May is the month when you can finally throw yourself into garden work without being limited by unpredictable weather. With trees in full leaf and flowers blooming nicely, your garden is ready for more plants, flowers and vegetables! Take advantage of the sunshine by spending more time outside adding to your flower displays and tending to fruit and vegetables while tidying up areas of the garden that need some extra attention.
Now is the time to start thinking about planting summer bedding. Bedding plants give your garden some much needed decoration in beds, borders and baskets. Hardy annuals can now be sown directly in the soil while bulbs can be sown to provide vibrant colour.
You can have fun with summer bedding by planning how you wish to display your flowers. Would you like to have some symmetry in your bedding? Or do you have a more laissez-faire approach? Summer bedding allows you to get creative and add interest to areas of the garden with flowers like dahlias and geraniums.
Fruit trees should be growing healthy and strong by now. Do not spray fruits if they have blossoms. This simply prevents hurting the bees that are vital to your fruit trees for pollination.
To keep your fruit trees in healthy condition, we recommend using Westland Sulphate of Potash. With its high potassium content, the formulation encourages fruit development and strengthens plants to help them withstand pests and disease.
If you have been growing strawberry plants, they should be partly blooming by now. Strawberry plants become less fertile with age and are more prone to disease so it helps to replace them every couple of years. Use Vitax Organic Liquid Strawberry Fertiliser to help keep strawberry plants healthy. The potash feed contains naturally occurring nutrients and essential trace elements to support strawberry plants and promotes fruit growth.
If you have also been growing vegetables, you should be focusing on tidying up your vegetable patch. One method to keep vegetable patches organised is to 'intercrop.'
Intercropping means that you grow two different vegetables within the same row, choosing one slow growing crop and one fast growing crop. The faster vegetable, such as radish, will be able to be harvested before the slower (tomato, leek, parsnip) fills the space.
Give your vegetables a helping hand with Miracle-Gro All Purpose Concentrated Liquid Plant Food. This new formula stimulates growth and yield, root formation and improves plants resistance to environmental stresses.
Vegetables seeds that have been growing indoors can now be moved outside during the day to allow them to get used to different conditions. Remember to move them back inside in the evening to avoid them from succumbing to colder temperatures which they aren't yet used to!
Weeds and pests are now more common within the garden due to the warmer weather. Protect your fruits and vegetables from pests by using Provanto Ultimate Fruit & Vegetable Bug Killer which kills most common insects. It can be applied to fruits and vegetables such as apples, pears and lettuce.
Keep digging up weeds to keep areas clear and tidy. Doff Advanced Concentrated Weedkiller is a highly effective glyphosate based weedkiller for the control of annual and deep rooted perennial weeds. It breaks down naturally in the soil to allow for replanting in the future and destroys weeds down to the roots.
The jobs on your May to-do list should encourage you to be more creative and adventurous with your ideas for the garden. This is the month to go wild with vibrant blooms and pretty displays!