May always creates a frenzy in my gardening mind. The plants wake up in earnest. Leaves and flowers pop. Everything seems to explode. I truly feel a lazy guilt—like if I waste a minute, the opportunity to garden will be lost. Plants will die; my plans will fail. There is not enough time!
Relax! Growth is just beginning. If you don’t get to it today, get to it tomorrow or next week.
What follows are suggestions. You may have the time to do these tasks in the next week, but if you get to them in the next month, they will still be effective.
In the meantime, enjoy the blooms of early May like this bleeding heart (Dicentra spectablis). This plant blooms reliably around Mother’s Day every year. I love it.
Maybe Mom wants more butterflies. Plant a butterfly garden with asters, Rudbeckia, joe-pye weed, Liatris, butterfly weed, Coreopsis, and Echinacea.
If Mom has a small yard, think about giving her a small tree like kousa dogwood, fringetree, or serviceberry (single stem) as a spring-flowering plant to remind her of you!
Besides the pink of bleeding heart and crabapples, you will notice that native plants and other successful May bloomers have white blooms. That is an evolutionary decision. White flowers attract pollinators in spring, which means more white-flowering plants continue to bloom in May.
Blooming now are crabapple, shadbush, fothergilla, and wild strawberry. All have white flowers. Maybe add some of these to a moon garden that you can enjoy through a window on a chilly evening.
White-flowering plants reflect the moonlight. I plan to expand my moon garden with summer-flowering white blooms because I am more likely to enjoy the white blooms from my deck in the summer. I will investigate the white lilies, hosta, annual white cosmos, and similar summer-blooming white flowers.
Other less desirable plants are blooming now. Garlic mustard and ground ivy are blooming, but they create a problem in most gardens. Garlic mustard has some potential as a food flavoring (I have tasted and disliked). The garlic mustard plant roots send out a chemical that prevents native and more desirable native plants from growing well. Continue to remove any flowering garlic mustard from the garden before it sets seed, bag it up, and dispose of it in the trash. Ground ivy spreads easily from small bits of root. Although annoying, the ground ivy plant does not have the same noxious effect on our landscapes. I tolerate the green in my “lawn” (AKA green leafy expanse of ground cover) but remove it from my flower beds and vegetable gardens. Ground ivy will choke out preferred plants and steal nutrients.
Some tasks and things to think about:
You may have offered to plant a tree or shrub for Mom on Mother’s Day.
A couple tips:
- Plant trees so top of root ball rises above soil surface.
- Clear an area three feet in radius from the tree trunk of any grass or weeds and mulch with three inches deep of bark or other mulch. The peripheral barrier eliminates competition for nutrients and moisture and also reduces the risk of damaging the woody plant from lawn mowers or string trimmers.
We have enjoyed a deep-soaking rain lately. Use straw or salt hay to suppress weeds in the vegetable garden and keep that moisture in the soil.
Do you see cedar-apple rust on your apple and crabapple trees every year? The disease develops where there are two hosts. Cedar-apple rust fungi produce orange gelatinous spore masses on juniper. The spores infect apple species and those patches reinfect the junipers. Disrupt the cycle to reduce the impact from this fungus by removing the orange masses from local juniper when found and put prunings in the trash.
Check on your vegetable garden and food plans:
- Harvest rhubarb by pulling off stems (grab firmly and pull).
- Seed melon, squash, or cucumber in peat pots now to transplant in June. You will plant the seedling and peat pot together into the garden location. This reduces root disturbance. Be sure that the peat pot is buried completely because the peat will wick moisture away from the plant if exposed to air above the soil surface.
- Weed around raspberry canes. I enjoyed weeding on recent cool, misty days. The soil moisture made it easy to pull up weeds and I didn’t overheat.
Reduce turf stress and improve vigor to combat red thread on the lawn. Start and keep mowing at high settings (three inches or higher) to improve turf health.
Continue to edge your perennial beds and observe any health issues. Tan and water-soaked streaks on bearded iris leaves indicate iris borer. Investigate now and squish the borers by hand or apply Spinosad.
Water and fertilize houseplants more often with increasing daily temps and day length. If you get overwhelmed by the houseplants, consider that cacti and succulents require less water and fertilizer!
If you had fungus problems or powdery mildew on your perennials last year, cut back one-third of phlox, delphinium, aster, and monarda stems to encourage air flow and reduce powdery mildew. Also reduce stem height by a third to extend bloom time.
We did our first lawn mowing. Set mow height to three inches or higher and leave a section unmowed for more flowers in the landscape that attract insects. These insects will attract birds to you property.
Have you put out your hummingbird feeder yet? I count on them appearing around May 2 every year—orioles too! By the way, Moms and others love hummingbirds!
I call myself the Lazy Berkshire Gardener because I don’t want to work too hard in my gardens. I want to enjoy them. I find it easier to observe my landscape and let the compost happen, the water pool up, or daisies to self-sow. I look for ways to do the minimum task for the biggest impact. For example, mulching is better than spraying and much better than weeding all season. I look for beautiful, low-maintenance plants that thrive in or at least tolerate my garden conditions. Plus, I am willing to live with the consequences if I miss something.
