April brings frost, showers, crazy weather

April with all its fickleness is here. The first full moon of spring is now here. April can be a month filled with a lot of tricky and deceptive weather mixed with a bag of all kinds of weather. April can feature a variety of weather patterns that can fool many gardeners with its fickleness. The month can range from warn one day to cold the next with perhaps some snow included along the way and then seasoned with a few frosts and some April showers mixed in for good measure. April in all its fickleness is certainly one of the year’s most interesting months.

Hoping for a month of April showers. Instead of April being filled with late frosts, we would love to see plenty of April showers to give the month an April-fresh fragrance. The kind of showers that cause school girls to carry an umbrella in their book bags and also cause birds to sing new songs and maybe generate the first rainbow of the season of spring. After all, it is said that, “April showers bring May flowers!” We would certainly like to see April showers become the trademark of April in the spring of 2020.

Plenty of frost days left in April. Frost all during April is a good possibility. Even though April 16 is predicted as the last frost date, temperatures can still get low enough to bring frost anytime during the month and even possibly into early days of May.

April is month to plan perennials. Perennials are the flowers tough enough to endure all four seasons and provide foliage, flowers, and color all during the year. They require very little care and provide something green all year long. April is the month to begin a porch or deck of colorful containers of pretty perennials. Most hardwares, nurseries, garden centers, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walmart and seed shops have perennials ready to purchase and transplant to larger containers. Perennials to choose from include diantus, coral bells, bugleweed, sea thrift, creeping phlox, dusty miller, hens and chicks, Sweet William, candytuft, ‘forget-me-nots’, periwinkles, Columbine, red hot poker, Veronica, and American Bee Balm.

Enjoying the full pink moon of April. The full moon of the month of April will occur on Tuesday, April 7, and will be named “Full Pink Moon.” This moon may appear pinkish as it rises after the sunset in the eastern sky. This moon is also known as the Paschal Moon because passover begins on Wednesday, April 8.

Dogwoods may be later this year. Today is Palm Sunday and this means Easter is a few days earlier this year and may cause the dogwoods to bloom a little later. A few may be blooming at Easter, but the pink buds of Judas trees as well as jonquils and daffodils should add extra color to the Easter landscape.

Forget-me-nots, Periwinkle, and Veronica blue flowers that make unusual perennials. We have a large container of Veronicas on the backside of the front porch and a pot of forget-me-nots on the deck and both produce royal blue flowers. Their dark green foliage is beautiful all during winter. When they cascade over their containers and are adorned with blue flowers, they are a thing of beauty.

Looking for arrival of humming birds. Early April heralds the arrival of the first hummingbirds returning from beyond the Gulf of Mexico. With the cool April temperatures and few flowers in bloom except for Carolina Jasmine and peach blossoms, your hummingbird feeder with its inviting nectar will be a welcome sight for them. Since it is early in the season, only a few hummers may arrive at your feeders. Don’t waste nectar but fill the feeders only half full to avoid waste. After more hummers arrive, fill the feeders completely full.

The beauty and fragrance of hyacinths of early spring. The scent of the perfume of hyacinths near the front porch is pleasing to the nostrils and inviting to the eye. Their dainty blooms and colors of red, white, yellow, blue, and lavender form a welcome mat into the wonders of spring. Year after year these bulbs come back. The secret of spring bulbs such as hyacinth, jonquil, daffodil narcissos to bloom every spring is allowing the blooms and foliage to cycle out. Let them die out after the bloom cycle and don’t trim them back. This gives added nutrients and vigor to the forming of next year’s bulbs. These bulbs will remain dormant until next season. Cover the area where the bulbs are with a layer of crushed leaves in autumn. In early spring or late winter, spikes of foliage will pop through the leaves and begin their new growth cycle.

A perennial from mother nature. This is a perennial that does not come from the garden shop or nursery but from the wild at the edge of the garden plot or woodlands. This is the American violet with its deep purple or lavender blooms and heart-shaped foliage. All you have to do to enjoy them is to dig up a clump of them and plant in a container of fine textured potting medium. They will thrive on decks or semi-sunny locations on porches and bloom every year as well as produce plenty of foliage.

Starting a row of spring greens. The greens planted in early spring are much sweeter than autumn greens and will produce a harvest in 45 to 50 days and you will still have plenty of time for succeeding with a warm weather vegetable crop. You can sow a single variety such as curly mustard or mixture of several greens such as Flonda broadleaf kale, mustard, tendergreen, rape, and turnip. The seed shop or hardware will mix the seed for you in any ratio you would like. An ounce of seed costs less than two dollars. You can sow seed in a row or bed or broadcast them in a patch. They are easier to harvest when sown in a row.

A row of spring onion sets to adorn a bowl of greens. Nothing compliments a bowl of greens like a dish of spring onion greens with a shot of apple cider vinegar in them. Onion sets come in yellow, red, or white for about three dollars a pound. They quickly grow in early spring and can be harvested at same time as the greens mature. Set onions about two or three inches apart in a furrow two or three inches deep. Cover with a layer of peat moss and then hill up soil on each side of the furrow. Feed with Miracle-Gro liquid plant food after they sprout.

A quick crop of leafy green lettuce. Lettuce is a cool weather vegetable and the month of April has enough cool remaining to produce a quick harvest in less than 45 days.You can choose from many varieties such as Grand Rapids, Iceburg, Black-Seeded Simpson, Bibb, Red Sails, Buttercrunch, and Oak Leaf. A packet costs less than two dollars. Sow in a furrow about two inches deep, thinly sow seed and cover with a layer of peat moss and hill up soil on each side of the furrow. When seed sprout feed with an application of Miracle-Gro liquid plant food every ten days.

Almanac for April 2020. Wednesday, April 1, was April Fool’s Day. The moon reached its first quarter on Wednesday, April 1. Palm Sunday is today, April 5. The full moon will occur on Tuesday, April 7, and will be named “Full Pink Moon.” Easter will be Sunday, April 12. There will be a new moon on the western horizon at sunset on Wednesday, April 22. Arbor Day will be Friday, April 26. Earth Day will be Wednesday, April 22. The moon reaches its first quarter on Thursday, April 30.

Hoe-Hoe-Hoedown: One winter evening a man riding his motorcycle reversed his motorcycle jacket so that the icy winds would not blow through the coat. As he sped along the highway, he skidded on some black ice and crashed into a tree. When the emergency crew got there, the first aid crew asked a man standing over the motorcycle rider what had happened. The man replied that the motorcyclist seemed to be in good shape until he tried to turn the cyclists head back around and he died.

Solving the problem of old age: Patient- “How can I live to be a hundred, Doctor?” Doctor- “Give up cookies, cake, ice cream, candy bars, and soft drinks. Stop eating steak, potatoes, breads, rolls and gravy.” Patient- “And if I did, will it make me live to be a hundred?” Doctor: “Maybe not, but it will certainly make you feel like you’re a hundred!”

Made for each other: Husband- “Abigail and Albert make a perfect couple, don’t you think?” Wife- “Yes, she’s a pill and he’s a headache!”

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