THE BEST GARDENING TIPS FOR MAY 🌸🌼🧡
🌼 Continue planting spring-flowering bulbs. Water bulbs deeply and ensure they never dry out completely. Feed fortnightly with bulb food or organic 3:1:5. Keep feeding fading bulbs to boost them for next season.
🥀 Dead-head winter-flowering annuals to encourage further flowers. Continue planting winter-flowering seedlings like Pansies, Violas, Poppies, Primulas, Calendula, Stocks, Cineraria, Primulas and Primroses. Look at feeding them fortnightly with seedling food or liquid fertiliser. Also add a good layer of mulch, this will keep their roots warm during the cold months that lie ahead.
🌹May is the perfect month for planting roses. Come spring they will be settled and you can expect to be rewarded with strong healthy growth and lovely blooms.
🌳 May is the month to plant and transplant trees, vines, shrubs and hedging plants. The still temperatures are ideal as it puts less strain on the plant.
🌱Aloes will add warmth and vibrancy to your winter garden, plus they’re waterwise and very easy to maintain. We stock a wide variety waiting to be planted into your beds, rockeries and containers.
🪴Bring colour indoors with flowering indoor plants like Cyclamen, Chrysanthemum and beautiful Phalaenopsis orchids. Hyacinth bulbs can also still be planted in pots on a bright window sill from where they will lend fragrance to any room. Look at feeding them once a month with a liquid plant food for indoor plants. Feed orchids in flower with a specially formulated orchid food.
In the Vegetable Garden:
🥦Remove the last of the spent summer veg and plant Swiss chard, leeks, brassicas eg cauliflower broccoli and cabbages, peas, winter lettuce and oriental greens.
💦Thin out your seedlings that were sown if needed and feed them with seedling food or a water-soluble fertiliser. Mulch well to keep their little roots warm.
🌿May is a good time to also lift, divide and replant perennial vegetables like lemongrass, chives and artichokes.
🍓Look at planting strawberries and mulch them well.
🌽Feed vegetables with our organic range of flower power or gwano pellet fertiliser.
🥦Cabbages are prone to aphids. Spray preventatively with an organic aphicide eg neem oil or Organiced. Try and do some interplanting with Sage to deter white fly and Calendula, pennyroyal or chives to repel aphids.
🐛Keep an eye for signs of cutworm around young vegetable seedlings and place bait if necessary.
Sowing Guide:
🌼Flowers: Look at planting thongs like African Daisy, Namaqualand Daisy, Pansies, Calendula, Diascia, Nemesia, and Sweet Peas for color are ideal to plant this month.
🌽Vegetables: Things like your Broad Beans, Onions, Peas, Chinese Cabbage, Winter Lettuce, Mustard, Oriental Greens, Radish, Swiss Chard and Parsnips.
🌱Herbs: You can plant, Rocket and Coriander.
In General:
💦Look at changing the settings on your irrigation system to suit the temperature for autumn it is better to water mid-morning to early afternoon allowing excess water to be soaked up by the plant's. Allowing it to be less wet during the cooler temperatures at night.
🥀Deadhead your rose bushes and spray fortnightly with a fungicide to combat black spot.
❄️The average first date for heavy frost in Gauteng is the 19th of May so stock up on frost protection, fleece or hessian to protect tender plants. Move sensitive potted plants to a protected spot.
💧Water the garden early in the day and mulch generously around all plants to protect roots. Always leave some space around the stems of plants when mulching to prevent disease. Feed with an organic 3:1:5 fertiliser to strengthen cell walls and control evaporation.
🪨You can spread a layer of acid compost around your Camellias and Azaleas, keep them moist to prevent bud drop.
🏡Mow lawns on a high setting leaving a little more leaf blade, as surface growth is slowing down, and water if dry. Do a last overseeding with evergreen, cold tolerant lawn seed.
🍁Start collecting all the fallen autumn leaves and use as a mulch or add to the compost heap.
Indoor Plants:
💦As days cool down, indoor plants will need less watering and can very easily become waterlogged. Keep an eye on them and allow the surface soil to dry out slightly before watering again. Do the finger test: stick your finger in the soil up to the first joint and if it feels moist, wait a bit longer with watering.
💡Light Bulb Moment💡
Look at drawing a rough plan of your garden and mark the position of plants that will die back in winter, like Echinacea, Hostas, Alstroemeria and Eucomis and other bulbs to prevent damage and over-planting.
FOR THE BIRD LOVERS
🦜Feed the birds more regularly as their natural food sources are starting to run low. Look at including suet in your feeding programme to provide them with a source of fat and energy.
🌿Invest in plants like Wild Dagga and Aloes for nectar-feeding birds and wild grasses for seed-feeders.
🦆Don’t neglect cleaning birdbaths as birds still enjoy a good splash on the warmer days!
HAPPY GARDENING 🌸🌼💦🌼🪴🏡
🌱Please visit us at Tuingenoot where our friendly staff is always ready to assist.
🗓 Open 7 days a week
🚛 We Deliver
📍 C/O Old Jhb Road & Lyttleton Drive, Clubview, Centurion
📞 012-660 0103
🌐 www.tuingenoot.co.za
*Photos used for advertising purposes only*
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