Month of May Gardening Tasks

Thin your vegetable seedlings when they are 3" tall to prevent overcrowding and possible stunted growth.

Sow vegetables in successive intervals to prolong your harvest season. Examples are corn, beans, lettuce, spinach, radish and carrots. They will come into ripeness over a larger period of time.

All spring-flowering bulbs should be stripped of their dead flowers and poor foliage. But, maintain the growth as long as you can with regular watering and feeding. This will build up the bulbs and ensure more flowers next spring.

Divide your primroses right after all the flowers have died and trimmed off. This will encourage more growth and increase flowering next spring.

Discard all the camellia flowers that have browned and especially those which are on the ground. They are great harbors of disease as fungi and bacteria.

Plant your shady areas of the garden with such plants as wax and tuberous begonia, impatiens [variegated varieties to a lesser sense, as they like more sunlight], lobelia, herbs and an assortment of ferns.

In preparation for hot summer days ahead, purchase bags of mulch and apply liberally around your bushes and flowers. This will keep the top roots cool and retain more moisture.

If your ground cover areas have bare spots, now is the best time to dig up the fuller areas and separate out plants to transplant into the holes. The fuller areas will fill in quickly, so you will not even know they were disturbed. But, be sure to keep the transplants well watered until they take hold. In a few weeks, give them a half-strength food and then full-strength after they are growing. Watch them during the hot spells so as not to let dry and thus die.

Spruce up your perennial herbs now with a good pruning and feeding. Cut them back to the fresh, new green growth and pinch growing points to force more branching.

Mulch around the plants with compost or decomposed leaves. Sprinkle with a slow-release fertilizer like Osmocote or feed with a general gardening food, at one tablespoon per gallon water, once a month.

Be sure to pinch off stems throughout the year, even if you are not needing them for cooking, as this will keep the bushes compact and the branches not spindly.

Now is the time to check out those spring bulbs which did not bloom this year. Dig them up, knock off the soil but keep the green foliage attached, and replant them in a hole with new compost or leaf mold added to it, along with some bonemeal, to enrich the root area. If they have been in the shade, move them to a sunnier location.