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Gardening Tips for May

Posted: Monday, May 3rd, 2010

After our last frost date has passed (hopefully the May long weekend!), plant warm-season annual flowers, herbs, and vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, basil, marigolds and petunias.

This includes plants for containers, pots, window boxes, and planters. Remove any cool-season flowers you may already have there. Work in a slow-release fertilizer. If there are plants overwintering in the container and you're keeping them, simply work the slow-release fertilizer into the top inch or so of soil.

Plant tender summer bulbs including glads, cannas, dahlias, and tuberous begonias.

Once the soil has warmed to 15 degrees C (warm enough to walk on comfortably barefoot), plant seeds for corn, green beans, squash, cucumbers, okra, melons, sweet potatoes and other heat-lovers.

Continue to plant container-grown trees, shrubs, perennial herbs, and perennial flowers. You can try planting bare-root trees and shrubs now, but at this late date, they may not thrive.

Continue to deadhead.

Continue feeding roses, either with chemicals or organic fertilizers, such as compost or fish emulsion.

Keep new plantings of trees, shrubs, and others well-watered.

Stake plants that will grow tall now, while they're just a foot or so high.

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