Hi Gardeners
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| Trilliums |
They’re back! Two battling hummingbirds almost hit me this
morning on my way back from the barn. And I saw orioles yesterday too. I have yet to see the rose breasted grosbeaks,
but I am watching for them. Get your hummingbird and oriole feeders out.
We finally got some rain; I am just wishing we got more. Showers and misty rain most of the day
yesterday and overnight but the rain gauge only shows 2/10 inch. But at least it
will perk up the flowers a bit. Some things were actually wilting. I am still going to get the hoses hooked up
this weekend. If I do that it should mean that the rest of May will be wet,
lol.
The redbud tree is in full glorious bloom and the flowering
quince is blooming too. The apple trees are blooming. I still have lots of
tulips, daffodils, and other spring bulbs in bloom. Lots of beautiful blooming
crabapples around too. My poor magnolia is blooming but the buds really got hit
by the frost last week and the ends of the petals are all brown.
In the woods I see the black cherries, service berries and
dogwood are blooming. Trilliums and trout lilies are blooming. Violets and dandelions
are everywhere. It has to be bee heaven week.
Checking my calendars from past years I see we are 1-2 weeks
ahead of previous springs on average as far as bloom times go. The race is on
to get things planted; May is always a busy month for gardeners. It’s the time
when most zone 5-6 gardeners are getting vegetable gardens in, planting annuals,
and putting up hanging baskets. They are also planting trees and shrubs, new
perennials and cleaning out established garden beds.
Zone 7 and 8 gardeners are doing the things above and starting
their first harvests of greens and scallions, young radishes and beets. They
may be pruning spring flowering shrubs after the bloom has faded. Gardeners in zones 3 and 4, well, you should
be seeing some spring flowers and gardening will get started for you this month
too.
While there are plenty of things you can plant in May, gardeners in zone 6 and above should still be patient and keep a close eye on the weather reports. Last year we had snow flurries on May 9 and 10 here. In zones 5 and 6 frost and even freezes can still happen. Don’t plant by a calendar date or holiday, plant by the weather conditions and predictions.
May Gardening
This Sunday is Mother’s Day and many people feel it’s time
to put out those beautiful annual hanging baskets, and get those annuals
planted. But the holiday is earlier than normal and if you look at the weather
reports for this area, and many parts of the country, you’ll see some cold
weather- down close to freezing if not freezing, coming next week.
Buy the plants if you must, but be ready to protect them, I
wouldn’t plant those annuals in the ground just yet. I wouldn’t plant tomatoes or peppers outside
either this week in zones 5-6 or lower.
For most gardeners, zones 4 and up, clean up time is here.
Remove dead stems, debris and so on.
Mark slow emerging plants if you remove the dead stems. Slow emergers
include hardy hibiscus, buddleia, balloon flower, and butterfly weed.
If you see no new growth on a plant or emerging from the
ground, other than those slow emergers mentioned, mark the plant or area with
something. Water the plant if its dry. Then examine it again in a week. Try the
scratch test on a stem if it has woody stems. If you scratch off a little bark
and see green it may be alive still. If you don’t see growth in 2 weeks it’s
probably dead.
Prune off dead areas of rose canes, look at stems carefully.
Cut just above a node or where you see a new leaf. New leaves are often
red. Also prune off winter killed areas
of other plants.
Don’t remove the foliage of spring blooming bulbs after the
blooms fade. It needs to yellow and die naturally. You can trim off any seed
pods that form, unless you want to collect and plant seeds. But you don’t have
to remove seedpods.
Don’t prune spring flowering shrubs until after they bloom.
Mow the lawn before it gets 4 inches high, but only take off
about an inch in the first mowing. Healthy grass needs leaves to produce food.
Keep your lawn about 3 inches tall.
Get stakes and supports in early, before plants get too
tall.
Get started on that weeding! It will get away from you
quickly.
Don’t put out tomatoes and peppers before the soil is warm,
above 60 degrees, and the nights are above 45 degrees. Even if they don’t get
frost, cold soil and nights can stunt plants.
Patience, patience, just because it’s warm one day, doesn’t
mean cold weather is gone. Know your last average frost date. Then pay
attention to weather forecasts.
When covering plants for frost protection make sure to remove
covers as soon as possible after the sun comes up. Days heat up quickly now and
plants can get too hot under covers, especially anything clear, very quickly.
Always harden plants off if they were growing inside, by
moving them to the shade first for a day or two or making some shade for
them. Then over a few days expose them
to additional sun.
Make sure to keep potted plants waiting to be planted
watered. Small pots dry out very quickly. And when planting into the garden
water the plants well. Newly planted plants, including trees and shrubs, should
be watered every few days (unless it’s rainy) if the soil feels dry until they get
established.
