This is a transplanting month, particularly for cabbages and cauliflowers, all which should be now taken and put out for summer use. Celery should also now be pricked out. Continue to plant, if necessary, pot herbs and sweet herbs, such as rooted slips of balm, penny royal, and camomile. It is a good time also to plant out slips of mint from the roots; other crops of peas may also now be sown, as also a late crop of beans. Now also you may sow gourds and pumpkins in a frame. All pruning must be finished. Insects must be looked after on fruit trees. Vines may be laid down in layers; wall-fruit thinned; strawberry beds weeded, and kept very clean; new-budded and new-grafted trees well examined to see if the clay keeps close to the grafts. In the flower garden or borders some of the tender annuals may now be pricked out, and some of the others sown in the frame, such as Prince’s feather, capsicum, love-apples, Indian corn, gourds, sweet balsam, marvel of Peru; stocks, and the hardy annuals, may now be sown in the open ground, as Adonis poppy, sweet peas, catch-fly, annual sunflower, larkspur, lupines, Venus’s looking-glass. The best way to sow sweet peas is in pots, and protect them well from the birds, who will otherwise not leave one. Inarching may now be performed on evergreens and other plants, which you may wish to propagate this way.
MAY.
Lettuces will now want tying up. Peas will require sticking. Do not tie your lettuces up too tightly, and when you stick your peas put in the stick in a slanting direction. Clear and thin carrots and parsnips, leaving the largest plants at least four inches from each other; thin also onions; plant out cauliflowers. Sow brocoli seeds for the crop to come in on the following winter and early spring. Sow and plant savoys; top the broad beans that are now in blossom, which will make the pods set sooner and swell faster. Plant the various kinds of French beans, such as the white speckled, in drills about three feet apart, and sow them thin. Prick out and plant celery; continue to sow radishes and small salading for daily use. Water new planted crops, and now let more than common care be taken to destroy weeds amongst crops of every kind; and now is the time for using your Dutch hoe freely among the rows of peas, beans, and spinach; but do not leave your weeds about in the drills or borders; clear all carefully away, and keep the garden clean and neat.
JUNE.
Look after your melons, pumpkins, gourds, and cucumbers, in frames; let them be well supplied with fresh air and water. To save cauliflower seed, mark some of the best and earliest plants, with the largest and whitest and closest flower heads, which should not be cut, but left to run to seed. Peas may still be sown, and French beans also, as may cabbage and colewort seed. Gather mint, balm, and other aromatic herbs, towards the end of this month, for drying. Examine any new planted trees, see that they are not too dry, and that they are well secured. Water should be given to those that show any symptoms of flagging; water them well, but not frequently. Take care that your strawberry beds are also well watered. Hang up nets before early cherry-trees against walls, and over small trees, to protect them from the birds. Most of the tender annuals may be now finally planted out, and now is the time to take up the roots of tulips, crown imperials, jonquils, &c., and to take away the offsets. Continue to support with sticks all the tall growing flowering plants. Cut box-edgings, and regulate your flower borders, keeping your plants well watered if the weather should be very dry.
JULY.
You may now sow a batch of turnips for winter or autumn use, and also some carrot seed to raise young carrots for use later in the autumn. Celery may be transplanted, winter spinach may be sown, lettuces may be planted out, coleworts may be sown. Gather your cucumbers as they appear, and gather all sorts of seeds as they ripen in dry weather, pulling up the stems with the seed where it can be done. Bring out the cockscombs, double balsams, and all other curious annuals kept till this time in frames. Transplant annuals into the borders. Lay carnations and sweetwilliams; propagate pinks by pipings; transplant perennial plants. Take up bulbous roots, cut box-edgings, regulate your flower borders. Plant cuttings and slips of succulent plants; shift geraniums and other plants into larger pots, if necessary.
AUGUST.
Cauliflower seed must be sown between the 18th and the 24th. Celery should now be transplanted into trenches, and lettuce planted out. In the end of the month the dry flower stems of aromatic plants, such as hyssop, sage, lavender, should be cut down. Now look well out for various seeds as they ripen, which gather by cutting or pulling off the seed-stalks, then place them in the full sun against a hedge or wall to get them thoroughly dry. All flowers should now be carefully attended, and watered when necessary. The pink pipings should now be planted out in beds, and the seeds of many bulbous flowers, such as tulips, hyacinths, lilies, may be sown to obtain new varieties. Flower borders should occasionally be gone over with a sharp hoe, after which they should be raked over neatly, and all weeds and litter cleared away.