Purslane in my garden. Love it!

April is a fun month. This time of the year is full of opportunities, but it's also an uncertain time. The temperature outside can be just right for all kinds of vegetables, but it might also get close to freezing up here in the north. The nights are of course even colder and the upper layer of the soil often freezes. This unpredictability makes me want to be a bit careful with sowing outside right now. Instead, I try to pre-sow my seeds and keep them somewhere protected before I put them outside.

I pre-sow vegetables like beets, chard, beans and corn. If I want to have early alliums, then I just root onion sets in a sheltered spot rather than plant them in cold soil. Many vegetables will start to bolt if the temperature changes quickly. For example beets and onions. So, I try to pre-sow these vegetables just to be sure.

As you can see in the list below, a lot of the vegetables I sow are recurrent. This is because I sow a little bit quite often. This way, I get to harvest several times and then we don't get overwhelmed by too many of one particular vegetable.

This is what I sow in April:

Indoors, plant outside later
Onion (white onion, shallot, red onion)
Tomato
Lettuce
Rooting onion set

Indoors, plant in polytunnel 1 later
Squash (a few plants for an early harvest)
Basil
Lettuce
Snap beans (a few plants for an early harvest)

Hotbed in polytunnel 1:
Leafy greens and radish if there is room.

Polytunnel, plant outside later:
Chard
New Zealand spinach
Purslane (the top picture)
Beets
Late white cabbage
Late savoy cabbage
Late kale
Late red cabbage
Summer flowers
Spinach
Turnip
Scallion
Garden peas
Sugar snap peas
Seed potatoes

Cold frame outside:
Spinach
Lettuce
Arugula
Radish
Summer carrot
Summer flowers

Beds outside:
Summer carrot
Winter carrot
Bunching onion
Turnip
Fava beans
Plant Jerusalem artichokes
Summer flowers

I think I remembered most of it! Of course, I do sow several varieties of these vegetables. I might even have time to do several sowings of the same vegetable this month. It might just work, as long as I follow my motto "Sow a little bit, often"! This is especially true when I sow in April.

Wait before sowing cucumber, corn and beans

The reason why I don't sow cucumber, corn and beans right now is simply because I get better results when I sow these vegetables in May. If you sow your cucumbers too early, the plants will grow very large and bushy. They need a lot of space, soil, water and you also need to tie them up. Despite this, they might still not make it out of pure shock at the change of scenery when you move them. Sowing them a bit later is just easier, in my opinion.

Corn is so sensitive that it could die just from moving it from one pot to another. Pre-sowing it later (or sowing it in the beds outside under some fabric might work too) and moving the plant is a better idea. What about beans then? Well, they rot very easily if it's too cold in the soil or the temperature suddenly changes. Fava beans are an exception though. You can grow fava beans early in the season. Read this article to learn more: Growing fava beans early in the season. I hope you learned something from this article about what I sow in April!
/Sara Bäckmo