Four different colors of epiphyllum.

Aren’t we lucky -- we’re still experiencing warm but mild spring weather!  We’ve made it through May with nary a hot day over 90 degrees, much less our week of over 100-degrees that has plagued us in the past.  But, those over-90 degree days are forecast for this coming week, so we’ll see what’s to come later in the month.  As long as we continue to have this glorious spring weather with just enough heat to keep the tomatoes happily growing and sweetly ripening their fruits, I’m in heaven!
 
Continue Sowing and Transplanting

• In the hopes of continuing nice weather for at least a couple of weeks, it’s worth continuing to sow more seeds and transplant more seedlings of veggies and flowers so they’ll get settled in nicely before getting blasted with the coming summer heat.
• Do make a point of choosing heat-tolerant and bolt-resistant vegetable varieties to assure that you truly do get a crop to enjoy before they move on to setting seed.
• Choose transplants that aren't rootbound.  They'll have to spend too much effort trying to reach out into the soil to get established, and may not even manage it before the heat hits.
• Gently loosen the rootballs of transplants before planting them so roots can quickly reach out into surrounding soil to establish themselves and access moisture and fertilizer.
• Transplant them closely enough so that the leaves of the mature plants will shade the soil between the plants. This will keep plant roots cooler, and there's less evaporation, so you'll have to water less.
• Provide transplants with light shade for at least a week, and keep them evenly moist so the roots can reestablish themselves and begin putting out new growth.

 
Corn

• If you’re a beginning gardener and have a block of garden space of at least 4 feet by 4 feet, I urge you to grow corn, just for the experience.  You probably won’t get a great crop because the ears won’t completely fill out due to incomplete pollination and fertilization, and it’ll take a long time to get one or two ears per stalk.  The process just takes up too much garden space for too long to get too little to eat. But then you’ll know the process and consequently appreciate even more buying your corn at the farmers market!
• Sow seed no later than this month.  If sown later, they'll likely develop big grey and black puffy fungus in place of kernels when harvested in the fall.  However, like regular mushrooms (also a fungus), they make a tasty addition to omelettes.  Your choice to appreciate it or not!

 
Get More Tomato Fruits

• When tomato blossoms appear, you can help spread the sticky pollen easily by flicking each bloom during the driest part of the day. Big plants can be taken care of with one or two shakes while holding onto their cages or stakes.
• I accomplish this simply every time I water each plant by tucking more of the branches under the rungs of the cages.  Just moving all this foliage every other day or so makes the magic happen as new blossoms appear.
• When blossoms appear, fertilize your plants so they have the nutrition to support all the foliage, keep producing blossoms, setting fruit, and ripening the fruit.  Big fruits may take a good 30-45 days to mature.
• If your garden gets good air circulation, allow foliage to grow as it will – more foliage means more photosynthesis for more energy, and shade for developing fruit.
• If your garden doesn’t get much air circulation, or gets a lot of air moisture like toward the coast, you may want to do some pruning of interior growth so diseases don’t get a foothold in the crowded foliage.

Root Cuttings of Ornamentals

• Now’s a great time to root cuttings of firm green and woody branches, including azalea, chrysanthemum, carnation, fuchsia, geranium, hydrangea, loquat and succulents.
• Choose growth that is somewhat woody and not still bright green and pliable.
• Cut a five- or six- inch piece, and strip off all of the leaves but the tiny young top growth and one or two well-developed more mature leaves.
• Place the cutting in light, sandy soil or planting mix up to the bottom leaf.
• Sprinkle the foliage and thoroughly wet the soil mixture.
• Provide filtered light in a sheltered location and keep the soil mix moist but not soggy until the rootings are well-established and new foliage appears in about a month.
• Gently tug on the rooted seedling, and when it gives resistance, gently remove the potting mix to see whether it has several new white roots.
• If it does, transplant it to its permanent home.
• If it doesn’t, repot it and water it in for further growth and checking in another month.

 
For more garden tasks, see June.

Different colors of everblooming Salvia greggii.

