What to do in Your Garden This Month

What to do in Your Garden this month

by Suzanne Millard, Mendocino County Master Gardener

Finally we plant! For those crops susceptible to frost, we are now on our way out of the frost danger zone and we can fill our garden with starts and seeds that will become the bounty of our summer.

What to plant?

For May and June you can directly sow beans, carrots, chard, corn, lettuce, cucumber, squash, melons, turnips, potatoes and pumpkins. You can also start heat tolerant lettuce and chard for planting. Plants ready for transplant are tomatoes, tomatillos, chard, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, melons and lettuce.

Flowers and herbs appropriate for May and June direct sowing are dill, Lobella, Alyssum, Limonium, Zinnias, Amaranth, Petunias, Marigolds, Cosmos, Tithonias, Ageratum, Strawflowers, Calliopsis, Cleome, Celosia, Sanvitalia, Morning Glory, Nasturtiums, Dahlia, Heliotrope, Gomphrena, Geraniums, Sunflowers, Impatiens, Nicotiana, Thunbergia.

For more Gardener's Tips, please click Greater Hopland Planting Guide (Peter Huff and Kate Frey's Monthly Planting Calendar for Inland Mendocino, also found at the "How to - Grow Food" page on The Garden's Project Website).

What to look out for…

· Make sure young starts have been properly acclimated to the outdoors (hardened off). Do this by exposing them to the elements each day for a week, lengthening the time of exposure each successive day.

· For young starts in the garden, be sure that they are protected from strong winds early on.

· Once starts are planted, ensure that your irrigation connections are working properly. Make sure that irrigation filters are cleaned out and water is flowing freely to each plant.

· You’ll want to plant starts with similar water and sunlight needs together.

For a healthy garden, you’ll want to continue to keep your weeds to a minimum. Pests such as aphids, earwigs, slugs and snails will want to snack on your tender starts and established plants. Aphids can be controlled with strong will and persistence. Wash them off plants with a strong stream of water. Earwigs can feast on aphids but they can also feed on your plant leaves. Roll up wet newspapers or cardboard at night next to your plants. These will attract earwigs. First thing in the morning, dispose of the rolls of newspaper and cardboard and you’ll be disposing of a multitude of earwigs. Snails and slugs can be controlled either by hand or by surrounding garden beds or plants with cooper tape.

Just a friendly reminder that there is a tremendous body of knowledge about gardening in California, provided by University of California Cooperative Extension. This site, geared toward the home gardener can be found at http://cagardenweb.ucdavis.edu/.