Allotment advice and tips - May - Sunny predominately dry days and we can start watering as required at last .....

Month by month guide:
Vegetables, Herbs and Fruit.

Vegetables to put on the table this month:
Asparagus
Broad Beans
Spring Cabbage
Kohl Rabi
Leek
Lettuce
Spring Onion
Radish
Spinach

What to do in the allotment in May? Apart from harvesting the above.

General Tasks
Remove suckers from fruit trees.
Control slugs.
Water generously to requirements.
Check fruit bushes and Broad Beans for aphids and caterpillars.
Liquid feeding can begin.
Dressing of quick acting fertilizer (dried comfrey or nettle) and water in.
Feed the birds.

Vegetables:
Finish sowing Maincrop Carrots.
For Marrow, Squash, Pumpkin and Courgette's prepare early in the month by digging holes a foot square. 3 foot apart. Forkful of well rotted manure or dried seaweed sludge. Replace soil and draw up into a mound. Sow a couple of seeds direct or place your raised seedlings in. Leave strongest seed to grow on.
Sow Runner Beans.
Prepare sites for outdoor Tomatoes as Marrows above but 12 - 15 inches apart.
Sow French Beans mid month.
Set out Cauliflower plants sown last month 2 foot apart.
Making further sowings of spinach and salad crops.

Continue cutting Asparagus
Self blanching Celery plants can go in
Salsify can be sown for over winter cropping.

Sow Sweetcorn in recently manured soil. Sow in blocks to aid pollination.

Under Glass:
Remove cloches as necessary slowly allowing plants to harden off gradually.
For Cucumbers under cloches prepare as Marrows above.

Herbs:
Further sowing of Parsley, Chervil, Dill, Fennel, and Hyssop
Plant out Basil Seedlings
Thin April sown seedlings

Cuttings can now be taken of Thyme, Rosemary and Sage

Fruit:
Water in dry spells.
Water after flowering and during fruit swelling.
Water Strawberries during ripening.
Bark ringing Apple and Pear trees.
Check ties and stakes.
Treat if necessary Apple and Pear scab.
Check Plums for greenfly.
Raspberries can be weeded and mulched. Check and remove unwanted growth.
Feed Gooseberries
Protect forming Strawberries with chopped straw protect further from slugs.
Summer prune vines

More suggestions?

Some suggestions that have been sent in.

Composting: All you need to know

Manure: Some suggested uses

Wormeries: How to create a wormery.

If you have any advice on anything to do with allotments please contribute.