     Amazing – It’s raining!  We were promised a possible drizzle, but it’s been periodically moistening the soil a good amount all day long, and all the garden’s foliage is perking up in pleasure. The rest of the week promises to remain in the mid-70-degrees and cloudy-ish, so this is definitely a wonderful continuation of our mild spring weather.  I’m relishing it since I know the HEAT will be upon us shortly.  But in the meantime, I’m loving it.  Here are some of the things I’ve been playing with this week.
 
Help Your Tomatoes Set More Fruit
     Tomato blossoms pollinate themselves when each blossom’s pollen moves to its stigma, and then the fertilized flower begins to form the fruit.  You can help your plants set more fruits by merely brushing the bush to jostle the pollen onto the stigma.  Breezes can also do this, and you can just shake the bush.  If you’ve provided cages for your tomatoes, each time you push all that foliage back under the rungs of the cage so the branches are corralled and grow upward inside the cage, you’re accomplishing what the blossoms need to set fruit. 
 
Start or Transplant Succulents
     Now’s a great time to take cuttings of succulents for rooting. 
   I always hesitate to say that some gardening technique is foolproof because there will always be someone who isn’t successful and then they feel really bad and are convinced that they have the proverbial “black thumb”.  But this process really is simple. 
     Just snap off a section of the stem of a succulent that’s about an inch in length, cut a straight cut just above the break, let sit for 2 days to form a callous, and then stick the stem up to the foliage part in some potting soil in a container, and water it in so that the potting mix makes good contact with the stem.  Place in a location with bright light but no direct sun for a couple of weeks, and water only once a week during that time to make sure that the potting mix remains barely moist.  After several months, roots will have developed, and the plant can be transplanted.  Perhaps the “best” way to not have success is to water too much!   
 
Take Cuttings for Rooting
     Prune tips of azaleas, chrysanthemums, fuchsias, geraniums, lavender, marguerites and rosemary that are about 5 inches long.  Remove foliage on the bottom 3 inches.  Place into potting mix, water in, and proceed as described for succulents above.
 
Thinning Grapes and Tree Fruits
     Thin grape bunches and tree fruits for superior fruit quality. Remove about half of the number of grape clusters, leaving large gapes of air between remaining clusters.
     Thin tree fruits on alternate sides of branches for balance. The minimum distance to leave fruits on branches is about five to eight inches for apples, pears, peaches, and nectarines; four inches for plums and apricots.
     Thin too much rather than not enough so trees and vines aren't strained, especially when trees are young.
 
Encourage Bees and Butterflies
     Bees will aid pollination of most of your vegetables and ornamental plants and fruit trees.  They'll visit your garden more readily when you provide with their favorite plants -- including basil, borage, calendulas, catnip, hyssop, lemon balm, mint, summer savory, thyme, and other plants with blue flowers.
     To attract butterflies to your garden, plant asters, lantanas, buddleias ("butterfly bush"!), marigolds, sweet Williams, tithonias (Mexican sunflower), zinnias, and other daisy-like flowers.
 
For more garden tasks, see May.

We’ve just had a bit of a taste of our coming Summer Heat, with a day reaching 93 degrees, still pleasant enough to keep the doors and windows open during the day and leave more windows open at night than we’ve managed thus far this year.  In the garden, the tomatoes are loving the additional warmth and starting to blossom and even set some cherry tomato fruits, and beans and cukes and squashes are sprouting strongly.  But the unpleasant intensity of heat will be coming, so make sure your garden soil and plants are well-prepared to thrive and not just survive its onslaught.
 
