2010 Garden Journal - May
April showers bring May flowers but this year everything seems slightly ahead in the garden. Unusually warm weather but decent rainfall in April and early May created a perfect spring garden season.
May 3 -- planted Kohlrabi starts and red cabbage starts (purchased) outdoors under sun tunnel greenhouse cover. Forsythia and serviceberry are finished blooming however there are still plenty of spring blooms in the garden. As of today my magnolia and Chanticleer pear are still showing some blooms. Peaking right now are the wild apple trees, Purple Sandcherries and Grefsheim Spirea. My crab apple trees are just starting to bloom.
May 7 - 14 -- once again we experienced a week of very cold temperatures, heavy winds and rain in May. For the second year in a row, this cold snap came just as the late trees were budding (ginkgo, sassafras, flowering dogwood) and as many shrubs and evergreens had started to put on new growth. There was a significant amount of freezing damage again this year including damage to new growth (hedge maple, spireas, hydrangeas, some evergreens, dogwoods). The chokecherry were just beginning to bloom and all of the blooms were damaged this year. Luckily we did cover the garden this year with my new mini-greenhouses so we did not have any damage in the vegetable garden.
May 16 - a big planting day in the vegetable garden. The weather finally warmed up again and looks good for the next week or two so we decided to put in the last of the cool season crops. We finished preparing the new potato garden and planted 7 rows of potatoes, one row each for the seven varieties we are growing this year. 
There is still room for two more rows of yukon gold and norland. We are hoping to produce enough to be able to store potatoes for the majority of the winter.
I also planted the last of the cold season starts -- cabbages, lettuce and swiss chard. We seeded beets, carrots, parsnips, swiss chard, spinach, lettuce, kohlrabi and radishes (these were done by our youngest who is responsible for growing all the radishes for our family this year). Some of these were already the second planting for the season.
May 20 - The hawthorn trees are approaching full bloom, my favourite time for the back woodland area.
May 23 - our first dip in the pool this year as it has been unusually warm.
May 23/24 - we returned from my parents with 11 tomato plants, including two new heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peas and some double purple petunias. We spent the remainder of the long weekend planting out the rest of the vegetable garden. The weather has been unusually warm so we were able to plant everything our including the peppers, zucchini and tomatoes. We also planted our first row of beans as well as the pole beans.
May 25 - enjoyed our first bounty from the vegetable garden! We enjoyed a spinach salad with onions and strawberries with a apple cider vinegar and maple syrup dressing.
May 25 - European Sawfly infestation on my Mugho Pine. I cut out as many branches as I could find with the larvae.
May 26/27 - after warm temperatures all week, temperatures reached over 30C today. Early peas have flower buds. I will need to cover them with netting soon.
May 31 - we finally had some rain this evening and overnight (to June 1). We received about 1.25 inches which were sorely needed. While we have enjoyed the warm weather and the pool, it is the first year I remember the lawns turning brown by the last week in May.
We have since May 25 been eating spinach, lettuce and swiss chard from the garden. These greens were planted on April 3/4.
May started out with above normal temperatures and plenty of rain which caused many of the trees and shrubs to leaf out early or put on a growth spurt. Unfortunately very cold temperatures soon followed and in fact the temperatures fell below zero. While the Hamilton weather station reported a low of -0.1C, my own temperature gauge showed a low of -2C one evening. For the second year in a row we experienced major frost damage to trees and shrubs. While the early part of the month received a significant amount of moisture, the end of last half of the month was hot and dry.
