Hello Friends, Neighbors, Fellow Gardeners,

This May seems more like April, but we’ve had some nice warm days and spring doesn’t seem to last long here before summer arrives. 🌞🌼 Here are some garden tips, educational opportunities, and videos for May. This includes some events from U.S. Botanic Garden, Master Gardeners of Montgomery County, and Maryland Gardens. A lot of gardening events are announced on Facebook and we share them on our Facebook page as well as on our mctgardenclub.org website. Some upcoming events include Backyard Gardening Zoom Sessions, The Great Grow Along, Summer Garden/Landscape Classes at Montgomery College, Mill Creek Garden Club events including our Backyard Beekeeping event on Tuesday, May 24th, and Mill Creek Village and Mill Creek Garden Club’s Walk Around the Towne event with two garden tours on June 4th!

• Check out garden centers for discounted house plants.
• Take an inventory of pots and containers; clean or replenish potted soil.
• Plan for 2022 with these Free resources: Landscaping with Native Plants by the Maryland Native Plant Society, Plant Invaders of Mid-Atlantic Natural Areas by the National Park Service, Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia Reading Room. Visit our Online Gardening Resources page for more helpful online resources.
• Buy a good gardening book or magazine subscription for a gift for your favorite gardener.
• Have a question about gardening? Check the University of Maryland Extension’s New Maryland Grows blog for garden tips.

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Master Gardener Plant Clinics

Montgomery County Master Gardeners - Maryland

What can Master Gardeners do for you?

• Help you select and care for annual and perennial plants, shrubs and trees.
• Determine if you need to test your soil.
• Provide you with information on lawn care.
• Identify weeds, beneficial and noxious insects, and plant diseases and remedies.
• Teach you how to use pesticides, mulch and compost.
• Guide you in pruning trees and shrubs.
• Provide you with options for managing wildlife.
• Provide you with gardening resources.
• Help you submit a plant sample for diagnosis

Plant Clinics are held at several sites in the county on a weekly basis and at special events such as garden festivals and the county fair. Regularly scheduled Plant Clinics are located at public libraries and farmers’ markets throughout the county as well as at the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase.  There are also clinics three days per week at Brookside Gardens.  The busiest season is April through September, but some clinics are open year-round.  Bring your plant samples and questions to one of these locations in Montgomery County, MD (see link below to find a location near you):

https://extension.umd.edu/mg/locations/plant-clinics

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Thank You to All Our Volunteers for Our April Mill Creek Spring Cleanup!

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New Gardening Books

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Online Gardening Resources

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Online Garden-to-Table Recipes

There are many resources for recipes to make from your garden crops including seed companies, local farms, and online recipe cookbook catalogs. If you grow vegetables, these are very useful resources as the recipes feature the very plant you are growing. Here are few links to recipes you can make from your garden crops

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Local Farms

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• Support Our Local Farmers – Join a CSA and have fresh local produce delivered to you!
• Visit a local farmers’ market.

How to Support Farmers and Safely Shop at Farmers’ Markets

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Flowers and Groundcovers

• After the last frost date, plant warm-season annuals and tender bulbs (calla lilies, dahlias, gladiolus) in the ground and containers.
• Cut back spent tulip an daffodil blooms, but not the foliage!
• Feed your roses and new plantings with slow-release fertilizer sparingly.
• Remove last of spring flowers, replacing with transplants or seeds.
• Do not set out seedlings or tender annuals until after Mother’s Day (traditional last frost-free date for our entire area).
• Plant and prune roses.
• Check for black spots on your roses – remove and discard any affected leaves in the trash, never back into your garden or in your compost – apply fungicide with Neem oil every two weeks during the growing season.
• Provide supports for fast-growing perennials such as delphiniums, peonies, and lilies.
• Tie up clematis and other fast-growing climbing vines.
• Plant summer bulbs (such as dahlias and caladiums). 
• Pests to watch for: Aphids, 4-lined plant bug, spidermites, whiteflies, Deer, slugs, snails.
• Diseases to watch for:  Damping off of seedlings, Botrytis on peonies, Volutella blight on pachysandra.
• See UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips for more details.
• For a list of native plant resources, visit: https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/native-plant-resources

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Trees and Shrubs

• Plant and transplant shrubs that have finished blooming.
• Prune back forsythia, spirea, and other early-spring blooming shrubs.
• Check often and water newly planted trees if they don’t pass the finger test (stick your finger deep into soil – dry? Water!)
• Plant tree, shrubs, perennials; this is a good time to plant evergreens.
• If you must mulch, remove old mulch and then add 2″ – 3″ shredded pine or pine needles, keeping 3″ away from trunk.
• Prune crepe myrtle when you can see what is still alive.
• Prune azaleas when they finish blooming.
• Remove Ivy, Pachysandra, and other vine-like groundcover from under shrubs.
• Soil test established trees that have not been performing well.
• Keep mowers and trimmers away from trunks!
• Test soil pH on some hydrangeas and adjust: Blue: pH 5 – 5.5; Pink: pH 6 – 6.5 
• Remove bagworm bags.
• Mulch or compost healthy leaves.
• Soil test established trees that have not been performing well.
• Put diseased leaves, pesticide-laden grass clippings and weed seeds out for recycling rather than the compost pile.
• Spray with dormant oil to decrease pest infestations.
• Remove dead and dying trees.
• Pests to watch for:  Gypsy moths late in month, scale, sawfly, spidermites, leafminers, caterpillars, voles, and deer.
• Diseases to watch for:  Antracnose, Exobasidium gall on azaleas, Phytophthora, top dieback and root rot on azaleas.
• For more tips, see UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips for more details.