Preparing the Garden

• Watering – Continue deep watering so the full root systems of each plant stay moist (not soggy) from watering to watering.
• Fertilizing – Assuming you incorporated amendments like manure and compost initially into your growing beds prior to planting, sprinkle some more Dr. Earth or EB Stone organic slow-release fertilizer when vegetables start blossoming so they have the additional energy to continue setting and maturing their fruit.  Choose fertilizer versions that have lower first (nitrogen) numbers but higher second (phosphorus) and third (potash) numbers so the plant’s energy will be more directed to developing its roots and flowers and fruits.
• Planting new stuff – This is up to you depending on your locale.  Here in Pasadena in the past several years, I’ve discontinued planting additional tomatoes and other summer-lovers because I just didn’t want to spend the money for the additional water I’d have to use as a result of the constant intense heat; and when I did plant and water them, the resulting struggling plants didn't really thrive anyway.   So, if you choose to add more plants, getting them in as soon as possible now to assure that their roots will get well established before the real heat arrives and stays.  This is why I make a point of getting my consecutive plantings of tomatoes established by the end of April at the latest.  Consider that anything under 90 degrees is ok for plants, above 90 degrees will begin being stressful for plants, and above 100 is definitely torturous.  At these high temperatures, plants literally shut down and discontinue photosynthesis, so continuing to water them will potentially drown them until temperatures lower to the low 90s.
• Mulching – Keep a two- to four-inch layer of organic mulch covering soil to help prevent crusting and cracking of the soil surface, hold in moisture, encourage earthworms, moderate soil temperatures, improve the soil as it decomposes, and prevent weed seeds from germinating (and any that do germinate are easy to pull up).
• Covering plants – As a last-minute protective measure on any torrid-heat days, spunbonded polyester or similar fabric (even just plain old cheesecloth) helps cut down the amount of direct sun but still allows in water and air circulation.  This worked well on my tomatoes that year when we had two days of 116-degree heat. 

 
Loving the Harvests

• Artichokes – We’ve enjoyed the single super-large first globes and the 2nd and 3rd progressively-smaller ones, and are waiting on the 4th set of tinier “baby-size” artichokes.  Amazing flavor – as with everything that’s literally eaten within half an hour of picking!
• Breadseed Poppies – What colorful and delicate blossoms! I’ll leave the blossom pods to ripen so I can collect the seeds.  See my note below for doing this at school and community gardens.
• Baby Bok Choy, Tatsoi – After months of harvesting single outer leaves, it’s now a wonderful bonus that the bolting shoots going to seed are even sweeter than the single leaves were. 
• Chard – These tender, colorful and tasty leaves also continue to be tasty but smaller as the bolting stalk grows to some six feet tall!  I’ll collect some seed but also let a couple stalks of each color scatter their seed and wait for them to germinate next fall so I can transplant them as soon as them come up on their own.
• Kales – The Lacinato – Dinosaur or Tuscan – kale is the only one that seems never to bolt, so you can just keep pulling off the individual leaves as the stem grows taller and puts out side-shoots.  Years ago, I finally pulled up one that’d lasted for some four years, just because I wanted something smaller in the garden.  I enjoy the flavor of this variety more than the other kales which are more bitter and tougher in texture.
• Lettuce – Even the “bolt-resistant” varieties planted last fall that we've been eating since have finally bolted.  The issue is the heat – even though any fabric covering shades the plants, the heat accumulated around the lettuce plants results in the hormonal shift to bolting.  But this is worth the couple of weeks’ more harvesting before the lettuce turns too bitter!  Seeds and transplants put into the garden now will have this problem later this summer.  Consequently, plan on these two planting times each year to make sure you have lettuce almost year-round.
• Peas – I’d reseeded my peas about four times from last fall through the winter because not too many actually germinated each time.  But now I’m literally reaping the benefit, because many of them did indeed finally germinate and so I have several generations of plants at different stages of developing their foliage, growing taller, putting out blossoms, setting pea pods, some almost ready to pick, and others dying after harvesting the very first batch that had germinated.  Another reason to keep resowing every couple of weeks through the fall and winter!

 
Note to school and community gardens
When you allow plants to mature fully so you can collect the seed, I suggest erecting a sign such as “We’re saving the poppy [or whatever] seeds!” facing the public walkway or street so non-gardener passersby know that all that “trashy dead stuff” remains for a good purpose and is temporary.  Otherwise they may complain to their city council person that the garden is neglecting to clean up all its trash and making the neighborhood look bad.
 
For more garden tasks, see May