Gardening Advice and Helpful Tips
Your gardening advice for May.
Donna Turner
Plant Area Supervisor
Spring has officially sprung. Donna Turner shares her top 10 tips to get growing this May.
1. Flower power
May always feels like a turning point in the gardening calendar. As soon as the risk of frost has passed, it’s time to fill your borders, containers and hanging baskets with fuchsias, lobelias, petunias, geraniums and calibrachoa to create a stunning backdrop of colour for the warm summer days to come.
2. Outside chance
Hardening off is important and will result in much faster-growing and longer-lasting flowers. Place any annuals you buy from the garden centre in a sheltered place outside for a week to acclimatise to your garden before planting.
3. Stake out
It’s a good idea to get ahead of the game by putting in plant supports now. Once they’ve got going it’s a lot tougher to try to prop them up. Stake in canes or pea sticks next to sweet peas, climbing roses, runner beans and peas, and tie the plants onto them.
4. Chop chop
The third week in May is traditionally ‘Chelsea Chop’ time, a method of cutting back your perennials to help them produce more flowers. You can either prune all the stems on a clump, which delays all the flowers, or just half of them, which spreads the plant’s flowering over a longer period.
5. Trend watch
The English cottage garden is trending right now. To achieve the cottagecore look, avoid big drifts of one type of plant, and instead opt for a more meadow-like planting style filled with a mix of hollyhocks, lavender, roses, foxgloves and phlox.
6. Vine time
Late May is the perfect time for planting out your tomatoes. If you have an upright variety tie the main stem on to a tall cane for support whilst it grows. Remember to tie in the new stem as it grows upwards each week and pinch out any side shoots. For bush varieties, tie the tomatoes on to a shorter cane and allow all the shoots to grow.
7. Quick trim
Lightly trim topiary, box hedges and other formal hedging. This will keep them tidy through most of the summer, until they’re pruned properly later in the season. Give Leyland cypress hedges their first trim of the year and clip fast-growing hedges such as hawthorn.
8. Salad days
To ensure a steady supply of salad leaves throughout summer, succession sow a small amount of seeds every three to four weeks. Try experimenting with more unusual crops that you can’t easily find at the supermarket like mizuna, sorrel and spinach beet.
9. Shady characters
May is the perfect time to add colour and interest to your shady borders by planting hostas or ferns. As well as proving height and texture, they also make lovely companions for showier flowering plants.
10. Water well
Any veg or flowers planted this spring will need regular watering while they settle in and establish roots, especially during dry weather. And as your plants grow, so will the weeds so don’t forget to stop hoeing!
Feature plant: Delphinium Light Blue (Excalibur Series)
Flowering abundantly in early to mid-summer, this pastel blue delphinium variety pairs wonderfully with other perennials like lavender, peonies and foxgloves for a lovely cottage garden mix. Their elegant spikes are also much loved by bees too, making them an excellent choice for wildlife-friendly gardens.
More Advice?
Our Team's Top Tips
Ryan's Reels
Plant of the Week
The Sowers Guide
Ruth McNamee
Greenhouse Senior
October on the Veg Plot...
October is a great month to get ahead in the veg patch, writes Ruth McNamee.
Choose a sunny sheltered spot to sow broad beans. The variety Aquadulce Claudia does well from autumn sowing. Sow a double row with seeds 20cm apart. These plants should germinate, stand over winter and quickly establish when the weather warms. The crop can be enjoyed a couple of weeks earlier than spring sown seeds.
You can start to plant out garlic this month 15cm apart in rows 30cm apart. This can be left to next month if preferred. And there is still time to plant out overwintering onions. Make a shallow drill and place the sets pointy end up 15cms apart in rows 30cms apart. Onions are ready to harvest early next summer. Try onion and garlic in big pots and keep in a sheltered spot for the best results.
October is a great month to get your permanent planting done. It’s a good time to establish your fruit and asparagus beds while the soil is still warm from the summer heat. Rhubarb and asparagus crowns will now be available in the garden centre. Prepare the beds by removing all weeds. These crops will be in these beds for many years so it helps to give them a good start.
May is the month where strawberries flower so mulch plants with straw.
Prune early flowering shrubs such as the Forsynthia and Weigela.
Direct sow basil next to tomato seedlings to help draw white fly away.
Veg seeds that can be sown outdoors include courgette, beetroot and sprouts.
Lift and divide your spring bulbs and plant where you want for next year.
Check all foliage for lily beetle and greenfly and dispose of any found.
Gardening Jobs for January
Buy seeds to be sown in January or February.
Buy seed potatoes, onion sets and garlic.
Appraise the garden for form and structure, and plan alterations and additions.
Plant window boxes and containers for seasonal colour.
Protect vulnerable plants from frost and wind damage.
Firm in any autumn-planted shrubs and border plants lifted by frost.
Knock snow off branches, especially on conifers and hedges, if they are bending under the weight.
Check stakes and ties on newly planted trees.
Remember the birds in the garden and put out food for them, especially when it’s frosty.
