#Top Tips: In the Garden This May
- Plant hanging baskets under cover to get established for the end of May. Our step by step guide to planting a hanging basket. The best choice is available now. Help with ideas for hanging baskets >>
- Prick out seeds and continue to pot on plugs and rooted cuttings.
- Prune the shrubs that flowered late last year not before June and your hedges. More on pruning >>
- Sew main crop vegetables such as carrots, parsnips etc. More on Grow Your Own >>
- Plant the main crop potatoes.
- Container grown plants can be planted all year round but the earlier you plan them the longer they have to establish strong roots. More on how to Plant >>
- Sprinkle lime on heavy soils before its too late approximate every three years, top improve the structure. It will not be leached out of the soil before the plants start growing if done in Spring rather than Autumn.
- If you didn't dig your garden earlier in the Spring and top with manure, soil conditioners or some form of organic mater in the Autumn its not too late to get on with it now. If you dug it over and exposed the clods to break down over the winter well done.
- Feed the garden now as plants are beginning to grow by sprinkling on fertilizer. Growmore Fish Blood and Bone meal, calcified seaweed (also rich in trace elements) or Chicken Manure Pellets so it can be absorbed into the soil and used as the plants begin to grow in the warmer weather.
- Trim your box plants now as its warming up is the perfect time and collect the clippings leaving them on the ground will encourage box blight.
- It is time to sort the lawn out. Repair with turf it or reseed it. Give it a light trim and feed it.
- Plant deciduous trees, shrub, herbaceous, alpines, most things can be planted comfortably now. Avoid planting when the ground is wet and sticky.
- Don’t over look planting your new fruit bushes, taking advantage of the variety of different berries now available. If you have a difficult position such as a north or east wall try training a gooseberry. More on Fruit >>
- Generally tidy up, that means get rid of your weeds and clear your paths of moss.
- Watch out for slugs as you taste leafy plants emerge. Place a small sprinkling of pellets under vulnerable plants. Too many pellets is counter productive and you will actually attract the slug population ! More on pest and diseases >>
