Zone 5 Landscape & Garden Checklist: May

With new flowers bursting every day, butterflies emerging, and migratory birds arriving, May is the fourth dimension to frolic among the springtide. Caught in the blitz of scents and colors, it'due south easy to forget the important tasks that volition set your garden up for success. Here is a checklist of May gardening tasks for Zone 5!

Bring the Flower Garden to Life

Your gardening plants have been waiting for this calendar month all winter. Now they're springing to life, basking in the sunlight, and growing vigorously. In Zone v, you can begin or go on to plant perennials and annuals, likewise equally move your houseplants outside once the temperatures are consistently warm:

• Found Perennials and Annuals: start planting frost-hardy annuals at the beginning of the calendar month and the frost-sensitive ones, like impatiens, by the end of May. Yous can also breathe new life into the garden past planting perennials hardy to Zone 5 someday.
• Movement Houseplants Outside: in one case night-time temperatures start to warm up past the end of May, you can begin to take them outside for the summer. Make certain you harden them off gradually and give them an area protected from wind and afternoon sun.
• Let Spring Bulbs Xanthous Earlier Cutting Them: this allows the leaves to feed the bulbs while they're notwithstanding dark-green, giving them more energy for next spring.
• Establish Summer and Fall-Flowering Bulbs: such as gladioli, caladium, dahlia, calla lilies, and others.

Constitute New Trees and Shrubs

The basis has been prepare for planting new copse and shrubs since March, but May is still a good time to swap out old plants that need to be refreshed with new ones—whether they're drupe bushes, fruit trees, evergreens , privacy belts, or flowering shrubs. Choose a cloudy day to avoid the estrus and dig away!

Prune Leap-Flowering Shrubs

Remember to prune leap-flowering shrubs like forsythia, lilac, azaleas, rhododendron, and viburnum after they bloom. You have a window of 2-3 weeks before they starting time to grow side by side year's blossom buds.

Amidst the surge of sap and riot of new blossoms, planting and pruning are the primary gardening tasks at hand.

Continue Planting Your Vegetable Garden

Longing for homegrown vegetables this yr? They're the healthiest nutrient y'all'll ever eat, they taste amazing, and they cost almost nothing. In Zone 5, yous tin can begin planting in April, go on in May, and plant frost-sensitive vegetables after May 15th:

• Sow or Transplant Cold-Season Vegetables: you tin can go along to sow beets, carrots, spinach, kale, lettuce, and other frost-tolerant crops. If y'all plant them successively, you'll enjoy staggered harvests throughout the flavour. And you tin can transplant cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and other seedlings that don't mind a lilliputian frost.
• Sow Warm-Flavour Vegetables: after the risk of frost passes—typically around May 15th in Zone 5—you can sow frost-sensitive vegetables like beans, corn, squash, and pumpkins.
• Transplant Warm-Season Vegetables: you can start to harden off your love apple, eggplant, pepper, and cucumber seedlings at the beginning of the month and transplant them outdoors after May 15th.

Thin & Harvest Vegetable Garden

If you've planted seeds already, you may have a scrap of gardening to practice, as well as some bounty to savour:

• Thin Beets and Carrots: monitor them as they commencement to grow and sparse the seedlings every bit necessary. Sending them to the compost pile? Toss them into a salad instead.
• Harvest Vegetables: rhubarb and asparagus will already be prepare to start harvesting by the end of the calendar month in Zone five.
• Weed Vegetable Garden: it's already fourth dimension to start weeding. Yous'll have to distinguish the weeds from your sprouting vegetables every bit they come up.

Lawn Maintenance

Equally the gardening season gets underway, you'll begin a mowing routine equally well. Consider leaving your grass on the longer side this year. Longer grass prevents weed seeds from accessing the soil and develops deeper roots to access water, allowing you to water less. Another tip: leave the grass clippings every bit you mow equally a way to add nutrients to the lawn.

Gardening Maintenance

About ongoing gardening tasks begin this month in Zone 5, such as edging, weeding, watering, deadheading, and adding mulch where needed. Staying on top of your gardening saves you time after on and lets y'all get outside in May to enjoy the flowers.

Welcome the Birds

As you were gardening in April, y'all may have already seen or heard sparrows, thrushes, flycatchers, and kinglets. Both April and May are high time for migratory birds passing through Chicagoland . Keep an eye out for colorful flyers like Baltimore Orioles, Yellow Warblers, Indigo Buntings, Scarlet Tanagers, and more than. The males accept shed their brown winter plumage and are at present sporting vibrant feathers for the mating season. If you desire to admire birds right in your thousand, consider planting and gardening for a bird habitat !

This is the month nosotros've all been waiting for—here in Zone 5 and everywhere. Amidst the surge of sap and riot of new blossoms, planting and pruning are the main gardening tasks at hand. With your gardening checklist ready, you're set to go out and savour the season!

Platt Hill Plant nursery es el principal centro de jardinería y vivero de Chicago.

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Source: https://platthillnursery.com/es/may-gardening-checklist-zone-5/

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