So the peak of various and, at times, unforeseen garden works has come - April in the Kuban. This month not only inspires us to do good deeds, but also arranges an exam to test our readiness for the next summer season.
In the garden, for example, planting fruit trees is nearing completion. Strawberry beds cleared of old overwintered leaves and peduncles are gaining strength. At this time, one must not forget to add (however, as under berry bushes, perennial flowers) one of the nitrogen fertilizers (ammonium nitrate, urea, potassium nitrate) at the rate of 15-20 g per 1 sq. m of soil under the plants.
Particular attention should be paid to such a pest as leafworm. Spraying plants is best done in the evening. Why in the evening? Young caterpillars manage to hide in young leaves during the day. By night, they will go out to damage the ovaries, leaves and ... will meet with pesticides.
If someone did not have time to process the peach before the buds open against curls, you can turn to the drug Horus. But they can be sprayed only after flowering. After flowering (against parsnip and other pests on a pear), you can use any insecticide, but Fufanon, Spark - against a gall mite.
The same drugs are used on the apple tree against the Californian scale insects, copper flakes, aphids, ticks, weevils, and flower beetles.
April does not spoil us with warmth now, so whoever doesn’t have time can still plant such cold-resistant crops as cabbage, radishes, carrots, lettuce and others. A little later, you can sow zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans in open ground. And after them pumpkin, melon, beetroot, if the soil has already warmed up to 12-13ºС at the depth of seed placement.
A few words about the flower garden. In the first half of April, annuals such as calendula, cosmea, godetia, eschscholzia, and decorative herbs are sown in open ground. At the same time, onion plants (tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and small onion plants (crocuses, scylls, muscari, others) urgently require top dressing.
We will not forget about perennials wintering in the ground (peonies, phloxes, irises). In the first spring dressing, all of them are given only ammonium nitrate - 20 g per 1 sq. Km. m. But for daffodils and hyacinths, another 20 g of superphosphate and 10 g of potassium sulfate are added to nitrogen fertilizers.
Clematis, fed with nitrate (10 g per plant), loosen the soil, mulch sawdust. Mulching for clematis is necessary, since the root system of these plants does not tolerate soil overheating.
The materials of the newspaper "Niva Kuban" - April 3 - 2015