Hardy perennials from seed (this and last year’s sowings) and potted perennials acquired sales last fall are out in the coldframe.
Annuals and vegetables (tomato, pepper and eggplant) are growing indoors under lights.
Once we get dryer, warmer weather, planting can start.
Crabapples and dogwood are in flower. Japanese plums have finished blooming. First fruits this year?
Worcestershire
The gardeners are coming on Monday to run the mower over the lawn, do some pruning and generally tidy up.
I have a crab apple tree (quince) coming tomorrow that I want planted by a South-facing fence, to be trained as an espalier on wires already there.
Of my winter vegetables the pea-pods and beets are still going, even though it’s way too late and warm for them. The peas are still flowering but have mostly stopped producing pods so I’m going to rip them out in a few days. They’re a PITA now anyway because they need watering twice a day or they wilt in the sun (the beets too). The beets this year were slow to develop which is why I still have some. We have been eating beets at least three times a week for a while now. But that’s OK, 'cuz I love beets - including the stems and greens.
I had my first ripe tomato (Early Girl) last week, and there are lots of small ones on all three of my plants - Cherokee Purple and Celebrity in addition to E.G. Poblano, Bell, and sweet banana-type pepper plants are all blooming but no fruit yet. My Japanese eggplant needs more heat to start producing, but it’s growing great.
ETA: This is SE Texas, zone 9b
Cherokee Purple make the best BLTs.
Onions coming up already. Peas and beans are just starting to emerge. We planted one store squash and two good looking volunteers are emerging. We don’t know what type yet, but we usually get butternut squash and spaghetti squash. I planted tomatoes and eggplant yesterday - last year our eggplant crop was outstanding, so I’m hoping for a repeat. Haven’t seen any volunteer cherry tomatoes yet, but I’m sure they’re coming.
I turned my compost bin and mixed lots of excellent compost with the soil before I planted. Amazing stuff.
South East England.
After swapping allotments over winter, I’m still getting used to the new one. It’s based on raised beds (of which my old allotment had none). There are two areas which I’m turning into traditional beds - potato and pumpkin/squash (crops swapping plots yearly). Trad Bed 1 is still buried under equipment and may be a next year project. Trad Bed 2 - god, that was hard work, the area hasn’t been planted for years. What I really need is some good quality topsoil, for the Trad Beds and for some new additional raised beds too - and then…
Allotments are very often on land adjacent railway lines. Ours is next to an embankment - which suffered a major landslip over the winter. Network Rail moved in and took over several plots* as a kind of goods holding yard (“goods” mostly being several hundred tons of rock, plus heavy earthworking gear). They turned the whole allotment into a building site.
Repairs are almost complete, and things are winding down now. In order to make good the ruined plots, Network Rail have ordered in (I was told) six hundred tons or topsoil - far more than needed, so for the reat of us (who suffered nothing worse than limited access) it’s an “apologies for the inconvenience, and help yourselves as a thankyou” situation.
It would be rude to refuse. I now have access to more free topsoil than I could ever use. Plus there are dismantled building materials in “help yourself” piles. I have thirty-plus meters of free lumber (4x2) to make cages for my new (to me) fruit bushes!
Plants? Oh yeah. I’ll get round to that…
j
*- including the one I moved off over the winter!
BTW - is 4x2 a term in the US? A nominal 4 inches by 2 inches.
2 x 4 here. (Really 1.5" x 3.5")
Now you tell me, I remember I knew it - ain’t that always the way?
Also - I just remembered this photo. My old allotment is front left, surrounded by the red and white bollards. Currently a heavy machinery turning area.
j
Wildflower seeds are sown and starting to come up. I planted a few globe amaranth in the Aerogarden inside and I think those are ready to come out and go into a pot for outdoor hardening.
Only 4 ipheion came up out of 50 bulbs. Yikes.
Coleus are still inside but I’ve been leaving them out when weather permits. Hopefully they’ll be ready to stay outside 24/7 soon.