Rainy days ands cloudy weather are excellent for planting. If
it’s hot and sunny you may want to provide light shade for new transplants.
Houseplants should not be moved outside until all danger of
frost has passed, and they must be hardened off also. Most houseplants cannot
go into full sun, even if they were in a sunny window inside even after they
are hardened off. Tropical hibiscus, banana plants, geraniums and a few other
plants will tolerate full sun, but most houseplants need light shade or even
heavier shade outside.
Lots of gardeners will be receiving mail ordered plants this
month. Always open boxes immediately and
check the plants. Don’t leave boxes
sitting outside in the sun. Water the plants in pots if they feel dry and keep them
out of the direct sun but in good light, until you plant them. That should be
in just a few days. Bare root plants should have the roots moistened or wrapped
in a damp paper towel. Do not leave them soaking in water.
If you have to keep plants longer and they are not in a pot,
pot them. You can put them in sunlight after a few days if they are sun loving
plant and you remember to check them at least once a day to see if they need
water. Put shade plants in the shade.
Keep any bulbs dry until planted or pot them if they need to
wait more than a week.
May almanac
May is “mayvelous”, almost as good as June. The full moon is May 26th, and appropriately enough it’s called the flower moon. Perigee is the also the 26th so once again, we have a super moon. Apogee of the moon is on the 11th. And on the 11th around 1:24 pm EDT a “near earth object” CK1, between 35 and 75 feet long is going to pass very close to earth. That should be exciting.
Other names for May’s full moon are mother’s moon and milk
moon- because new mothers and their milk are everywhere. The month name of May
is derived from the name of the Greek goddess Maia, associated with fertility.
There are two sets of notable days in May folklore. The
first is Chilly Saints days, named for the Saints Mameritus, Pancras, and
Gervais. The days are the 11th, 12th, and 13th
and it is said that these days will be cold and frosty. Last year we had snow
on the 8th, 9th and 11th here, but the 12th
and 13th were nice. Mother’s
Day is the 9th this year so it might not be the best day to plant
flowers in the colder zones.
The second set of folklore days is the Ember days. May Ember days are the 22nd, 24th
and 25th. On the 22nd
the weather predicts the weather for June, the 24th predicts July
weather and the 25th predicts the August weather. Example: if it’s cold and wet on the 22nd
of May the month of June is supposed to be cold and wet.
Mother’s Day, May 9th, and Memorial Day, May 31st
are some of the biggest sales days that greenhouses have, and May is almost
synonymous with a trip to buy flowers. May is planting month around here. Plant something every day! May’s full moon is
said to be a great time to harvest any medicinal herbs that are growing for
their maximum potency. Many people use Memorial Day as the day to start
planting frost tender plants in zones 5 and 6.
But beware- frost can still happen, although it isn’t likely in zones 5
and above.
May Day was May 1, Cinco de Mayo is May 5th, May
6th is No Diet Day which is great.
It’s also National Teachers day. May 8th is World Red Cross
day and Iris day. The 16th is Love a Tree day. The 29th
is Learn about Composting day and the 30th is Water Your Flowers
Day.
May is National Barb-b-Que month, National Salad Month,
National Egg month, National Hamburger month and National Date your Mate month.
May is also Older Americans month, Bike Month, National Skin Cancer Awareness
month and Blood Pressure Awareness month.
May’s birth flower is the Lily of the Valley. It signifies
sweetness and humility. (But remember its poisonous). It also means a return to
happiness and you are supposed to give them to people you find complete
happiness with. This year I think we should all be passing out bougets of
lilies of the valley. The birthstone is the emerald which is a symbol of
re-birth.
Your clay
soil- and why it’s not so bad
When gardeners mention clay soil, they often do it with a
sad expression and a shrug, conveying to all that clay soil is a burden and an
impediment to the fine art of gardening. But clay soil is not as bad as many
gardeners think if they learn to handle it correctly. In fact, there are many
advantages to clay soil as I will explain later.
Soil is classified as clay, sand or loam by the size of the
disintegrated rock particles, or minerals, the size of the spaces between the
particles and the amount of organic matter in the soil. Most soil has some decayed
organic matter or humus and isn’t all clay or sand. Organic matter can still
decompose, humus is organic matter that has pretty much finished decomposing. But
the dominant type of mineral particles determines the type of soil you have.
Sand has the largest particles and the largest spaces
between particles. Clay has the smallest particles, and those particles tend to
occur in flat sheets with little space between them. Loam has both sand and
clay sized particles and a lot of organic matter.
There are sandy loams, soil with more sand than loam and
clay loams, soil with more clay sized particles than loam. You may hear the
term silt mentioned in reference to soil also. Silt is intermediate sized
particles of quartz or feldspar that tend to float in water, don’t form
aggregates and tend to be deposited in layers. (Aggregates refers to small
clumps of minerals which make soil have a crumbly texture.)
