What to Do in the Garden in April-Little Sprouts Learning

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April is a busy and exciting month in the garden. We are in zone 7. Check out what to plant and what to prepare and plan in the garden in April. And click here for a month by month garden planting guide.

pumpkin plants growing in the garden in april.

To check out your hardiness zone, click here. Each zone has different planting times as weather conditions differ. Here, our average last frost date is April 20th.

This year, we planted quite a few things a week or two early because it feels warm and that’s what we do. Some years we have had a frost as late as May 8th and as you can imagine, that caused us a lot of heartache. We are cautiously optimistic.

Before April, I like to have a plan of what we are doing in the garden. We have over 50 raised beds of differing sizes, so I have a spreadsheet that I use to coordinate it all. We usually don’t get everything in just as we wanted or someone who shall remain nameless gets a little overzealous on purchasing seeds or seedlings so we have to tuck a few more things in the beds than we planned.

It usually works out one way or another. We have many successes along with lots of failures. Part of gardening is understanding trial and error and being okay with more of the latter sometimes.

What to plant in April

In April in zone 7, we plant most flowers, herbs, tomatoes, and pepper plants and we plant melons, corn, beans, okra, squashes and cucumbers from seed. At Little Sprouts we usually try to plant one bed per day, weather permitting.

If the kids lose interest, I will come out and finish the bed we started that evening if possible. That way I don’t forget what is done and what needs to be done. We are planting several types of watermelon and cantaloupe, corn, green beans and several types of drying beans, cucumbers, okra, butternut, summer squash, pumpkins, and several varieties of tomatoes and hot peppers.

In addition, we are planting sunflowers, zinnias, marigolds, nasturtiums, and wildflowers for attracting pollinators, other beneficial insects, and repel problem pests.

a child in the garden doing garden chores.

April garden

Things that are ready or almost ready to harvest include lettuces, carrots we planted in the fall, asparagus, kale, spinach, and radishes. When it’s picking time, the kids have a ball!