My May Garden To-Do List

We are soooooo close. MAN spring is taking its sweet time to warm up this year though! I am in zone 5b, and normally we are seeing leaf buds on the trees at least.

Despite the slowness of spring, May might be the busiest month in the garden - and it starts TOMORROW! There is so much to do - but the work now should pay off come July & August when things are flourishing (at least that's what I'm telling myself...). I have to contend with the black flies too, once they start - pesky little buggers!!

What I've done already:

• Weeded raised veggie beds
• Raked in a few bags of compost, and even worked in some used coffee grounds (one day I will make my own compost... one day...)
• Threw in a bunch of worms I dug up elsewhere. Hopefully they are happily making their way through the beds now -- go worms! 
• Beds were also covered with dark fabric, both as a weed deterrent and to try to warm up the soil
• Sowed some spinach, green onion, leeks, and peas. Not sure how they will do as it's been so cold, but we'll see! Bit of an experiment with these.

My To Do list for the veggie garden for May:

• Put out tomato cloches - I'm trying a few Kozy Coats this year and I'm told I can put them out before the plants, to try to warm the soil where the plants will go.
• Cover hoops with light-weight plastic. I'm hoping I can warm up my raised beds by a few degrees, and get the seedlings out a few weeks early this year (May 15 versus June 1 for tomato and pepper plants).
• Sow remaining cold-weather seeds like green leaf lettuce, romaine, more spinach, green onion, more peas
• Build folding cucumber trellis - something like this but maybe not as tall
• Start hardening seedlings off - second week of May
• Hook up hoses and install irrigation hoses in beds. 
• Plant out seedlings and plants started indoors - May 15 ish (under plastic), later for peppers. Include blood-meal in tomato holes. Give peppers a spray of epsom-salt water.
• Sow all remaining seeds: beans, more green onions, more cucumbers, carrots, parsnips... 
• Plant out flower seedlings started indoors
• Set up trellis for cucumbers and supports for peas (these need to wait until the plastic covers are off - end of the month)
• Once plastic is off: hook up motion-sensing sprinkler to ward off the deer

Outside the veggie garden: 

• divide hostas and lillies
• clean up and re-mulch flower beds
• plant annuals
• prune lilacs and forsythia once they're finished flowering
• find somewhere to install a hammock and put it up, and then lay in it for a few hours. (Hahahaha)