The first May Bank Holiday

Dahlias ready for planting

Because there are two… This one at least seems to be sunny. Indeed, this spring has been so topsy turvy that I could have told you to just go and do everything you planned to do in April all over again. Yesterday felt more like early March than April anyway. At moment, February. Brr. However, fortune favours the brave, so I am just going to keep on with my May jobs, and hope that it all comes right in the end.

SEEDS TO SOW IN MAY

A month for sowing everything. Yes, everything. Hardy annuals, half-hardy annuals, and even the first of the biennials. The sweet rocket has been incredible this year and it is a good reminder that I don’t want a spring without it. And if I want it, I have to sow it.

Keep sowing hardy annuals to keep flowers going until late into the season, and the weather is warm enough for half-hardies and even to start thinking about biennials. Even sweet peas if you want blooms well into October.

The best thing about sowing in May is you can put seeds straight into the ground. The soil is warm, the air is kind, and it will definitely rain. Watering is key for germination so keep seeds well-watered until they are up and growing. The downside to direct sowing? Slugs.

Hedge your bets. Half in the ground, half on the windowsill is my advice.

My favourite biennials

/ Foxgloves, of every colour, but I adore ‘Sutton’s Apricot’. Grow the perennial ones for low maintenance flowers – Digitalis lanata ‘Café Crème’ is particularly special.

/ Honesty. Because truly, there is nothing like the lunar seed heads. I have them in wreaths all year round.

/ Hesperis. The white one. The scent is utterly wonderful.

Other seeds to sow in May:

/ Agrostemma (corncockle)

/ Ammi majus

/ Bells of Ireland (a week in the freezer first)

/ Bladder campion

/ Borage

/ Bronze Fennel

/ Chicory

/ Cornflowers

/ Cosmos

/ Dill

/ Dog daisy

/ Echinops

/ Grasses (all of them!)

/ Larkspur

/ Marigolds & tagetes

/ Nasturtium

/ Nigellas

/ Opium poppy

/ Orlaya Grandiflora

/ Phacelia

/ Rudbeckia hirta ’Sahara’

/ Scabiosa

/ Strawflowers

/ Sunflowers

/ Teasel

/ Viola tricolor

/ Wallflowers

/ Wild carrot

TO HARVEST IN MAY

The abundance builds

/ Aquilegia

/ The very last of the tulips

/ The first of the peonies

/ Bearded irises

/ Lilac (cut in bud & strip all leaves)

/ The very first roses

/ Honesty (or leave for seed heads)

/ Sweet rocket

/ The first biennial foxgloves

/ Cerinthe

/ Alliums

Coral charm peony

Other things to do:

Sow squash & beans

My winters are fuelled by tray bakes of squash and butter beans, often with handfuls of thyme and ragged edged torn halloumi. If I don’t go into November with shelves full of Potimarron and jars of pale, dried beans, I don’t feel quite right.

This means sowing squash now. I have a ridiculously large and varied collection of seed but I have learned from last year that the very big squash, although unbelievably beautiful, are quite intimidating to use and so I leave them too long before cutting into them and they have a tendency to rot. In an unusually sensible move, I am going to prioritise the onion squash, potimarrons and the like.

Also, the drier the better for me. I personally think there is nothing worse than a slimy squash. Yes, I do put supermarket BNS in that category. Ugh.

Use multipurpose not seed compost. Use 9cm pots (or recyclable equivalent) and put the seed on its side. Heat will make all the difference, so a kitchen windowsill or above a radiator would be great and they will appear in days. Just a note, I never ever direct sow these because of slugs. I think you need beefy plants to be able to get them out into the ground safely, all the more so if you use any sort of mypex/ground cover or have raised beds where slugs like to congregate.

Oh, and beans this weekend too. I find the usual butter beans are hard to get right in the UK (it’s not always hot enough), but I’m in love with Borlotti beans on the vine, so they will have to do.

Prick out anything in a seed tray

Once your seedlings have two true leaves, it is time to get them out of the seed trays and into pots. Firstly, they are likely to be running out of room and their roots are going sideways and getting entangled with one another, which means that you will damage them if they stay there much long.

Secondly, there really isn’t a lot of nutrition in seed compost, and the plant will have got as far as it has with what was stored inside the seed when you sowed it. It is going to need more now.

