What I’m Sowing and Growing in May

One of the biggest disadvantages of the way that I garden is that every bed is always in continuous use. As a result I never have the luxury of preparing beds for planting in advance. For many growers early spring is a time of preparation, whereas for me it’s a time of production and our harvests through spring are often as high as they are in August. The bottom line is that by May I’m a bit worn down by the demands of sowing, potting on, watering, clearing beds, planting and harvesting.

It’s also been extremely slow growing for the seedlings that I have no space for under-cover. The ones in the polytunnel and conservatory are great, but the nightly frosts have been a bit much for some of my beetroot and chard, I think I might be better starting again!

So April has been unusually busy, but May is when everything gradually starts to slow down. I finish up most of my summer plantings and enjoy the fruits of my labour as all the early spring plantings come ready.

Although this article is focused on May, I also have a summary of everything that I’m sowing for the whole year, if you’re interested please take a look at my month-by-month sowing guide.

Before we take a look at our plans for May it’s useful to catch up on the state of the kitchen garden:

and the allotment:

So finally we get to May’s sowing and growing video!  Mid Feb is the earliest we recommend sowing seeds without grow lights, but in April/May you can sow with much more confidence and I’ve certainly be busy! Here’s my growing progress video

and my sowing video for May!

If you’re interested in the databases that I used to manage the allotments I also have a video and associated blog post about them.  The blog post has all of the details on how to get your own copy of the database (with or without my data) to customise as you wish. If you take a copy with my data you will have to delete some of the images, as I have breached the limits of the free version.

I also have a fancy new database for tracking all of my seed packets.

Here’s a complete read-only view of the varieties database with all of my data.

Here’s what we are sowed in April:

Here’s what we are planning to sow in May:

If you want to look ahead to future months here’s a view of my sowing database for last year

Here’s a complete list of the varieties that I’m planning to sow in 2021 including all of our perennials

Watch out for the next video showing what I’m sowing in June, here’s a hint, quite a lot!