May Gardening: What to sow!

Things growing in the garden right now:

The broad beans I planted in November and January are now in the ground and starting to flower! These white flowers will turn into the blankety beds that the beans grow in! In the greenhouse, my leeks, cauliflower, cabbage, tomato, aubergine, courgette, pumpkin, butternut squashes and chamomile are doing well. Some of the tomatoes, courgettes and pumpkin plans are getting so big that they need planting out, but I wait for the last frost to be over. For most places in the UK this is middle to end of May. So they will stay put until the end of the month to be sure - with all this cold weather we have had, I won’t take any chances!

My overwintered rocket leaves were planted out around the spring equinox. They have grown well and i picked my first harvest last week. I’m still getting a good rhubarb crop and I recently trimmed back the sage and rosemary and donated a bundle of herbs to my local vegan cafe.

I also replanted all my strawberries. The area that had them in was riddled with perennial weeds and I have had that strawberry patch for 3 years so it was time to move them and give them a new lease of life. The chickens weeded the area where the strawberries once were by scratching about and, soon, it will be a perfect spot to plant out some of the things in the greenhouse.

My early potatoes went in at the end of March (4 rows of 5-6 seed potatoes) so I can expect my first potato crop 10-12 weeks from planting: mid June! My “2nd earlies” are salad potatoes but they work well for roasting and chips too - I always grow Charlotte potatoes. These went in at the end of April, which means an August crop. I sowed enough to last me from August until March if I put them in storage correctly to keep them from going soft.

I’ve constructed my wigwam made out of canes for my climbing and runner beans, which has just been sown inside the greenhouse.

Seeds I am sowing in May:

These are all sown in trays or module trays in the greenhouse and then planted out in May:

• Runner beans

• French beans (both climbing and bush varieties)

• Chamomile

• Beetroot

• Salad Leaves

• Radish

• Spinach

• Kale

I know what you might be thinking, some of these are the same as what you said you planted last month, so what happened? Well, I like to succession sow, which basically means I sow the same crop about every 4-6 weeks to have a continual supply. For example, by the time I have eaten my first lot of radishes, there will be more ready for me to eat and another lot about to be planted out that will be ready 4 weeks later!

These can be sown in a propagator indoors to be planted out in late May, early June:

• Swede

Things you can still sow if you missed them in April:

• Courgette

• Butternut Squash

• Pumpkin

They need to be sown indoors on a bright and warm windowsill, as they will struggle in a greenhouse. However they can be sown in a propagator in a warm greenhouse if you run out of windowsill space. They can be planted outside at the end of May, early June. Below you can see roughly the size they are about a week after planting out, so a little smaller than this is perfect. Space courgettes at least 1.5m apart and space butternuts and pumpkin 2m apart. They spread really far and wide. However, you can grow them vertically on a trellis or an archway if you don’t have a big garden.