Gardening jobs for April

Get your lawn in shape

After a winter of neglect, your lawn will benefit from a bit of TLC now. Start mowing once a week, beginning with the blades at the highest setting and gradually lowering them over the weeks. If your lawn mower needs replacing, see our Best Buy lawn mowers.

For a perfect finish, trim the lawn’s edges with long-handled shears or a grass trimmer

Lastly, give the lawn a feed. If it contains weeds or moss, treat these at the same time with a weed, feed and mosskiller treatment.

Kill weeds

Getting on top of weeds early in the season means that you should prevent them seeding and becoming a problem. Hoeing the border once a week works well.

Perennial weeds, such as dandelions, will come back if they’re hoed off, so to get rid of them permanently either dig them out roots and all or use a weedkiller containing glyphosate.

Plant out sweet peas

After pinching out sweet peas last month, they should have strong side-shoots that will flower well.

Plant them next to a support that they can climb by wrapping their tendrils around; they’ll need to be tied in with string at the start to get them going.

Harvest salads

Early sowings of salads should be ready to pick now. Cut off the leaves, rather than pulling up the whole plant, and they should resprout new ones.

Good salads to try include loose-leaf lettuce, rocket, mizuna and mustard.

Veg jobs for April

April brings warmer weather so it's time to get sowing and planting.

• Plant onions
• Earth up potatoes
• Sow tender crops indoors

For our full guide to veg garden jobs for April, watch our video.