Alan: Another good thing in April is to think about your herb garden. Herbs are one of my favorite things.
I love to grow herbs. I love to to use herbs.

And there’s two kinds of herbs in a sense. There are perennial herbs such as sage and thyme. Most of the mints those are perennial. And then you have annual herbs that are tender. Basil and cilantro, dill, parsley. Parsley is actually kind of hardy. I’ve even seen it live over. But it’s still classified as more of a tender herb.

In April, it’s still too early to put out basil. Now if it’s late April in Ohio, we’re past the frost free date, you have people can get away with it. But I don’t know how much advantage you’re going to have because the ground is still cold, even after the air temperatures warmed up.

In April, go through your herb garden. Look at all of your perennial herbs. What are coming up? You can divide some of those if you get they’re getting too big for that spot.

But the perennial herbs are great because you can just keep harvesting them every year. You don’t have to replant. And we even have one variety of rosemary that I’ve had success with year after year. It came back three years in a row. And rosemary is a very tender perennial here. It’s zone seven is the best one. And sometimes zone seven, if you have a cold winter, it won’t make it. Also if you have a dog that likes rosemary like mine does, and rips the whole plant out of the ground and runs through the yard with it, you’ll have to replant.

But there are quite a few herbs that will make it through winter. It’s good time in April to tidy those up. Divide them that just to have more room to plant the annuals, even in between when it’s time to do that. Which would not be in April. You probably want to wait till the frost free date which considered to be around May 15 in central Ohio.

Kevin: So now that we’re into April, any of you guys that were late getting things cleaned up, April is definitely the month you kind of want to have that checked off your list. It’s time to really take a thorough walk through the yard.

Examine anything that needs cleaned up. Whether it be old hostas, or maybe you’ve got just some old perennials, day lilies or asters, or something like that, that just the tops need cleaned off. You definitely want to get that done.

It’d be the time of year that you could do some pruning on your roses. Roses would be a plant that you’d want to go ahead and clean up. First examine your rose. Take out any decaying tissue, any brown tissue, that would be the first thing is get all that old wood out of there. And then take whatever top growth you have, depending on the type of rose. But for the most part, it’s safe to probably safely take off half of whatever growth you have there.

Now if it’s a climber that might be an exception, but most of the teas and shrubs, that would be a safe assumption.

When it comes to shrubs, is it going to be a spring flowering shrub or summer or even late summer or fall? And the answer is if it’s a spring flowering shrub, you’re going to want to wait till after that shrub is flowered, that coming spring. Even if it’s just unruly, and it’s just encroaching on your patio or sidewalk. If you want that color, you’re just going to have to be patient and wait till after the flower.

Once flowering is done, you can go ahead and trim that back. Just note it in your garden notes that would be something that you trim in the summer going into fall. You could most likely still trim it in fall and still get that spring color for most of those shrubs.

Kevin: It’s a fun time in the nursery at Dill’s Greenhouse, because our nursery is as full as it probably will ever be, in the month of April.

We receive trucks daily, sometimes multiple trucks daily. In addition to the stuff that we grow on site. If you’re kind of walking around and see some spots in your yard, and you’d like to kind of see a tree there, or a shrub, or maybe a screen (you got one of those neighbors that you’d rather not have), we can give you a number of suggestions. It’s all there on site to see. You can window shop.

If it’s something you don’t see, we work with at least a half dozen or more local nurseries that I can source material in and turn it around. Because of the time of year we can get those trucks in very regularly and probably turn your order around in a week, at the most.

Kevin: Well, when it comes to March, I like to get my to do list going. I do better with lists. So one thing I like to put on my list is getting my tools ready. Making sure my pruners are sharp. My springs are oiled and when it’s ready to need them, they’re ready to go. So a lot of things I’m looking to do in my garden in the spring is perhaps if I didn’t get to my ornamental grasses last fall or late winter, I can get those trimmed up. I like to cut those down, discard all that top growth before I see new green growth emerge.

Alan: Speaking of pruning your ornamental grasses, a good method that I learned was wrap it with duct tape. And then you can just cut that off about four to six inches above the ground. And you don’t have the pieces of grass flying all over in the wind. Just comes off in a bundle.

Kevin: I learned that the hard way.

Alan: Most of us have.

Kevin: Clean up your grasses. If you haven’t cleaned off the tops to some of those old perennials and they’re mushy on top or dry and crusty, it’s time to rake those off and make way for the new growth to come out. It’s also a good time to if you had some trouble areas last year with stuff getting too big, you can dig that up while it’s dormant. Divide it. Transplant it, replant it, give it away, throw it away, whatever you need to do to maintain that certain area of space that you’ve allotted for that plant.