Events in May:

- Rhododendron Day - 8 May 2008, RHS Garden Wisley Hall, Surrey. See RHS website for details

- British Iris Society Late Spring Show - 10 May 2008, RHS Garden Wisley Hall, Surrey. See RHS website for details

- Malvern Spring Gardening Show - 8 to 11 May 2008, Malvern. Click here for details

51 glorious garden websites

Times Online's gardening guru opens her address book to share her top pick of gardening websites

Related Internet Links

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BACKGROUND

• A gardener's guide to healing herbs and flowers

• Fruit bushes: what to grow and how to get a good crop

• Plant it now: a beginner's guide to snowdrops

• Neil Wormald’s week: a potted guide to growing chillies

• A guide to making a great patio garden

BACKGROUND

• A year in the garden: tasks for every season

• How to start a vegetable garden

• Twenty vegetable catalogues

• Eight great vegetable gardening books

BACKGROUND

• Growing kinds of chilli. . .

• Go ahead, pack it in

• Seeds of change

• Dolce vita on a plate

• Salad days that last forever

BACKGROUND

• Let’s not lose the plots

• A plot on the land

• Seeds of change

• There's life in the allotment

• One potato, two potato...

- RHS Chelsea Flower Show - 19 to 24 May 2008, London. Details.

May's Reader Queries answered by Stephen Anderton, The Times. Click here to read

Week 1:

What to do this week:

- Start planting up hanging baskets with tender bedding plants – keep them under cover until late May or early June

- Give formal box hedges a light trim. Hang codling-moth traps in apple trees

- New water lilies can be placed in garden ponds now

- If late frosts are forecast, protect the emerging shoots of early potatoes by covering them with horticultural fleece.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- Make sure that heavy-headed peonies are staked, especially the doubles, so that the weight of rain does not bring them down

- Look out for the first greenfly on the new shoots of roses and be ready to deal with them. Get the old finger-and-thumb to work before they proliferate

- Prune early-flowering shrubs that flower on last year¹s young shoots

- Perfumed Osmanthus delavayi has finished now and can be sheared over

- Winter jasmine can be thinned back to a framework of strong shoots. Winter heathers ­ erica carnea and darleyensis ­ must be sheared over to remove the flowered sections of last year¹s shoots, to keep them dense and respectable

- Glorious pink or white Clematis montana plants are coming to an end. Even though they may already be full of young shoots, cut back wall-trained specimens to a well-spaced framework of younger wood and fresh shoots. Those meant to ramble casually can just be thinned out every two or three years

- Keep your hand-fork and hoe busy on weed seedlings; this is the big month for them. Be ready to spot and spare seedling garden plants.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Q&A with Jane Owen, Times Online

Week 2:

What to do this week:

- Prune back the spent stems of Kerria japonica once they finish flowering

- In mild areas, sow runner bean seeds 2in deep, directly into the soil outside

- Clip privet hedges to shape

- Check the shoot tips of roses for greenfly

- Remove persistent dandelion weeds from the lawn.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Q&A with Jane Owen, Times Online

Week 3:

What to do this week:

- Start hardening off tender bedding plants. They can be planted outside at the end of the month

- After flowering, prune back the spent stems of spiraea ‘Arguta’ (bridal wreath). In the greenhouse, pinch out the unwanted sideshoots of cordon tomatoes

- Place a bundle of fresh barley straw in the garden pond, as this will stop the water turning green

- The seeds of night-scented stock (matthiola bicornis) can be sown in the garden now.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- Long, dry spells give plants and us a false sense of security, but beware: sudden, soaking rains will still bring down tall, top-heavy perennials. Make sure delphiniums and campanula lactiflora are supported before they can splay or break

- Clematis need moisture, not dry spells, to grow and flower well. Give them a can of liquid feed fortnightly and kill two birds with one stone

- Crocus and snowdrop leaves are dying back at the moment; where they are planted in grass it is now safe to mow. If the soil is dry and you mow it short, it will be slow to become green again. Perhaps you should wait until there has been a drop of rain? Daffodil grass needs a few more weeks before cutting

- Make a spring campaign against ground elder growing in borders or creeping under fences by carefully forking up and removing the brittle, white running roots. After three to four weeks, spray the regrowth with glyphosate

- Weeds, weeds, weeds! Remove hairy bitter cress seedlings before the seed can ripen and fire off into the air. Nothing is more depressing than having them explode as your hand moves in for the kill – it’s too late then

- Check for seedlings (bitter cress, dandelions, oxalis and so on) growing in the compost of newly bought plants, and clean them up thoroughly before you plant.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Q&A with Jane Owen, Times Online

Week 4:

What to do this week:

-Tender vegetables such as sweetcorn can be planted outdoors now

- Spread fresh straw around the base of strawberry plants, as this raises the developing fruits off the ground and prevents rots and moulds

- Scoop unwanted blanket weed out of garden ponds

- Sow swede seeds in the vegetable garden

- Remove suckers that are emerging on rose bushes.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Q&A with Jane Owen, Times Online

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