Blueberry bushes escaped any threat of frost, so some pretty good berries have set. Peaches are looking good too, but the squirrels will eat most of those before they are even ripe.
Three San Marzano tomatoes, two sweet bell peppers, and fourteen potatoes are in the ground. The raspberry bushes are woven into their lattice, and I put in eighteen elephant ear bulbs in the front.
I noticed, as I was planting the tomatoes, that one of them already has a tomato growing.
Looks like BLTs are back on the menu, boys!
This year I am going to try growing tomatoes from seed, rather than buying small plants at the garden center. I think if I start this week I should something ready to plant outside in about a month (?)
Six weeks is probably better. But depending on where you are there may still be six weeks or more to go before your (almost) guaranteed frost-free date, anyway.
Garden is slowly filling in, so far so good. Daffodils are looking nice, but now a lot of the other spring bulbs are joining in. The creeping Flox is looking robust this year. I was worried for it last year.
I finishes raking, dethatching and putting down grass seed yesterday. Now 7-10 days of watering. Of course the forecast dried up. 
The replacement Dogwood is looking good. I think I need to give it one more gallon today though, the forecasted rain has disappeared.
Does the pond stay full long enough to produce a generation of amphibians?
The first meeting of the gardening committee is coming up soon here at Walking Dead Manor. We’ll end up going to the local greenhouse, buying seeds/starters and planting in the limited garden space we have here. We usually plant a bunch of herbs for community/kitchen use along with flowers. We’ll also pick up a tomato plant for our own use. They don’t do particularly well in the pots, but that’s our only option. The wife’s niece plants enough vegetables to supply several households, so we’ll get some of that as the summer goes on.
Our Crabapple tree has dropped thousands of pinkish purple petals everywhere in the backyard. It looks very pretty against the fresh green grass and weeds.
The replacement dogwood is looking good. But I still don’t see any signs that the grass seed has taken off yet. 
I planted 4 Hydrangeas yesterday to help balance out the front yard. The pair of myrtles are showing signs of life along with the Rose of Sharons in the back yard.
The vinca we planted last year are beginning to take off this year. More than I expected survived.
My daughters garden is taking off, the onions and strawberries especially.
I think right now, watering by hose is taking me 45 minutes though. I could really use some April rains.
We could use some rain here in central Kentucky. After 8.51 inches of rain between 4/3 and 4/11, there’s been .01 inches since and I’m having to water the ornamental borders/beds and strawberry patch. You’d think it was effing Texas.
Strawberries are in flower, jujube and mulberry trees are starting to leaf out and there actually are scattered juvenile plums on the Japanese plum trees for the first time since I planted them.
*note: there is no worse piece of junk than a cheap Melnor oscillating sprinkler. I had to throw out two of them yesterday when they sprang multiple leaks after being hooked up to the hose. If you get more than a year of use out of these crappy sprinklers you’re lucky. I had one that stopped oscillating two months after purchase.
Problem is, even more expensive oscillating sprinklers are basically junk.
Coleus are outside and will be out for at least a week - I hope longer. It will be time to put them in their final pot/garden bed soon.
Globe amaranth were transplanted yesterday and are looking good.
I’ve got some native asters that are getting a little too aggressive with their spreading, so I weeded those out yesterday.
Time to put up the blueberry cages to keep the squirrels out of them.
After moving my first batch of 32 tomatoes out of the basement grow area, I asked the food pantry whether they would like plants to give to clients. They said yes. So
I’ve got another 28 going. Small, but by the time we hit our last frost date, they should look decent.
Then I started 22 winter squash plants. I think I need therapy.
These gardening threads always die off because the gardeners are very busy gardening.
But the Chicago area is awaiting possible “baseball sized hail” so y’all could post progress this evening. I’m hoping no hail but yes rain! Been super dry here.
Everything here is coming along. I’ve managed to give away a few squash plants, so now I only need to find room for 13. I’ve got butternut, honey patch, honey nut, Long Island cheese, and some GIANT pumpkins.
And trombonicos for the first time. Super excited about those.