Spring garden checklist: what to do now

Spring arrives faster than the list gets done. These are the jobs that are hard to catch up on later, roughly in the order they need doing.

Before anything grows

Sharpen and oil the tools. Ten minutes now, while nothing is urgent. A clean bypass blade cuts rather than crushes, and a crushed stem is where disease gets in. Sharpen only the bevel of the upper blade; the lower hook stays flat.

Check and clear the irrigation. Remove the end cap of any drip line and run the tap for a minute to flush winter sediment. Any dripper that has slowed usually just needs its filter rinsed.

Wash pots and seed trays. Old compost harbours fungus gnats and damping-off. Hot water and a brush is enough.

Pruning, while the shape is still visible

Cut back late-summer flowering shrubs before the buds break. Leave spring flowerers alone — they are already carrying this year's flowers and you would be cutting them off.

Remove anything dead, damaged or crossing, in that order. Stand back between cuts more often than feels necessary.

Feed the soil, not the plants

Top-dress containers by scraping off the top few centimetres of tired compost and replacing it with fresh. In beds, a mulch of garden compost or well-rotted manure does more for the season than any liquid feed will.

A soil test is worth doing once every few years. Most disappointing crops come down to pH being wrong for what is planted, and no amount of feeding corrects that.

Sowing, in two waves

Under cover, from late February. Tomatoes, peppers, aubergines — anything that needs a long season. A mini greenhouse on a terrace buys four to six weeks over the open garden. Open it on warm days; a closed greenhouse in full sun cooks its contents.

Direct, once the soil warms. Beans, salad, chard, carrots. Soil temperature matters more than the date on the packet — seed sown into cold wet ground rots rather than germinates.

Protect the new growth

Fresh growth is exactly what pigeons and cabbage whites are looking for. Fine mesh over hoops stops both while letting rain and most of the light through. Put it on before you see the damage, not after.

Then leave it alone

The most common spring mistake is fussing. Seedlings need light, steady moisture and time. Most of what goes wrong in April is a response to something that would have resolved on its own by May.