You can get a soil test and it will tell you what type of
soil you have. But if you have clay soil you probably know it. Its thick and
gooey when wet and hard and cracked when dry. It sticks to your shoes and
shovels in mass. You can roll it in a ball or even make things out of it. If
fact clay with almost no organic matter at all is dug up and sold to produce
modeling clay and is even used for clay facial masks.
Clay soil can be red, yellow or gray, sometimes almost
white. Or if it has some silt or organic matter it can be brown. The color
comes from the types of rocks that were broken down to form it.
The good and bad points of clay soil
Clay soil may shed water at first, but once wet it can take
a long time to dry out. Water has a hard time moving through clay soil, so
drainage is poor. Since water moves slowly through clay soil any pollutants the
water is carrying, such as nitrates, are less likely to reach the ground water
and contaminate it. But once gardeners have worked to improve that clay soil
and facilitate drainage, the fact that it holds water longer than other soils
can actually be an advantage.
One of the good properties of clay soil is that the mineral
particles have a negative electrical charge. Most nutrients that plants need
from the soil like potassium, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur and others have
positive charges. Therefore, they are attracted to the clay particles and cling
to them, keeping them from being washed down deep into the soil and away from
plant roots. Clay soil is generally more
fertile than sandy soil and requires less supplementation than other soils.
While many plants have a hard time sending their roots down into heavy clay soil, many other plants have adapted to it. Clay soils do help anchor plants firmly. Plants growing in clay soils are less likely to be pushed out of the ground (called heaving), as it freezes and thaws during the winter. When properly amended and cared for clay soils can be used to grow a wide range of plants.
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| Yep, you have clay soil |
Turning clay soil into great garden soil
Unless you truck in all new soil, your soil is always going
to have properties of the original rock particles that were deposited there.
You can modify clay soil so that it has better texture and becomes clay loam,
but you will always have some characteristics of the original mineral
composition. Clay loam, however, is very good garden soil. So how do you get it?
The best soil for most plants has plenty of small
aggregates. Aggregates create soil texture. Aggregates are small clumps of
mineral particles and humus or organic matter bound together. A soil texture
like coarse cornmeal with a few larger lumps is good, a flourlike texture, or
granulated sugar texture or texture like a chunk of taffy is not good soil
texture.
Aggregates are formed when soil microbes break down organic
matter and secrete a glue-like substance. Plant roots also exude substances
that can bind soil particles. Fungal hyphae and chemical reactions also
contribute to bind together soil particles.
The best thing gardeners can do to start the formation of
good aggregates and make soil texture better for gardening is to add organic
matter. Compost is good to add to clay soil too but since finished compost leaves
little for microbes to decompose, adding fresh organic matter is better.
Fresh organic matter can be a cover crop you till into the
soil. Or it can be something like small bark chips or shredded bark, small wood
chips, dried leaves, chopped straw, even sawdust. (I don’t recommend sphagnum peat;
it holds too much moisture and is also too expensive.) It will take time for the
soil microbes to work and there is no quick solution. The first application of
organic matter should be about 6 inches thick. If you can apply it in fall before
you want to plant, it works better.
If you have compost apply that liberally also, inches thick. Compost is good for soil structure but for clay soil organic matter that isn’t decomposed yet is also needed. Remember that the process of it being broken down by microbes is what creates that good sticky substance that promotes aggregates.
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| Clay soil and compacted areas |
Work the organic matter and compost into the clay, if the
soil is dry enough to work. Never, ever,
work clay soil when it’s wet. You can dig it in or use a rototiller the first
year. You can also just layer the organic matter and compost on top of the soil
and let worms and microbes work if you have a few months before you need to
plant. You should notice an improvement the first year in soil texture, but it
will be better in following years.
Organic matter needs to be added every year to clay based
soils. The first couple years it will be hard to work the organic matter or
compost into the soil, but every year it will get easier, and your soil will
get better. You won’t need to add as much organic matter as the years progress,
and compost may do the job just as well after the first few years.
Caution- don’t try planting into a layer of compost or
organic matter on top of soil, that won’t work well, at least in the first year
after application. The organic matter has to be mixed with soil. After the
first year you may be able to plant through a layer of some organic amendments,
like coarse bark.
What can you do if you already have perennials planted in
clay soil and want to amend the soil? Just work organic matter into the soil around
them and apply it heavily in the fall after the perennials are dormant. While
the decomposing of organic matter can use nitrogen needed for plant growth, heavy
clay soils may hold enough nitrogen that it won’t be a problem. If plants do
seem yellow or stunted, check first to see if the soil isn’t staying too wet,
then if needed, supplement with some nitrogen fertilizer.
