Spring fever and itchy green thumb – early April gardening: prune, clean and (almost) plant!

Welcome to the first week of April - when the days hit the pleasant mid-60s, and southern Utah spring breezes try to steal your hat! Tricolor daffodils, snow-white Bradford peaches, bright purple redbuds, and buttery goldenrods are putting on a show. In some warmer spots, apricots and plums are already starting to bloom. The colors are pumping our hearts full of spring joy - and making our gardener hands real itchy to plant something.

Premature mushroom from the mushroom workshop. Photo by Claudia Jones.

But hold your hose (and your spade, and your shovel)! Before we rush into planting, let’s take care of some early season essentials.

1. Prune & Protect Trees and Shrubs - Now’s the perfect time to prune your trees and bushes - while they’re still in the bud stage. That’s the sweet spot after dormancy, when buds swell just before they bloom.

Take this chance to prune away anything dead, diseased or damaged. It’s also the ideal moment to apply dormant sprays - either petroleum based horticultural oils or plant-based options like canola oil. (Heads-up: neem oil isn’t very effective for dormant spraying.) Dormant sprays help control aphids, fire blight and borers before they cause trouble.

2. Spring Cleaning for the Garden - Before you step into your garden, sanitize your gear - boots, gloves, clippers, everything. Clorox/Lysol wipes work great, or you can make a simple 70 percent bleach solution with a clean washcloth.

If you left leaves, clippings, and debris in your garden over winter (good job providing critter habitat!), now’s the time for a tidy-up. Think of it like giving your garden a good hair comb. Gently remove early weeds, check under debris for praying mantis eggs, ladybug larvae (they don’t look like the adults!) and other beneficial insects. Give them water and shelter, and clear out overwintered pests like early aphids or wasps.

If you’re unsure what’s what, don’t guess - use apps like Google Lens, PictureThis, or iNaturalist, or reach out to your local Master Gardeners or the USU Extension office. We love bug photos!

3. Time to (Almost) Plant - Late March to early April is prime time for cool-season vegetables and flowers. Ideally, I like to plant pansies, ornamental cabbage, snap peas, spinach, and brassicas in the fall - but let’s be honest, life happens. Sometimes I don’t get to it, and sometimes winter just wins.

The good news? Spring is a second chance. Grab some pansies from your local nursery and pop them in garden beds or boxes. These cold loving edible flowers make great cover crops before your warm season veggie stars TPC (tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers), flower-bed big names ZMP (Zinnia, Marigolds and Petunias), or native landscape superstars like Prince’s Plume and penstemons go in. Keep them cool and watered, and they might even stick around to bloom again in late September - a cheerful reminder to plant for fall.

You can also direct seed peas, spinach, and other cool-season crops. They’ll likely be ready to harvest by mid-to-late June, leaving you room for quick-growing, heat-loving summer plants.

Not in the mood to babysit seedlings through unpredictable spring weather? Perfect. This is also a great time to start summer vegetables indoors from seed, but that’s a topic for another day … maybe in my next column!