HURRAY, IT’S MAY! We 3Growbags are in celebratory mood – not only for the Coronation of King Charles III (it just HAD to be crown imperials for our feature pic this week, didn’t it), but also because we started our blog together seven years ago this weekend!
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For many gardeners, May is the loveliest month of all. Full of fresh flowers, new foliage and promise. But my goodness, it’s a very busy month too! We need to match the mad plant-growth going on out there with tasks like planting out the bedding and trimming formal hedges amongst a heap of other things…
Ready to party?
Are you hosting a Coronation
There are a lot of little staking, weeding and pest-control jobs that come crowding in at this time of year, however small your outdoor space. As plants come into full growth, they appreciate a feed using organic products like blood, fish and bone or pelleted chicken manure. Tie in climbers as the shoots develop – don’t forget that many climbers like roses respond to being tied in horizontally by flowering with greater abandon.
Deadhead early spring-flowerers like bergenias, narcissi and hellebores (unless you want the latter to set seed). The mini-snips in our online shop are really handy for jobs like this. Stroke off any aphids or blackfly, or jet them off with water. Another great tip is make sure edges of formal features like hedging or paths are sharp and well-defined. You can get away with all sorts of jungle in the borders if the edges of them are clipped. I do! Then you’ll just need a quick whizz around with the broom, and you’re all ready to party.
Be gentle with the bedding
Are your tender bedding plants (cosmos, tagetes, nemesia and all the rest) straining to be planted outside by now? For most of us, May is the month in which we can release them from the shackles of greenhouses, cold frames and windowsills ready to brighten our gardens all summer.
But please let them get used to it first. Put the trays, pots or modules outside during the day and bring them under cover each night-time for a few days, until they are ready to face the outside world unprotected.
One more thing about bedding plants – take little shoots off plants like verbena now, trim away the lower leaves, tuck them into pots of compost soaked in tepid water and keep them on a windowsill. They root easily and you’ve got more verbenas!
Garden-visiting
I visited a lovely private
And it’s SUCH a pleasant way to learn with so many areas of personal development covered – fresh air, exercise, nosiness, scholarly study………and cake! Find out all about what’s open in your area. There are links at the bottom to the National
Gardening shorts
- Primroses and primulas of all kinds seemed particularly bright and full of flower this year – must be something to do with all that rain we’ve had! Now they are finishing, it is simplicity itself to dig up the big clumps in your
garden and pull the rosettes gently apart. Each one will grow into a lovely little clump for next year’s display as long as it’s quickly replanted now into fertile soil and given a good watering before it goes dormant for the summer.
- If you sowed some cucumber seeds a few weeks ago, like I did, they should be growing on nicely now in their individual pots. Try to keep the seedlings out of strong direct sunlight as they can be prone to getting their leaves scorched. Keep the compost moist but not soaking, and I think it can be a good idea to water them in the morning rather than in the evening – sitting in cold and wet overnight can make them think about succumbing to rot before they’ve really got going. When you come to moving them where you want them for the summer, try to disturb the roots as little as possible – fussy things, aren’t they, but they’re worth it!
- This is just the time when whitefly might begin to multiply in the greenhouse. Order some biocontrols (don’t forget that they won’t work if you have used insecticides as well), or put pots of mint or French marigolds around the greenhouse, and stroke the leaves often to release the scent – the whitefly loathe it!
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