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Herbs, Veggies, and Fruit

• New fruit plants: keep watered their first spring, summer, and fall.
• Plant tender transplants: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, sweet potato.
• Sow seeds of: beans, melons, cucumbers.
• Keep all transplants watered deeply for 2-3 weeks.
• Divide perennials and herbs. Pot up extras and give away at plant swaps.
• Thin seedlings.
• Harvest your herbs often and keep them trimmed back to encourage leafy growth.
• Apply dormant oil spray to fruit trees.
• Pests to watch for: Asparagus beetle, aphids, birds, cabbage worms, cutworms, deer, Japanese beetle, rabbits, woodchucks.
• Diseases to watch for: Apple scab, Cedar-apple rust.
• Here are some more UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips.

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Lawns

• Fertilize turf only if weak: apply 1 lb. N/1000 sq. ft.
• Calibrate your spreader before fertilizing.
• To control crabgrass, apply pre-emergent herbicide to lawn (when forsythia blooms drop).
• Mow high to reduce weeds and stress: Fescue & Bluegrass: 3″ – 3 1/2″, Zoysia: 2″
• Control wild onions in warm season turf with broadleaf weed control.
• Have soil tested (every 3 years minimum).
• Clean yard of all leaves and other debris.
• Turn your compost pile.
• The annual soil science calendars from the Natural Resources Conservation Service are both educational and beautifully done. The one for 2022 as well as those for previous years are available as free PDFs here: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/edu/?cid=nrcseprd1250008
• Diseases to watch for: brown patch, and red thread
• Pests to watch for: Grubs
• See UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips for more details.

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Indoors/Houseplants

• Begin hardening off prior to putting outside in shade for summer.
• Repot and fertilize houseplants when new growth begins.
• Repot larger plants that are going outside for the summer.
• Change water in cuttings started last fall and add 2-3 pieces of fish tank charcoal. 
• Do not over water house plants.
• Check on your container plants daily and keep them well-watered.
• Rotate houseplants to promote even growth.
• Remove old leaves, damaged stems.
• Pinch out growing tips of leggy cuttings and plants that are overwintering.
• Clean the leaves of your indoor houseplants to prevent dust and film build-up.
• Pests to watch for:  aphids, spider mites, mealybug, scale, and whitefly.
• See UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips for more information.
  

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Indoor/Outdoor Insect and Wildlife Tips

• Watch for insect and disease problems throughout your garden.
• Ticks are very active now. 
• Check your plants at night with a flashlight for any night-feeding insects like slugs.
• Look out for slug eggs grouped under sticks and stones. They are the size of BBs and pale in color.
• Put out slug traps around your vulnerable edibles and hostas.
• Leave hummingbird feeders out until October 15th.
• Put up birdhouses. 
• Put suet out for birds.
• Keep bird feeders clean and filled.
• Switch your deer deterrent spray.
• Set out traps for mice, moles, and voles.
• Watch for: carpenter ants, flies, mosquitos, stink bugs, termites, rabbits, raccoons, groundhogs, deer, mice, moles, snakes, squirrels, and voles.
• For more information, see UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips.

Source: University of Maryland’s Home and Garden Information Center (HGIC) and the Washington Gardener.

See more tips from HGIC:

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Support Our Local Farmers – Join a CSA and have fresh local produce delivered to you!

CSAs are seeing record numbers of subscribers http://ow.ly/eiQT50zD5lW – find your farmer here: http://ow.ly/jbO250zD56M

CSAs can take many forms, but essentially they are community supported farms in which members contribute to farming projects, usually by way of membership fees, in exchange for fresh, local produce. The concept came to the United States from Europe in the 1980s.  They are a great way to take advantage of fresh, locally grown fruit, vegetables, herbs, and more while supporting nearby farms. Each one is different, some offer pickup locations in urban areas, some offer only farm-based pickups.

There are multiple CSAs located around the County offering a wide variety of products. CSAs begin taking sign-ups for spring and summer seasons in the early part of the year, and they tend to fill up FAST! Know of another CSA not on our list? Let us know! Montgomery Countryside Alliance also maintains a list:

 http://www.mocoalliance.org/community-supported-agriculture.html

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A free 10-day virtual festival connecting gardeners with the influencers, taste-makers and cutting edge content of today’s gardening world.

Over 40 workshops, virtual tours of inspiring public and botanic gardens nation-wide and Houseplant Happy Hours… join real time and connect with presenters plus other attendees or watch at your convenience for six-months.

This timely content will help you up your plant game or inspire you to try new ideas in 2022. A unique opportunity to be encouraged and educated by some of the biggest influencers, educators and taste-makers in today’s gardening world.

Get more info at https://greatgrowalong.com.

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Backyard Beekeeping

TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2022 AT 7 PM

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Grow It Eat It 2022 Event

Sat, May 14, 2022

10:00 AM – 4:00 PM EDT

University of Maryland Extension – Montgomery County

Location

Montgomery County Extension

Agricultural History Farm Park

18410 Muncaster Road

Derwood, MD 20855

View Map

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