Alcea rosea 'chater's salmon pink'

The garden is getting greener and greener, the seedlings are growing like roof tiles and the Ice Saints are in sight. The month of May is by far the busiest month in the entire garden season. There is an incredible amount that can be sown directly, we can already enjoy summer temperatures now and then and the first crops can already be harvested. May is therefore a busy month, but do not forget to regularly enjoy all that beauty in the garden.

How beautiful the flower bulbs have also flowered recently, for some species the season is now really at its end. Did you plant them in the open ground and do you want them to return to the garden next year to give the best of themselves? Then definitely do not cut them off, the bulb needs all the energy to flower again next year. Because the leaves serve as a kind of solar panel, they should definitely not be removed. Let them die off quietly, so the bulb can prepare itself well for next season. Another small extra tip: it is best to remove the faded flower heads. This way the flower bulb does not put energy into creating seeds. A small exception to this are tulips. Most tulips give the best of themselves in the first year, but this decreases year after year. We therefore recommend treating cultivated tulips as annuals. If the tulips have finished flowering or are ready to harvest, you can pull them out of the ground with the bulb. This also gives you longer stems to put them in a vase. You can of course leave naturalising tulips in the garden, they multiply every year in the garden.

Due to the warm temperatures and beautiful days, the aphids awake. These small herbivorous insects mainly target the young fresh plants in the spring, with all the consequences that entails. They are very useful in the garden, after all, they serve as food for garden birds and other insects. It is therefore better not to combat them, but fortunately there is an easy solution to deal with this: place decoy plants in the garden. These decoy plants are extra popular with aphids and attract them. The aphids will therefore mainly eat the decoy plants, which keeps your other plants free of aphids. An additional advantage is that you attract small garden birds, which in turn eat snails and other pests.

Without insects there will unfortunately never be pollination of all the beautiful flowers and beautiful crops. It is therefore important to give even the smallest insects a place in our garden. You can easily provide this by hanging an insect hotel, but there are many other options to provide this in the garden. Think of a pile of branches, a messy corner with pruning waste at the back of the garden or a few stones in a pile to create a sheltered spot.

If you would like to make an insect hotel yourself, you can even make creative use of waste:

• Drill holes in wood waste. Make sure the holes are smooth and large enough.
• Cut bamboo sticks into equal pieces and stack them.
• Stack bricks with holes in them, so that butterflies can hide in them.
• Provide a spot with sand. Sand bees and other insects like to use this.