Warmer mornings filled with sunshine are what I’ve been longing for and the chorus of lawn mowers is a reminder that the grass cutting season has begun! Walking out into the garden you can find Paeony flower buds the size of golf balls, bleeding hearts shyly flowering away and the beds and borders springing to life with the fresh new foliage of old favourites like lilies and delphiniums.
The soil is getting covered up as plants assert their territory, like the nesting birds are doing right now. Along with mowing we are starting to water plants in the dry, hot spells we have been lucky enough to have. It’s a lovely time of year, full of growth and summer excitement. We are seeing the last of the frosts off!
In my greenhouse my seedlings are growing up and will want to be hardened off before long, I’m looking forward to planting them out and seeing them enjoy their first summer! There is a definite feeling that spring is ebbing away as I begin to pull out spring bedding and by the end of May, the summer bedding will be planted out.
As I tackle the gardens, giving them a spring tidy, I notice I’m not the only one feeling at home in the garden – as I catch a cheeky blackbird pulling the stuffing out of my coat abandoned to one side in the heat!
Along with all the loveliness of approaching summer though are the pests to watch out for and the expanding list of jobs to do in the garden,
Happy Gardening!
Jobs for May:
- As daffodils fade, deadhead, lift and divide
- Harden plants off (by gradually moving them outdoors for longer periods until they can survive night time lower temperatures and are ready to plant out)
- Tie in sweet peas, roses, clematis, honeysuckle
- Start feeding containers (and roses) with a liquid feed every couple of weeks
- Watch out for aphids, wipe them off carefully between your fingers
- Look out for red beetles on your lilies and remove
- Prune Ribes, Forsythia and Chaenomeles after flowering
- Cut back Fuchsias and Penstemons
- Weed, weed, weed!