What not to do with clay soil
It is NOT good to amend small holes in clay soil for individual plants. What you do then is create a bathtub for plant roots to rot in. The organic matter or topsoil or whatever you filled the hole with absorbs water and the clay soil walls don’t let it easily leach away. Also, the roots of many plants will hit the harder clay walls of your hole and instead of penetrating them, will bend and circle back into the softer amended soil. This produces girdling roots and can kill the plant.
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| Refill holes with what you took out. |
If you can mix the original soil with your amendments, and
organic matter is the preferred amendment, and make the area amended 3 times
larger than what the root zone of your new plant will be, you may be ok. But
for a tree or shrub stick to refilling the hole with what you took out. You can
add some amendments on top, most people mulch new trees anyway. Chose species
that grow well in clay soil.
Don’t add gypsum to clay soil until you have
consulted with your local county Extension office to see if it’s helpful in
your area. For some types of clay soil gypsum can help improve soil texture.
Clay composed of some minerals does interact beneficially with gypsum, but in clay
with other mineral types, gypsum does nothing to improve it and is an unnecessary
effort and expense.
Lime does not improve the texture of clay soil. Lime
is used to raise soil pH or to add calcium to calcium deficient soils. It does nothing to make clay soil easier to
work with. And since clay soils holds onto minerals more than other soil types
adding lime when it’s not needed may result in too much calcium in the soil or too
high soil pH, both of which can harm plants.
Do not add sand to clay soil. It seems logical that this would move
soil texture more to a middle ground, but in practice what it does is create a
worse problem- soil that is like a cement brick. After a couple of years of
heavy amendment with organic matter you could mix in some sand and it would
help drainage a bit. But don’t add sand to heavy clay soil without much organic matter or you will regret
it.
Epsom salts do nothing to improve clay soil and can
cause serious damage to plant roots when mixed into clay soil. As mentioned
before clay soil holds onto minerals and too much magnesium can build up in clay-based
soils when Epsom salt is used on them. And salt of any kind stays in clay-based
soils longer than sandy soils, many commercial fertilizers are salt based, and
you’ll need to use less of them in heavy clay soil.
But the most important thing to remember about your clay
soil is not to compact it! Don’t
even walk in the garden if the soil is wet. Don’t rototill it or drive any machinery
over it when its wet. Clay soil dries out slower than other soils and you may
have to wait longer in spring to get into your garden. Using raised beds with
clay soil helps it drain, dry out and warm up faster in spring plus it helps avoid
compaction.
Clay soil can become great garden soil if you know how to
handle it. Don’t despair if your soil is heavy on the clay side, just get busy
collecting organic matter to improve it.
Plants
that tolerate or like clay soil
If you don’t want to amend your soil just chose plant
species that do well or tolerate it.
Most garden vegetables though, do not like heavy clay soil. Cabbage, broccoli,
peas and beans are your best bets. And most spring flowering bulbs don’t do
well in clay soil either.
Trees- most oaks, willows, poplar, aspen, cottonwood,
hickories, hackberry, butternut, honey locust, river birch, crabapples,
hawthorn, linden, Kentucky coffeetree, white cedar, larch, tamarack, silver
maple
Shrubs- ninebark, forsythia, viburnums, chokecherry, currants
and gooseberries, potentilla, shrub dogwoods, lilac, bayberry, barberry, yews,
weigelia, flowering quince, honeysuckle, mock orange
Perennials- coneflowers (Echinacea), helenium, asters,
foxglove, rudbeckia, goldenrod, Joe Pye, lamium, Heliopsis, goatsbeard,
daylilies, Japanese iris, Ostrich fern, beebalm, ladie’s mantle, sea thrift,
compass plant, liatris, sedums, phlox, cardinal flower, Jerusalem artichoke.
Links you’ll like
Is your asparagus
coming up, but you wonder about harvesting it?
Are you planting asparagus this spring and need to know more about
it? Read this article about asparagus.
https://gardeninggrannysgardenpages.blogspot.com/p/asparagus-is-one-of-foods-you-either.html
Are you experiencing mole
problems this spring? Don’t fall for
all the myths about mole control, learn the facts with this article;
https://gardeninggrannysgardenpages.blogspot.com/p/mole-control-wiithout-myths.html
Want to grow strawberries
this spring? This link will help.
http://gardeninggrannysgardenpages.blogspot.com/p/growing-strawberries-in-homegarden.html
Corydalis is an
underused spring blooming plant. Learn
about it here.
https://gardeninggrannysgardenpages.blogspot.com/p/corydalis-corydalissolida-kor-riduh-lis.html
"When April steps aside for May, like diamonds all
the rain-drops glisten; fresh violets open every day; to some new bird each
hour we listen."
―Lucy Larcom
Kim Willis
All parts of this blog are
copyrighted and may not be used without permission.
And So On….
Find
Michigan garden events/classes here:
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facebook page)
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