April Vegetable Planting with Satchells

April is a great time to get stuck into your garden. Yes, the weather can be changeable – sun one minute, April showers and even snow the next, but the soil is beginning to warm, creating the optimum environment for your vegetables to thrive.

There is a massive variety of seeds that can be planted around this time of year, providing you with fresh produce to last you and your family all summer long.

Perfect Potatoes

Potatoes are a staple ingredient of our diet across the UK and having access to the best quality, pesticide-free, homegrown produce is a huge privilege.

Many keen gardeners begin chitting their potatoes around January; a process that encourages the seed to sprout in the early months of the year. April provides the perfect climate to move these seeds into your garden or allotment.

To do so, you will need a trench around 13cm deep and wide enough to leave a 30cm gap between each seed. This space will give the vegetables enough room to flourish.

The crop will be ready to harvest between June and September, depending on the variety that you are cultivating.

Beautiful Beetroot

Beetroot is the perfect vegetable for the beginner gardener.

The seeds can be sown outside from early April through to mid-June, making it ideal for April vegetable planting.

The beauty of beetroot is it requires very little space. Beetroot only needs around 1cm of depth to thrive in your allotment. Remember to leave approximately 10cm between seeds to allow the roots to develop.

Water regularly, and your beetroot will be ready anywhere between 10-20 weeks after planting.

Unfortunately, beetroot is also a favourite of slugs and snails and is often destroyed by them before it is ready to be harvested. Creating a barrier of eggshells can help remove access for these creatures, working as a cheap and efficient damage control mechanism.

Reliable Runner Beans

April is a great time to plant runner bean seeds inside.

A warm environment is required, so a windowsill works perfectly. Ideally, though, a greenhouse will provide the seedling with the all-round light that it craves. Plenty of sunlight and a little water will encourage your seed to sprout.

You should then transfer your beans outside in the middle of May.

Make sure you have a robust support system in place; canes around 2 metres tall are perfect. Transfer the beans from pot to soil, being careful not to disrupt the roots in the process.

Runner beans require vast amounts of water. When the pods reach around 8 inches in length, the beans are ready to harvest. Picking pods regularly encourages more to grow.

No space to grow your own vegetables?

Three Reasons an Allotment is a Great Idea

1. An allotment is excellent for a healthy mind and body. The daily exercise will get your heart rate up and your muscles working, providing a fun and constructive way to keep your body healthy.

2. Access to the freshest, pesticide-free vegetables. Your allotment will provide you with a never-ending supply of fresh, seasonal vegetables to keep the family fed year-round. You will find yourself eating more vegetables than ever before and experimenting with new foods and flavours.

3. Growing your own vegetables helps the environment, reducing the need for excess plastic packaging and dramatically reducing your carbon footprint.

If you have always wanted more space to cultivate vegetables, consider moving to a property with more outside space so you can create a vegetable patch of your own. A property with a garden is cited as one of the most wanted aspects by today’s home movers and is a particular reason for many to be relocating away from the city, choosing more rural areas to call home.

Satchells offer properties to buy and rent throughout Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire within a 40 minutes commute of London – perfect for you to combine rural living life alongside the demands of a corporate lifestyle. Call Satchells on 01462 410394 or email us at salesadmincentre@satchells.co.uk. We know our onions!