Prepare your pots first. Lay them out, almost full with a multipurpose, peat-free compost. Dib a hole in the middle but don’t press the soil down or compact it. Use a label, a pencil, or a butterknife to get right underneath the seedling and lift it out. What I mean is, if you can possibly resist, lift out, don’t tug the plant. The advice is also to touch the leaves not the stem; they only have one stem and if it is damaged the plant won’t recover. It can probably afford to have a leaf damaged and still grow on absolutely fine.

Drop the seedling into the hole you have made and give it a bit of a shuffle so the compost falls back in and fills the hole. Water from underneath. You may need to top up the compost after you have watered, it can sink a bit.

Many plants can be dropped in so it is only their leaves above the compost and the whole stem is buried. That is, the line of where it was in the seed tray is much lower than in the pot. Lots of plants can grow roots from their stems if they are underground and so you get stronger and healthier plants this way.

Definitely do this with cosmos and tomatoes.

Watering

If you have had rain, you may think that you can relax on the watering front. And you can (although I don’t water anything that is in open ground anyway, so this is a bit academic) but do not forget containers and anything in the greenhouse. My big pots in the courtyard are full of tulips in full flower and their need for water outstrips what rain would fall on that surface area. Keeping them well hydrated will make for a longer lasting tulip and I know that I added grit to the compost and lots of rocks to the pot so I am not worried about them getting waterlogged.

To cut or not to cut

Every so often, someone says to me ‘your house must be full of flowers every day!’. It really isn’t. I have been absolutely itching to cut the Dom Pedro tulips. Partly to have them in the house, partly because it is the only way to capture them photographically.

However, as I am now a closed system in terms of bringing bulbs into Malus Farm, these ones are going to have to last. And so instead of cutting them, I am going to enjoy them in the pot, and then nurture the foliage so that I can keep the bulbs for next year and hopefully forever. Many tulip bulbs simply do not come back year after year, but I do find more do than you would expect. You must snap the seedheads off once the flowers are over though.

Similarly, there are deep, inky purple stems rising in one of the beds. My absolute joy and delight, Anthriscus sylvestris 'Ravenswing'. It is not often that I veer towards naming an individual flower as a favourite, but this plant is what comes to mind when people ask me. And my appetite for them is considerable, which means leaving them to set seed by not cutting them. I will harvest and distribute around and about the flower field. I have so much native cow parsley that I dare not sell the seed because I imagine it crosses and turns pale, but I will take the risk for me.

Staking & supporting

There is a moment between the plant getting into its growth stride when it has size and weight, but hasn’t yet managed to hold itself up, or entwine with an external support, or get its tendrils onto something vertical. Yes, mostly sweet peas, but also my furry brown clematis and some of my roses are looking quite uncontained at the moment. Half an hour with a roll of twine and some scissors will pay dividends at this time of year. I find climbers that don’t feel anchored just don’t grow; once they feel that the support is there, they suddenly rush up.

Although, if we are talking sweet peas and you have only just planted yours out, don’t worry if they are sitting there languishing a bit. I do find mine always take a week or so to get used to the change of scenery and they look like they are doing absolutely no growing at all. Give it time. They’ll be fine.

If it is out of the ground, get it in the ground

There are three things that I am going to make sure I get sorted today. I have ten Café au Lait tubers, a delivery of comfrey roots and four pleached lime trees, all waiting. They are fine; the tubers and the roots aren’t sprouting yet, and the trees are in pots. But they are also not growing, and I want all of them to be happy and thrive.

If I am honest, they are quite a few other things that are also ready. Fifty corncockle seedlings that are threatening to flower in their pots in the greenhouse. A Malus hupehensis who has been waiting patiently for longer than I will admit.

Just get everything in that is going in, in.

Where I am (the mildest bit of a mild county) I can usually take middle of April as the last frost. This year has obviously been different, but I cannot leave it any longer. The dahlias are being planted out tomorrow. All of them, and I have far too many.  

Buxus

On a sad note, box. The caterpillars have arrived in Somerset and are attacking plants in a positively apocalyptical way. You can pick them off one by one or, if you are so inclined, there is a spray, Xentari.

I have areas of the garden where I love having box, and areas where it just doesn’t thrive. I think we all might have to come to terms with letting it go.

Weed

I have ground elder really badly in one corner of the perennial beds. Even a trip last week to Nant y Bedd, self-professed holder of the national collection of weeds, has persuaded me that I can just let it choke everything else out. I’m going to have to get in there with a hand fork…