Garden planting and tasks for May
With new flowers blooming every day, butterflies emerging, and migratory birds arriving, May is the time to step up the work in our kitchen garden. It’s so easy to get caught up in the arrival of spring flowers, nursery offerings, and farmer’s markets, and equally as easy to forget the important tasks that will set our garden up for success. Here is a checklist of May gardening tasks for Zone 5. In May, you’ll be harvesting the arugula, lettuce greens, kale, spinach, scallions and Swiss chard you planted last month. May’s temperatures also allow these seeds to be directly sown into the garden: beets, carrots, kohlrabi, late cabbage, mustard, collards, turnips, radish, spinach, onion sets, and peas. If you have planted potatoes in grow bags or in beds it’s time to “hill them up.” In growing bags, what that means is to add about 4” of soil on top of the green leafy tops so that just the very tops of the plants are peeking out of the dirt. You’ll keep doing this until the plants finally flower and the leaves turn yellow. (You can read the rest of the process for harvesting potatoes here.)
Like any baby, your plant babies are going to require quite a lot of your attention as they start life. Here are my suggestions for helping get them off to a good start.
Keep a rain gauge in your kitchen garden. Your garden needs about 1 inch of rain per week from May until September so water accordingly. Young plants may not survive if you let them dry out. This is the one from Amazon that I have and it is currently on sale for only $4.98!!
Have a trellis system in place for your tomatoes (and other vining plants) before they start to sprawl.
Start hardening off your seedlings that you’ve raised indoors so that they acclimatize to conditions outside. (Be prepared to cover frost intolerant plants in case of an unseasonable frost.) Plant them outside only when there’s no danger of frost.
Weed every day. Weeds will be growing faster than your plants and because they compete with your vegetable and herb’s nutrients it’s important to remove them as soon as they show up.
Thin out your seedlings! Carrots and radishes for example, need enough room to widen underground. If you don’t want to compost them, toss them in your salad.
Direct sow beans, cucumbers, beets, lettuce and both summer and winter squash.
Look for signs of disease and pests and be prepared to treat and protect plants accordingly.
While we may think we’re growing our garden for ourselves and family, neighbors and friends–insects, birds, bunnies and deer are pretty sure we’re growing it for them. Storied Garden would love to help you with any aspect of your gardening this month, including dealing with pests. Click on the button below to schedule a consultation.