From a story by Ray Naylor in the current Asimov’s:
Gardening in Northern California is not like life. It’s like playing checkers with all your pieces kinged from the start. You can make a lot of mistakes and still win.
So true. I’ve successfully transplanted six volunteer cherry tomato plants away from the beans, and about five squash of indeterminate nature. Our problem is to keep things from growing
Results of a lot of work on the front yard. Grass is looking good and lots of flowers added the last 2 years.
Above are thumbnails, click to enlarge.
The neighborhood is exploding with color. Lilac bushes, cherry and apple blossoms, and of course bulbs popping up madly. We’re still not-so-patiently waiting for late May to roll around.
All those blooms sound beautiful, but what is the significance of late May?
The never-ending critter battles rage on. I have put up bird netting, but a couple of nights ago a possum got through and had a field day. About a dozen tomatoes, six or so peppers of all varieties, and three (half of them!) of the eggplants were lying on the ground in various states of chewed-up-edness.
Planting any earlier is dicey. While everything would likely be fine, the general rule of thumb in MN is “wait until Memorial Day”. Also, tomatoes like a fairly narrow range of temperatures to thrive; between 60 and 80, IIRC. Temps this week are in the 40s-50s, so the soil isn’t warm enough.
Ah, OK. You hadn’t mentioned low temperatures, so my mind didn’t go there for May. I should have checked your location before responding, and it might have occurred to me.
My problem is the opposite - we’ve had slightly warmer than average temps for a couple of weeks. So far it’s been borderline and I’m getting lots of tomatoes, but if night temps don’t get down to about 72 or lower tomatoes stop setting fruit.
And remember that’s the old Memorial Day, May 30. This year the official celebration’s almost a week early,
The climate’s overall warmer; but it is Global Weirding, after all, and occasionally reverts briefly. Here in upstate New York we just had a couple of days in the 80º’sF – and we have frost warnings for tonight. I doubt it’ll frost in my microclimate; but yeah the tomatoes and eggplant and peppers are staying in the greenhouse for now, and said greenhouse will be closed up tonight.
Even in parts of the country where the last frost is almost always much earlier, late May marks the onset of gardeners’ fabled “warm, settled weather” when tropical and house plants can go outdoors and warm-weather crops like beans and melons can be safely planted.
Much of my tomatoes, eggplant and sweet peppers were planted in raised beds yesterday. We’re due for a couple of nights with mid-40s lows around mid-week but after that, it looks like “warm, settled weather” may have arrived for good. It’s just about time to continue my hardy palm experiments by planting Trachycarpus fortunei cultivars in the front yard in a relatively protected location.
Trying to improve the health of one of my two maple trees.
Does my plan sound OK to the Straight Dope Gardeners?
Mother’s day is the traditional day in Maryland, although its been unseasonably cool this month, so I waited until yesterday to put things out in the containers.
That includes my first plant that I grew from seed, which I am proud of. And if he doesn’t work out, I have four or five backups waiting on the windowsill.
I’m afraid I have no clue; I don’t know anything about current recommendations for health of maple trees.
I will say that I’ve seen trees live on for many years with that sort of hole left untreated in them; and also that it looks to me like the sort of hole that some creature or other would like to make a home out of. I don’t know whether your area is short on such homes, though a lot of places are.
But your local extension office may know whether there are maple diseases in the area which make it dangerous to leave the hole open.
Wildflower seeds are doing well, allium are up and have buds, but no blooms yet. Globe amaranth are blooming. Cardinal flower is up, the lavender plant I bought last year has blooms. Coleus have been planted in their final places.
Blueberries are ripening and we’ve had some for dinner almost every day for about 5 days now. I picked some of the peaches and put them in a paper bag with a couple apples. I don’t have a lot of hope for those, but we’ll see. If there are any left on the tree by the end of the week, I may pick a few more and see how those do.
The bushes have all gone apeshit. I pruned the small abelia, one of the spirea and the two barberries. That leaves another spirea, the honeysuckle and the three loropetalum. I think we’ll rip the honeysuckle out - it’s just to hard to keep it under control.
I also have a redbud sucker that looks like it might grow into a real tree - we’d planted a tree in that spot, but it died, and now there are several suckers growing from the roots of it. I’ll get rid of the two others and do what I can to encourage the third.
The rose bushes aren’t looking good - I need to see what I can do about that too.
We planted our tomato and a bunch of potted flowers a couple of days ago. Hopefully the former will do better than last year’s attempt. Mixed in some tomato fertilizer, so that should help.
There is an ancient English saying, of unknown origin: “Ne’er cast a clout 'till May is out”.
“Clout” apparently refers to (winter) clothing in the original, but gardeners have also taken it to mean that we shouldn’t plant tender plants, as frost is not uncommon in late May.
Just to confuse things, the common hawthorn is also known as “May”. So “till May is out” could mean, until "the hawthorn is out [in bloom]".
I planted a butt-load of Honey Locusts seeds a couple seasons ago. I had what I considered a real good crop spring up. Well, stinkin’ rabbits ate a bunch of them, and I wrote them off. Caged up a few that made… Prettly much let the weeds take over everything.
Went out and checked my tree lines… And Damn! They almost all came back, and with a Vengeance! The survivors are 3 feet tall and growing strong. The new sprouts are seemingly growing an inch a week!
Happy Tree Time!
The raspberries are starting to come in.
If they’re anything like black locust, you can’t kill those things. Cut one down, and half a dozen new ones will sprout from the roots.
You’ll now spend the rest of your life trying to keep them from taking over your property. Have fun!
(Mowing, consistently, a wide strip all around them will do it.)
– thorny locust, also hard to get rid of once rooted
They are Welcome to it!
I figured I’d get your attention with my post. 
Yeah, but do you have squash to eat, right now?
I have a butternut squash left from last fall’s harvest, still in good shape.
And much of the next-to-last one, cooked, in the refrigerator.
So yes, I do.
(My summer squash isn’t planted yet. I do that from direct seed, and it wants 70ºF soil or close to it, and we’ve only just hit 59º. Plus which, the field it’s going into has been too wet to finish working up. From the look of the weather report (cross all fingers), both of those things may be solvable by late this coming week – just in time for me to have to start taking time each week for farmers’ market.)