Monday, 16 May 2011

Cottage garden jobs to do in May

Outside

  • Continue successional sowings of salads, peas and spinach
  • Pinch out the tops of broad beans if they are attacked by blackfly
  • Put up a protective screen around carrots against carrot fly
  • Earth up potatoes and, if the shoots are threatened by frost cover them with fleece
  • Plant leeks and all members of the cabbage family
  • Stake tall herbaceous plants before they grow too big
  • Take cuttings of mint and rosemary
  • Ventilate cold frames more generously
  • Tuck straw under strawberries as the fruit begins to swell
Sow hardy perennials and biennials in a seedbed outside

Inside

  • Keep greenhouse well ventilated
  • Remove side-shoots from tomatoes as they appear and start feeding with a liquid fertilizer at every watering
  • Pot on peppers into their final pots
  • Start to feed aubergines, cucumbers, melons and peppers growing in pots
  • If plants in pots waiting to be planted out begin to look yellow, give them a liquid feed.

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