May Garden Guide

The Guide to May garden activities on most parts of Aotea: seed saving, planting and seed sowing, propagation, harvesting, pests and diseases to watch out for, plus orchard activities:

It is the end of the seed saving season:

If you have grown squashes such as cupola, butternuts or buttercups, or pumpkins, these are the seeds to save now! BUT read on to make sure your seeds will be true….

There are four species within the Genus Cucurbita: maxima, pepo, moschata and mixta. Within each species there are many varieties which will all cross with each other. So to be sure that our seeds are true, be sure that you have only grown ONE member of a family. For instance, if you have a cupola squash that you want to save seeds from, be sure that you haven’t grown any butternuts, Chuck’s Winter Squash or rampicante. If you have neighbours who gorw any of these, bees can can cross their varieties with yours! Also be aware the pumpkins from supermarekts will usually be hybrids and the seeds will not come true to type.

o   Cucurbita maxima includes buttercup, Musquee de Provence, Marina di Chioggia, Triamble, Whangaparaoa Crown  

o   Cucurbita moschata includes all butternuts, cupola, Chucks Winter Squash, and Rampicante/Tromboncino

o   Cucurbita pepo includes all zucchini and scallopini, acorn squash, kumikumi, African Gem, spaghetti squash, crookneck squash

o   Cucurbita  argyrosperma aka mixta (eg gourds). Note: C. moschata and C. argyrosperma will cross as they are very closely genetically related.

Check out the full article here: 

Planting for Winter

May is the last opportunity to plant for winter. The later the planting, the longer the seedlings will take to grow, as the soil temperature cools down and daylength gets shorter. Make sure your garden area gets at least 6 hrs of sun per day! Any less and your plants are unlikely to make much, if any, growth. If your gardens on are on South facing slope or in a shady valley, SORRY IT IS TOO LATE!

If you had a productive summer garden, the soil will need a top up with compost or vermicast before planting hungry winter crops.  If you don’t have any, water the planting holes with a liquid fertiliser such as fish/sea weed extract just prior to planting and water the plants in well.

If still needing to water, which can be the case in a dry autumn, remember to shift your watering time away from evenings as it will encourage slugs and snails, as well as chill the soil down. 

GIVEN THE ABOVE CONDITIONS, here’s what you can still plant now: 

Green Manure: if  you aren’t planning on a winter garden or are leaving some beds fallow, consider planting a green manure. 

Sow/Plant now last chance:

All your cool-season greens:

• Single Plantings (will provide ongoing harvest through the winter): curly kale and cavalo nero, silverbeet, frisee endive eg pancalieri, escarole, celery, parsley, sprouting broccoli eg Tasty stems

• Single plantings of Perennials: globe artichoke (will produce in mid-late spring)  lovage, sweet marjoram and garlic chives

• Last successional plantings of (these mostly supply only one harvest per plant/a short harvesting window): endive, spinach, fennel, escarole, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, pak choy 

Strawberry Plants: Time to plant new strawberry plants. Either use healthy plantlets from runners in your garden or a friend’s, or purchase potted plants. Prepare the bed very well with plenty of compost. Strawberry plants hate wet feet and appreciate a mounded bed. Mulch well. Keep plants that have had one fruiting season. They will be even better next summer, BUT: Clean them up, feed and mulch. Remove weeds and runners as they will crowd them out. GET RID OF ANY PLANTS THAT ARE OVER TWO YEARS OLD. they will encourage disease, and their crowns will get overcrowded, producing small, low quality fruit next summer. 

Remove flowers on all your new and one-year old strawberry plants right through to end of August.

Flowers: perennials such as hollyhocks, edible annuals such as calendula, pansies, violas, cornflowers and snapdragons, and sweetly scented ones such as sweet peas, stocks, wall flowers, carnations  and good old alyssum. 

Direct Sow:

• Coriander : always soak seed for 24 hrs before sowing, use fresh seed AND KEEP WELL WATERED TO STOP THEM GOING TO SEED. DO NOT plant out coriander seedlings - they are taprooted, pots are too small, root hits the bottom and when planted  will go to seed very fast. Direct sow coriander every two weeks to keep a good supply. 

• Corn Salad/mache/Nusslisalat - this is a tender green that germinates in cool weather and forms a pretty rosette which can be pulled out and used as a salad green with mild nutty flavour. It seems to resist slugs and caterpillars very well!

• Rocket, mizuna, tatsoi: broadcast seed, but protect against slugs and snails. These brassica greens love the cooler season, so plenty of opportunity later in the year if too hot/dry now. Several small sowings are better than one large one.

• Carrots (soak seed for 24 hrs before sowing), use fresh seed, keep well watered for up to 3 weeks til they emerge, guard against birds, slugs and snails. 

• Beetroot: guard against birds, slugs and snails. Hmmm a bit too late really. They really like warm, rich  soil to do well. Best before end of March if you can. They tend to hold well through the winter and any left unharvested will bolt in spring. 

• Turnips, swedes, kohlrabi, daikon, and radish: these are all in the cabbage family so will need to be protected against snails and slugs

• Broadbeans and peas: these can be sown through to end of April, May at a pinch in a warm sunny garden. You can also germinate these in a seed tray and plant out direct to the garden when they emerge.

Propagation

• Take hardwood and semi-hardwood cuttings of trees suchas figs, plus perennial herbs, shrubs  and flowers while the weather is warm, roots will strike more quickly. 

Harvesting

• Pumpkins, butternuts, cupolas and buttercups. Any remaining fruit should be harvested by the end of May. If they aren’t completely ripe, feed them to the chooks.The stalk leading to the fruit should be very hard and dry. Butternuts should have a  warm orange/brown skin, with little green streaking. Cupolas should be completely orange/tan. Buttercups and pumpkins should mostly develop an orange patch where the skin is in contact with the ground. PROTECT FROM RATS. 

Watch out for:

• Birds after your seedlings (use nets)

In the Orchard

• Last chance to feed citrus with sheep pellets or chook manure. Next application in spring. Winter is a great time to apply dolomite lime, as the winter rains will wash it into the soil. Try not to apply dolomite and manure at the same time. 

• May is perfect citrus planting time (plant deciduous trees like pip and stonefruit when they are dormant, any time in winter from July on). The soil is still warm but the rains will ensure they get off to a good start and establish before the return of warmer weather in spring. 

• Leave any pruning now until late winter/early spring, (July-August) best time is just before bud break. Stonefruit first, if not already summer pruned, as they flower first. Then pears, and apples last.  

• Bananas will be fattening up now. Bring them in when the individual fruit have rounded out and are no longer angular. No need to wait for them to turn yellow- they will be far too tempting at this point - they will ripen up perfectly well off the plant.   Watch out for pukeko, rats and kaka having a nibble. 

• Erica says now is the time to spray copper on your fruit  trees for disease control. Be aware that it is a heavy metal and is damaging to soil microbial life and some forms are toxic to bees. However, there are many forms of copper, two forms that are less harmful are copper oxychloride and copper hydroxide. 

• You can also mix copper with a horticultural oil to smother insect eggs and scale insects at the same time.  

• Rake up and either hot compost or burn fallen fruit tree leaves, especially if you have disease in the orchard, which is  quite likely after the very wet spring in 2024.