May in the Garden

 By Sandi Jones

May is a quiet time in the garden. The nights are cool but the days still have some heat. Winter is just around the corner!

Plant growth has slowed down and the plants aren’t as greedy for water and fertilizer. Because the days are cooler moisture stays longer in the soil so be careful not to over water as cool temperatures and wet soil will encourage root rot and fungus.

Garden renovation is on the top of my must do list. I will be digging up and moving perennials and bushes that are in the wrong place and cutting back perennials that have finished blooming. Cutting back foliage gives you lots of room to get into the garden and spread compost or manure as well as mulch.

I bought a potted rose last week. All I wanted to do was a 10-minute job of planting the rose. I ended up spending 6 hours digging up large rocks, cutting back overgrown perennials, moving an unhappy peony (It may be unhappy wherever I move it here on the Central Coast.), adding more soil, soil wetting agent etc. to the whole bed.

It is time to take your spring flowering bulbs out of the refrigerator and plant them in the garden.

I am watching what I hope is Erythronium or trout lily, growing in the garden. I bought it at a garden club-trading table last spring. It disappeared soon after I planted it (I thought the brush turkeys had trashed it) but in the cooler weather new mottled leaves are now showing above the soil. Trout lily has a flower like a Turk’s cap. We will see what variety I have when it blooms.

Sweet peas should be up. If there is no sign of them the seeds could have rotted during those days of rain we had last month. It may be too late to replant but nothing ventured…

Pinch the centre growth when the sweet pea seedlings are about 15 cm high. This will encourage side shoots to develop and will give you more flowers on your plant.

My Zygos are all in bud. I am very excited, as I have been talking to them for over a year.  Whoops! I just learned you stop fertilizing the month before flowers set, as they are not heavy feeders. I mistakenly fed them with a seaweed fertilizer because they were coming into bud but they don’t seem any the worse for wear.

Bare root roses are being offered for sale now. If you are considering purchasing new roses to replace roses that have died, remember to remove all the old soil from the area where your roses died. The soil will be sick and will infect the new roses. When you are only replacing one or two roses replacing the soil isn’t too bad. Think about the renovation of the rose garden at Old Parliament House in Canberra where tons of soil had to be removed and replaced with healthy soil.

Some of my older roses have scale and spraying, as an afterthought did not work. I got out the white oil and gave those pesky insects a good spray. The oil smoothers the scale and a week later the remains can be rubbed off.

Petroleum jelly works too and an old toothbrush is handy for removing the bodies from the rose canes.

Roses prefer full sun all day but gardeners don’t always have the perfect spot for roses. Roses will grow in a minimum of 6 hours sunlight. Morning sun is best, as it will dry off the dew and be less change of fungal disease.

Roses love a sweet soil. Test the ph in your rose bed. If the ph is less than 6.5 a handful of dolomite per square meter will raise the ph.

Sprinkle a little sulphate of potash around each rose bush and water in. Potash thickens the cell wall of the leaves making it harder for fungus to enter.

Harvest the fallen leaves from that lovely autumn colour and compost. Better still throw the leaves in the chicken coop and let the chickens do your work for you.

Spray stone fruits with copper oxychloride or a Bordeaux mixture after most of the leaves have fallen as precaution against fungal diseases such as shot hole and leaf curl.

Houseplants need to be moved around the house to get more light especially in rooms facing south and southeast.

May is the month to take cuttings of bay, box, curry plant, lavender, thyme and southernwood and is also the ideal time to plant coriander

Veggie of the month is the leek. Leeks are a type of mild onion and are very expensive to buy. I was very sad when I pulled the last leek in late November.

Leeks contain iron, calcium, and vitamins A, C, E, and B6. They are easy to grow and pest and disease resistant. Leeks will grow in a wide variety of soils from sandy loam to clay. The only thing they dislike is compacted soil. Leek seed will germinate in soil temperatures as low as 7c. Plant your seed or transplants but don’t stand there waiting with your saucepan as leeks take a full season to mature. Plant lots because once you have leeks in your garden almost every recipe you look at calls for a leek or two. Mmmm.

Plant of the Month is Armoracia rusticana or Horseradish. Roast beef isn’t roast beef without horseradish!  Horseradish is not pretty and even at it’s unhappiest it can be rampant so choose your spot carefully. It grows by underground rhizomes and small pieces left in the ground after harvesting in the winter will produce many new plants. Horseradish is not particular where it grows in sun or shade but always in deep well tilled soil.

The heat from the root comes at the end of the growing season when the rhizomes thicken with an accumulation of starch.

We have ours planted in a bathtub which was initially used as a pool for ducks (who have long since gone to that supper plate in the sky). The tub is buried in the ground so the top is at ground level and has been filled with well-rotted compost and soil. A small planting like ours should only be harvested every two years to give the roots time to mature.

The root is dug up and peeled and then grated in the food processor and vinegar is added to the mix to preserve it. At the fresh stage the fumes will clean up and kill any suggestion of a cold. Once you have tasted freshly grated horseradish you will never go back to the insipid horseradish cream again!

  Until next month may all your bugs be good bugs.

Happy gardening!