April brings us well into autumn, and the days are now getting shorter.
During this month, temperatures drop, winds ease off and weather may be mild, sunny and warm or damp and rainy, making it ideal for planting. While the soil is still warm, it’s a good time to plant trees, shrubs and herbs, as their roots will have a chance to take hold before winter.
Melbourne and Sydney will average 11-13 days of rainfall, while Perth and Adelaide will average around 8-9 days.
This is also the last chance to harvest fruit such as apples and pears (if they are ripe) before they’re damaged by frost. (To tell if an apple or pear is ripe, lift the fruit up gently in the palm of your hand, and give it a slight twist. Ripe fruit will come away easily with the stalk still attached to the fruit).
Things to Do This Month:
- Plant new trees, shrubs, climbers, annuals and perennials.
- Gather and compost autumn leaves.
- Divide overgrown perennials, collect their seeds, prune those that have finished flowering,
- Relocate evergreen shrubs (can be done either in autumn or early spring).
- Prune tall shrubs to reduce their height to better resist winter winds.
- Collect and sow seeds from berry producing trees and shrubs.
- Propagation of hardwood cuttings is done in autumn – prune off 30cm long shoots of current season’s growth, cut off the soft growing tip and the bottom end below a bud, dip end into rooting hormone. Make a ‘slit trench’ by pushing a spade into soil and rocking it back and forth. In clay soil, add some coarse sand for drainage. Put cuttings in so lower 2/3 is below the soil, and press the soil down around them. Cuttings will root and be ready to plant next autumn.
- Dig in cool season green manures that were sown in early autumn (such as rapeseed, broad beans, fenugreek, linseed, lupins, mustard, oats, subclover, and vetch) before they flower.
- Prune brambleberries after they finish fruiting – cut out the canes that fruited, and tie in the newly grown canes to the support wires on the berry trellises.
- Blackcurrants (and brambleberries) can be pruned from now till winter time.
- Continue planting garlic, strawberry runners and shallot bulbs.
- Harvest and store root crops – continue lifting beetroot and carrots and finish lifting potatoes. Leave parsnips in ground, they need some cold to taste the best.
- Cut down asparagus foliage that has turned yellow (if it wasn’t done in March) and top-dress the asparagus crowns with compost or manure.
- Cut back the tops of other perennial vegetables that are beginning to die back.
- Empty compost bins into the garden to prepare soil for next season.
- Cover ponds with netting to prevent autumn leaves rotting in the water. Also, feed the fish less food, as they are less active as the days shorten and uneaten food will foul the water.
Vegetables and Herbs to Grow in April (Temperate Climate)
| April Seeds to Sow and Seedlings to Plant (Temperate Climate Australia) | Sow/Plant | Harvest (weeks) |
| Beetroot | dst | 7-10 |
| Broad Beans | dst | 12-22 |
| Broccoli | t | 10-16 |
| Cabbage | t | 8-15 |
| Carrot | d | 12-18 |
| Cauliflower | t | 15-22 |
| Chives | dst | 7-11 |
| Collard Greens | t | 8-11 |
| Coriander (Cilantro) | dst | 4-6 |
| Corn Salad | d | 5-8 |
| Daikon | d | 8-10 |
| Dill | dt | 8-12 |
| Endive | dst | 10-11 |
| Fennel (Bronze) | dst | 14-15 |
| Fennel (Florence) | dt | 14-20 |
| Garlic | plant cloves | 17-25 |
| Kale | t | 7-9 |
| Kohlrabi | t | 7-10 |
| Lettuce | dst | 8-12 |
| Mizuna | dst | 5-7 |
| Mustard Greens | dst | 5-8 |
| Pak Choy | dst | 6-11 |
| Parsley | dst | 9-19 |
| Peas | dst | 9-11 |
| Radish | d | 5-7 |
| Rocket | d | 21-35 days |
| Salsify | d | 14-21 |
| Shallots | d | 12-15 |
| Silverbeet (Swiss Chard) | t | 7-12 |
| Snow Peas | dst | 12-14 |
| Spinach | dst | 5-11 |
| Spring Onions (Bunching Onions) | st | 6-10 |
| Swedes (Rutabaga) | dst | 10-14 |
| Turnip | d | 6-9 |
Key:
d = sow seeds directly into ground
s = sow seeds into seed tray
ds = sow seeds directly into ground or seed tray
t = transplant seedlings (small plants) into larger pots or plant into ground
*= frost tender
**= sow after frost
Download printable PDF version of Gardening Calendar (Australian Temperate Climate) – April
To help improve these garden calendars, feedback and additional information from readers is greatly appreciated! Australia’s climate varies considerably, and local knowledge of when particular things need to be done in the garden are most helpful to others living in those area, so please feel free to share.
Greets from Perth WA
Thank you for your temperate planting guide I shall certainly be using it
A slightly different question, I have some pot bound / root bound trees (fiddlewood Citharexylum spinosum, kings park red bottlebrush, ficus benjamina golden monique) 4 to 5 metres tall growing in VERY SMALL 200mm pots, which are standing on brick paving, not surprisingly the roots have grown through the bottom of the pots and in-between the pavers, so they have now become firmly anchored in the gaps between the paving. Should I:
(1) Coppice them to ground level rip them up & repot in larger pots?
(2) Pollard them down to about 3 metres & repot in larger pots?
(3) Remove all the leaves by hand & denude the branches as autumn is not cold enough for fiddlewood Citharexylum spinosum to loose its leaves in autumn/winter?
Many thanks for your reply in advance
All the best & thanks for a great website
Regards Jo
Hi Jo, thanks for your comment!
Not quite the right place to ask this question as it’s not on topic, better to email me instead, but I’ll respond to your question. I’m not sure how to say this, but your 4-5m trees may have once been growing in those small 20cm wide pots when they were under a metre tall, but there’s no way they are growing in them now! A 20cm pot can only support a very small rootball. They’re definitely growing very deeply in the ground, with those little 20cm pots wrapped round the base of their trunks. You can ignore the pots completely, or even cut them away and see the matter as it is – you have three very large trees growing in the ground among your pavers. This is really a big job for an arborist, and there’s no way those trees 4-5m are going back into regular sized pots! Hope this helps!