MAY GARDEN CHECKLIST
The following is a garden checklist:

• Remember to feed hummingbirds with 1 part sugar and 3 or 4 parts water. There is no need in using red food coloring. Replace sugar water mix at least once a week if it is not emptied sooner.
  

• As early vegetables bolt, go ahead and harvest what you have, cutting off the seed stalk will not encourage new growth. Broccoli heads may not be as large, but harvest while they are full and closed. Yellow blooms means the quality is going way down.
  
• To ensure that you will have the largest onions in the neighborhood, fertilize weekly using a liquid nitrogen fertilizer or 34-0-0 fertilizer (1/3 lb. per 100 ft.). Onions need a constant level of nitrogen to perform their best.
  
• Watch for caterpillars on cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and ornamentals and take control measures early by using Bacillus thuringiensis (Dipel, Javelin and other trade names). Larger more mature caterpillars are harder to control and you may have to use Sevin.
  
• Warm season vegetables – tomatoes, pepper, squash, okra and corn can be planted. As you plant, broadcast a complete fertilizer in the soil, then repeat in about 6 weeks. Mulch and water as needed. Watch for insects, diseases and weeds.
  
• To prevent early blight on tomatoes, start spraying with chlorothalonil or mancozeb when first bloom clusters are noticed. This disease causing fungus can stay in the soil for several years. Mulching will help some, which prevents the splashing of soil onto the lower leaves. Planting tomatoes in a new spot will help, but contaminating your new garden site can happen so quickly. This disease is transferred to a new garden by wind-blown spores, contaminated tools and shoes, buying diseased plants, or chewing insects.
  
• Keep a clean garden. Mulch around plants with 3-4 inches of mulch to help maintain moisture and discourage weeds. Organic mulches also break down slowly, releasing nutrients into the soil. Mulch also cuts down on soil borne diseases such as tomato blight.
  
• Herb gardens are an easy way to have an ample supply of fresh herbs for cooking. Most nurseries carry herb plants. Many are perennials and some are evergreen and can be used in the landscape as well as to eat. Rosemary is a semi-shrub and thyme makes an attractive evergreen groundcover in full sun. Be careful with pesticides around herbs – remember you are going to eat them!
  
• Prune spring flowering shrubs as soon as the flowers fade. If you prune in the fall or winter, you will remove next season’s flower buds.
  
• Check azaleas for lacebugs. This small sucking insect prefers to feed on azaleas or pyracantha but can spill over onto any kind of adjacent plants. The leaves of infested plants are yellowed and stippled on top. Black deposits from the lacebug are left on the underside of the leaves. To control, apply acephate, imidacloprid, bifenthrin, or permethrin according to label directions.
  
• Fertilize warm-season lawns – zoysia and bermuda – as soon as they are totally greened up. Use a high nitrogen fertilizer. Most of the weeds that have been blooming are winter weeds and should be on their way out. Start watching for summer weeds – crabgrass and nutgrass – and catch them as they emerge and try to stop their spread.
  
• Spring flowering bulb foliage needs to remain as long as possible (minimum of 6-8 weeks after blooming). Foliage can be removed at first signs of yellowing. As foliage begins to yellow it’s a good time to dig and divide clumps of overcrowded or unwanted bulbs while foliage is still visible.
  
• Dogwood, flowering plum, ornamental cherry, crabapple and related plants are prone to borers. Borers usually enter the trunks of these trees at soil line and can cause death in one or two seasons. A preventative control for borers is an application of insecticide applied to the trunk of trees in early May and repeated at six week intervals 2-3 times. Permethrin or bifenthrin work well in protecting these valuable ornamental specimen trees. Also, applying a 2-3 inch mulch around these ornamentals helps prevent damage to the trunk from lawnmowers and string line trimmers which helps prevent borers too.
  
• Houseplants can safely be moved outside if you haven’t already done so. Expose plants to sunlight gradually.
  
• When pansies and violas start to fade, replace them with summer annuals for summer color. There are lots of excellent annuals to choose from. Some to consider are the penta which likes the sun, attracts hummingbirds and butterflies and comes in pink, red, white and purple and Dragonwing Begonia is another one for partial shade.
  

Mark D. Keaton
County Extension Agent-
Telephone: 425-2335

For more information on gardening, contact the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Baxter County Extension office at 425-2335.

A delicious cake like muffin, perfect when fresh fruit is ripe like right now.





Oven: 375 degrees F.
Bake: 25-30 minutes
Yields: 12 muffins

Ingredients:
6 T. Butter (86 g)
3/4 c. Sugar (150 g)
2 Large Eggs

2 c. + 2 T. All Purpose Flour (243 g)
1 T. Baking powder
1/2 tsp. Salt

1/2 c. Milk (122 g)
2 tsp. Vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. Almond extract

2 c. Mixed Berries:
Blueberries
Strawberries
Raspberries
(fresh or frozen thawed and drained)
slice larger berries

Topping
1 T. Sugar
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon

Directions:

• In a large bowl cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, Add each egg one at a time and beat well after each addition.
• In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Fold flour mixture one third at a time into the reamed mixture, alternating with the liquid ingredients (milk, vanilla and almond extract).
• Gently fold in the berries until they are just blended in.
• Grease 12 muffin cups or use paper liners. Fill the cup 3/4 - 7/8 full (use a #12 scoop which is 1/3 cup). sprinkle the tops with the sugar and cinnamon mixture.
• Bake them for 25 to 30 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the muffin.
• Remove the muffins from the oven, and cool in the pan for 5 minutes before transferring them in a rick to cool completely.

