Dry, dry, dry! Your garden needs about 1 inch of water a week, and we haven’t had rain in ages. Don’t forget to water deeply and infrequently; frequent, shallow watering encourages shallow roots. Check out our post here for most smart watering tips.
Kitchen Gardens
In fruit and vegetable gardens, we’re
- • hilling potatoes and training peas and beans up their supports.
- • finishing up planting out peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, melons, and squash. Try to get these heat-lovers in the ground by the end of May to give them enough time to develop.
- • sowing beans, edamame, and cucumbers.
- • holding off on planting pumpkins. Most pumpkins planted now will fruit in August. If you want pumpkins for Halloween, use the “days to maturity” on the back of the seed packet and count backward from late May to find your planting date.
- • pruning our tomatoes and training them up their supports. If you’re using stakes or spirals to train your tomatoes, you’ll want to prune them to one main stem; this article from Fine Gardening shows you how. Tomatoes grown in cages don’t need to be pruned.
- • harvesting strawberries, cherries, salad greens, radishes, and peas.
- • weeding and watering.
- • turning the compost heap.
Amy M harvested her first cherries from her dwarf cherry tree this week!
Ornamental Gardens
In other parts of the garden, we’re
- • weeding and watering.
- • planting container-grown trees and shrubs. Ideal spring planting time continues through May and early June. It’s a perfect time to plant perennials, too.
- • mulching. Use 2″ to 4″ of mulch, and be sure to keep mulch away from plant stems and trunks.
- • planting up summer pots. Remember to water pots every day, especially during hot and dry weather.
- • mowing. We set the mowers at 3″ for the healthiest lawns, and we leave the clippings on the lawn to recycle nitrogen into the grass.
