Recommended gardening jobs to do in May

Our busy Vice Chairman has produced this handy list of tasks which we should all be doing in and around the garden this month:

1. Kitchen Garden 

- continue successional sowings of salad crops and herbs- sow french and runner beans direct into soil

- plant out brussels sprouts, tomatoes, courgettes and pumpkins

- earth up potatoes when shoots are 25 cm high

2. Pest watch!

- keep an eye out for gooseberry sawfly damage and American gooseberry mildew - watch out for red lily beetle on lilies - check roses for blackspot and aphids

3. Glasshouse and Indoors

- pot on root-bound house plants - apply shade paint (cool glass) or use blinds on greenhouses and conservatories

4. Shrubs and climbers 

- clip evergreen hedges

- prune spring flowering shrubs - prune overgrown clematis montana after flowering and wall trained pyracantha