly good to get citrus trees.

Planting

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Soil

  • Enrich soil before planting with Bailey Soil Improver Plus or for sandy soils use Baileys Soil Matters Clay & Compost. Clay & Compost permanently improves nutrient and water holding capacity by combining quality organic compost, aged chicken manure, rock minerals and kaoline clay. This will help your new editions establish well before the cooler months, read more. 
  • Prepare soil as above for deciduous fruit trees and roses for winter planting. 

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Flowers & Ornaments

  • Spring flowering bulbs make an impressive display in any garden and the ideal time to plant in Perth is from late March to early May when the weather and soil has started to cool, read more on Planting Bulbs in WA. 
  • Sow poppy, Forget Me Not, Calendula, Lobelia and Delphinium seeds. Sow everlasting seed by the handful after first rains for a blast of spring colour.
  • Plant or pot up pansies, violas, polyanthus, cineraria for cool season colour. Use Baileys Premium Potting Mix.
  • It is time to pot up cyclamen from last season. Use a top quality free draining potting mix like Baileys Premium Potting Mix and be careful to position the corm so that it is half in the soil and half out.

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Vegetables & Herbs

  • In the vegetable garden its planting time as the early rains promise to take care of watering. Plant all members of the onion tribe including shallots, leeks, chives, onions, spring onions and garlic. The cabbage family is huge particularly when you add in the Oriental types. All can be planted now so don't forget pak choi, mibuna, mizuna, Wong Bok, broccoli, cabbage , Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and so on. Also lettuce, silver beet, Swiss chard, English spinach, peas, broad beans turnip, Swede, carrots, Florence fennel, endive, kohlrabi, beetroot and potatoes.
  • Use individual cloves of garlic for planting. These bulbs can be planted about 5cm deep pointy end up in a well-draining, organic rich soil and a sunny spot. They take 6-8 months or more to mature.
  • Rhubarb crowns can be lifted, divided and replanted into rich soil for another year of growth and productivity.  

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Fruits

  • Get citrus trees started while soil is warm and rain is imminent. The choice of different varieties is very good at this time of the year.

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Pot Plants

  • If your outdoor space is limited, bring the garden inside by potting up some indoor plants. The variety in most nurseries now is fantastic. Use Baileys Indoor Premium Potting Mix. 

Feeding

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Vegetables & Herbs

  • Baileys Soil Matters Garden is an organic based, broad spectrum plant food which can be applied across the entire garden and veggie patch. It's microbial coating is designed to stimulates healthy population of native soil biology and improve nutrient uptake. 

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Flowers & Ornaments

  • The early starters in the camellia family are the sasanqua types. These begin their show in April and progressively open through May and finish up in June. Give them a feed if you haven't already done so.Time to give the lawn a feed, see our lawn section for advice.

Pruning, Maintenance & Harvest

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Flowers & Ornaments

  • Cut the deadhead of Dahlias to keep the flowers coming along.
  • Get lethal with the secateurs on your roses if you haven't pruned them already in March. Take off about a third of the stem growth and follow up with an application of Baileys Soil Matters Garden to give them a good feed. 

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Trees & Bushes

  • Time to prune. Cut back flower heads of agapanthus and oleanders now they have finished flowering.
  • Prepare and enrich existing soil for cool season plantings with Baileys Soil Improver Plus.

Lawn Care

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  • Autumn fertilising prepares your lawn for the winter months. It encourages prolonged growth to ensure a thick coverage and extended colour. These applications will be the most important for the year. It will also help prevent weeds from taking hold while your lawns growth rate slows.
    When the soil temperature drops in winter, we recommend moving to foliar applications only, so fertiliser early March and again mid-April to early May using a granular fertiliser like Baileys Energy Turf or 3.1.1. Plus.
  • If your lawn is in need of some TLC, is warn or patchy, apply Baileys Lawn Reviver as a top dressing, this will boost the soil profile with organic carbon and stimulate soil biology. The exciting thing is you can see the difference within days.
  • Dethatching your lawn can be done now if needed. The test is to walk over the lawn to see how spongy it has become. Thatch is a build-up of dead stems and grass leaves above the soil surface.
  • This is a good time to plant a new lawn. Prepare the area with a layer of Baileys Soil Matters Clay & Compost. If it's clay, however, use Soil Improver Plus and dig into the soil to a depth of 10cm. 

Pest Control

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  • Watch out for slugs, snails, aphids, whitefly, cabbage moth and associated caterpillars in the vegie patch this season. 
  • The best method is always prevention and if you don't have a problem, act quick to secure your garden with a finely woven net immediately. Exclusion netting is a great way to keep most pests at bay.

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