Midwest Region

• Apply organic matter, compost, and manure to soil.
• Seed cool-season vegetables outside, such as beets, peas, lettuce, collards, turnips, carrots, broccoli, Brussels sprout, Swiss chard, kale, kohlrabi, onions, parsley, parsnips, radishes, and spinach. (See our Best Dates to Plant chart on Almanac.com/Gardening.)
• Cover tender plants if late frost is in the forecast.
• Start tomato seeds indoors.
• Plant broccoli plants and early cabbage outdoors.
• Sow your cool-season vegetables in succession so you can have a steady harvest throughout the growing season.
• Plants started indoors should be hardened off outdoors in cold frames.
• Sow seeds of hardy annual flowers (larkspur, California poppy, sweet pea).
• Plant pansies.
• Begin fertilizing houseplants again.
• Clean up your garden. Rake up any leaves, remove winter mulch, remove any dead plants, and mix in compost in your garden soil.
• Fertilize the lawn.
• Fertilize roses, raspberries, and woody plants.
• Plant potatoes.
• Mow your ground covers to remove any winter damage. Fertilize and water the ground covers to encourage growth.
• Cut back flower stalks on your spring-flowering bulbs as the flowers begin to fade.
• Finish pruning fruit trees, roses, raspberries, grapevines.
• Start looking for tent caterpillar nests in fruit trees and remove.
• Plant new trees for Earth Day.
• Apply horticultural oil to trees and shrubs that had insect issues last year.
• Prune spring-blooming shrubs, such as forsythia, after they have finished flowering.
• Divide perennials that are overcrowded.
• Thin out crowded seedlings of cool-season vegetables, such as beets, carrots, and lettuce.
• Begin setting out transplants of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.