Gardeners Checklist: Here Is What to Do on the Week of May 5

By Ron Kujawski

* Put “Help Mom” at the top of your To Do list this week. Giving Mom a helping hand with her gardening tasks may be the best Mother’s Day gift; certainly, it will be the most appreciated.  Mom may say “it’s the help that kills you,” but she doesn’t mean it…..hopefully.

* Go ahead and tempt fate by sowing seeds of sweet corn. According to the latest weather forecast, there does not appear to be any chance of frost over the next 10 days, and the projections are for the low temperatures not even dropping into the 30°F range. On the other hand, Mother Nature does not like to be toyed with, so keep floating row covers handy to place over the planted area if frost threatens. Plant sweet corn in blocks of 4 short rows to ensure good pollination, and don't sow all corn seed at once. Save some for later sowings, just in case Mother Nature takes offense at these forecasters.  

* Make your first, second, or third sowing of beets, carrots, kohlrabi, radishes, turnips, bunching onions, arugula, leaf lettuce, and spinach. These are crops best planted in small amounts but at regular intervals of two or three weeks for continuous yield. Since radishes, leaf lettuce, and spinach don’t like hot weather, this is the last sowing of spring for these vegetables, but sowings can start again in early August for fall harvests.

* Prune out the dead (browned) shoots of junipers. Some of this damage may have been due to winter desiccation, but it could also be due to juniper blight disease. Make pruning cuts a couple of inches below the dead area.

* Examine landscape plants for the following pests: Rose Slugs eating leaves of roses, tiny larvae of Viburnum Leaf Beetle dining on the undersides of viburnum leaves, slug-larvae of Lily Leaf Beetle chomping on leaves of Asiatic lilies, and clusters of European Pine Sawfly caterpillars making a meal of the needles on mugo pine. All of these pests can be controlled with a product containing spinosad. Spinosad is a natural product created by the fermentation of a bacterium commonly found in soil.

* Take extra precautions when working outdoors in brushy areas to protect yourself from deer ticks, now called the Blacklegged Tick. The tick is currently in the very tiny nymph stage and therefore hard to detect. It has been reported that you are most likely to contract Lyme disease from deer ticks in the nymph stage.

* Look for bright orange, jelly-like globs on the branches of Eastern red cedar. These colorful structures are galls of cedar-apple rust. Though they do little harm to the cedars, they do release spores that infect the leaves of apples and crabapples. Prune off the galls and bury them.

* Crowd out weeds in lawns by maintaining a cutting height of three inches. Also, taller grass plants will develop a deep root system, which helps the lawn survive summer droughts.

*

There’s no better time to plant a new perennial garden than now. However, it’s always wise to create a planting plan first. I speak from experience when I say that without a decent plan, the end result may look like the garden from hell. Woefully lacking any design skills, I now rely on plans I find in books on perennial gardens or popular gardening magazines such as Garden Gate and Fine Gardening.  As a friend of mine once said, “Being original is admitting defeat.”

Ron Kujawski began gardening at an early age on his family's onion farm in upstate New York. Although now retired, he spent most of his career teaching at the UMass Extension Service. He serves on Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Horticulture Advisory Committee. His book, Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook, is available here.