How to Grow Cilantro
Cilantro needs full sun or light shade in southern zones since it bolts quickly in hot weather. It grows best in a well-drained, moist soil. Cilantro plants should be spaced about 6 to 8 inches apart. To harvest fresh cilantro all season, make successive sowings every 2 to 3 weeks starting in late spring.

From the time of sowing seed, cilantro leaves can begin to be harvested in about 3 to 4 weeks. Cilantro seeds can be harvested in about 45 days.

Flowering Coriander for Aphid Control
In the Salinas Valley of California, aphids have been one of the worst pests in the lettuce fields. The USDA Cooperative Extension Service has been investigating organic methods for aphid control, and experimented with coriander plants and Alyssum plants; when intercropped with the lettuce and allowed to flower, they attract beneficial insects such as hoverflies, the larvae of which eat up to 150 aphids per day before they mature into flying adults.

The Herb Society of America www.herbsociety.org
Wikipedia

Tree Peony
Latin: Paeonia suffruticosa
Tree peonies form flowers as much as 8 inches across when they bloom in late April.As Americans, we tend to take an egocentric view of the world, often assuming that other places and cultures have little to offer. Because really old and rich civilizations such as China baffle and bewilder us, most Americans dismiss them as backwards, if they think of them at all. But, for gardeners we must embrace China for she has provided many of our most cherished garden flowers, including the stunningly beautiful tree peony.

Paeonia suffruticosa, the tree peony, is a deciduous woody shrub growing to 6 feet tall and wide. It has stout, sparsely branched stems and coarse, compound leaves with nine leaflets. The leaves are bright red when they emerge in early spring.

As the season advances, the flower buds begin to swell, reaching the size of a small apple before issuing forth in late April with a flower the size of a salad plate. Double forms are most common with the blossoms in delicate pastel shades of red, pink, white and yellow. The beauty of the flower is unsurpassed, making it easy to understand why the Chinese treasure tree peonies as Western culture does the rose.

Tree peonies have been mentioned in Chinese literature since the 4th century BC and have been an important garden plant since at least the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Chinese scholars look to this dynasty as a long, stable reign of rulers who promoted learning and the arts, including gardening.

This progressive age saw the elevation of women in Chinese culture, in large measure due to the efforts of Wu Zetian (625-705). Empress Wu was born into a noble family and, as a young girl became one of the ruler’s concubines. Through a series of deft maneuvers and palace intrigues, she had herself named Empress when her own son resigned the throne in 690, breaking with the long held Confucian teaching that only men could become rulers.

Empress Wu’s connection to the tree peony is probably pivotal in the development of the flower, for she is said to have banned it from her gardens and palaces because it failed to bloom as precociously as she felt it should. This banishment was the catalyst for breeders to develop the free-flowering forms that are found in gardens today. When European merchants and plant explorers introduced the plant to Europe, they simply purchased them from retail sources that had been growing and selling the plant for over 1,000 years.

Tree peonies can be grown in all parts of Arkansas but are less common in gardens than their herbaceous cousins. Their rarity in cultivation is because they’re difficult to propagate. The Chinese learned early on that they could be grafted onto the rootstock of an herbaceous peon, a straightforward but not necessarily easy grafting procedure. Many of the 350 named cultivars listed are old Chinese selections, simply given new names when they were introduced into Europe.

Tree peonies do best in a fertile, well drained garden soil. They will grow in full sun or light shade and are easy to grow if well sited. They should be watered during dry periods and fertilized with a topdressing of compost each spring. The flowers are susceptible to wind and weather during the time they are open, so afternoon shade and wind protection helps preserve the length of their all too short bloom display.

By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist - Ornamentals
Extension News - April 1, 2005

This is an easy healthy dinner, you can put together in no time.





Ingredients:

• 4 tilapia or other mild, thin fish fillets (about 4 ounces each)
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon canola or olive oil
• 3/4 cup finely chopped bottled roasted red bell peppers
• 1/2 cup mild picante sauce (low sodium)
• 1/2 to 1 chipotle pepper canned in adobe sauce, finely mashed and chopped with a fork
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoons minced garlic (or to taste)

Nutritional Information:
Serves 4; 3 ounces fish and 1/3 cup sauce per serving,
​

Calories: 151
Total Fat: 5.5 g
 Cholesterol: 57 mg.
Sodium: 329 mg
Carbohydrates: 3 gm.
Protein: 23 grams

Source: American Heart Association 2007