By Alicia Paaso - Gardenscape Sales Team/RHS Level 2 Horticulturalist
May is a gorgeous spring month for gardening filled with excitement for summer that’s just around the corner. Gardens all around are filled with vibrant flowers, including my personal favourites: irises, wisteria, and peonies! The soil is warming, perfect for sowing various vegetable seeds straight into the ground and planting out seedlings. It is an exciting month for the gardening calendar with many gardening shows, such as the prestigious RHS Chelsea Show, that are guaranteed to inspire you. At Gardenscape, we are busy preparing for our stand at the Kent Gardening Show. We will be there during the whole Late May bank holiday. We look forward to seeing you there! In the meantime, read below about some of the many gardening opportunities May has to offer.
With May’s warmer weather, the risk of frost is gone, and you can plant more tender plants without worrying about frost damage. It is the ideal month for focusing on edible crops, especially as now is your last chance to plant runner strawberries and sweetcorn. It is essential to consider what space you have available when choosing your crops. Sweetcorn is wind-pollinated and needs to be grown in blocks with relatively wide spacing (34-45 cm apart), but where there is limited space, you can utilise the growing area by planting spinach and lettuce in between plants. Baby corn varieties might be more suitable if space is limited, as they can be planted in rows.
In May, sprouting broccoli can be grown both indoors and outdoors. As with all brassicas, it is vital to ensure that the soil isn’t below 6 pH to prevent club root disease. French bean seedlings can be planted outdoors, and seeds can be sown straight into pots or outdoors. They thrive being planted in the ground with free-draining soil in a sunny spot. If you sow them in seed trays before planting out, both peat-free compost and multipurpose compost are great options.
Climbers such as wisteria and clematis put on a lot of growth this time of the year, so make sure to tie new shoots to their supports as they appear. Your wisteria might require a potassium boost to support flowering by adding sulphate of potash. Especially in sandy soils, as they are prone to potassium leaching. A potash fertiliser will also benefit blueberry shrubs that are starting to produce fruit. Also, remember to increase watering as the blueberries are forming. Tomatoes should be ready to be transplanted into larger pots. Ensure that their main stem is tied to their support as they grow.
The ‘No Mow May’ movement is back to encourage gardeners not to mow their lawns during May to let wildflowers grow for the benefit of wildlife. It gives pollinators like bees and butterflies essential food for the start of summer, as well as locking away carbon underground. You don’t have to leave your whole lawn to grow; even a small patch will be beneficial for our pollinators. Alternatively, you can grow pollinator-friendly plants such as catmint (Nepeta) and lavender to help pollinators. They are beneficial for wildlife and make an aesthetic addition to borders with their lavender-blue flowers. Lavender and catmint can be planted in sunny spots in May. They are also drought tolerant.
Grass seeding should ideally be done before the end of May, as drought and hot conditions in the summer months can significantly reduce the germination rate.
Enjoy your May gardening!