Gardening Tips for April and May

These two months are possibly the busiest in the gardening calendar. There's plenty of seed sowing to be done as well as the tasks of thinning and transplanting.
With many crops you can sow one set into the ground and then a few weeks later re-sow to give you a succession of fresh vegetables. If the soil is dry, it's a good idea to soak your seed drill before sowing.
A tip when watering plants in the greenhouse is to fill your watering cans and keep them in the greenhouse so that the water can reach a similar temperature, this will avoid shocking the young seedlings.
Strawberry beds should be kept weed free to encourage a good crop, and as flowers appear on fruit bushes, cover them with netting to keep the birds off. As the soil warms up the weeds start to grow.
Hoeing them off as small seedlings will make the job far easier than waiting for them to grow and send their roots down. This is best done on a dry day so that the weeds do not have a chance to recover and make sure that the blade of your hoe is nice and sharp to make the job easier.
Finally, as this is the last Grow your Own, I would like to wish all the gardeners out there a successful season and most of all enjoy what you are doing – it's the most rewarding hobby in the world.