May To-Do’s

I’m not a betting person.  I want what I plant to live.  By May 1st, there is still a  twenty percent chance of a  freeze. This comes from the  Oregon Climate Summaries.

By May most of us are  ready for summer. It may be  a wise idea to wait until at  least May 15th to plant out  many of your summer garden  vegetables, flowers or  seeds. For items such as  tomatoes, melons, and basil,  you may need a greenhouse,  or something like a cloche  to create a warmer environment.  Plant carrots, onions,  cilantro, broccoli, brussels  sprouts, cabbage, spinach,  lettuces, beans, potatoes,  many flowers, and if you  have a remarkable warm  garden area, corn. Empty  garden areas waiting winter  crops can be cover cropped.  Meanwhile, prune out deadwood,  stake up things before  they get hurt from flopping,  weed, and aerate soils to  renovate older lawns, which  is more effective than dethatching.

You might consider  beginning a compost  box or pile, since this not  only reduces your waste, but  brings a free and healthy  source of nutrients into your  garden from the resulting  soil. Feeding all the soils in  your garden is an important  part of gardening, so don’t  forget fertilizers, done in  connection with soil testing  to get the right results.  Identify areas where weeds  are a problem. Possible  solutions include the use of  mulch. In areas such as  lawns, the weeds may indicate  a soil nutrient problem  or even a drainage issue.

Mulches can be newspapers,  layered and then topped  with a barkmulch, but they  can also be sheets of plastic,  also called ‘mulches’ or  landscape fabric. Mulches  discourage weeds, but slugs  often love mulches, so  adding a few boards may  give you a ‘slug hotel’ to  house and dispose of them,  or, if you like, hunt them.