5 vegetable seeds you can sow in May.
1. Among the top choices for direct sowing this time of year are carrots! Carrots come in so many varieties, colours, and sizes but the one thing they all have in common is that they hate root disturbance! So my top tip is to wait until the risk of frost has passed and then sow away! Successional sowing is a great technique to use when sowing carrots to ensure that you have a continual supply of carrots through the season. Mind you, if your carrots are anything like mine, regardless of sowing them 3 weeks apart they will all catch each other up and all crop at the same time! I still don’t know why this happens!
Sowing carrots is really straight forward. Create a shallow drill in your soil roughly 2 inches deep and carefully sprinkle your carrot seeds along the drill. The phrase you will often hear is to sow thinly - this means not sprinkling too many seeds in one spot as this means you’ll have to do a lot of thinning out as the seedlings pop up. Carrot seeds are very small and often a similar colour to soil making it a tad tricky to see them against the soil so trying to keep track of where you have sown helps to avoid huge clumps of seedlings appearing. Once you have sown your seeds, cover them over with the soil and water them in.
2. Another great seed to direct sow this month is parsnips. Similar to carrots, parsnips don’t like their roots being distrubed and so direct sowing is the best option. Much like our carrot friends, there are a wide range of varieties to choose from in the parnsip world! I’ve always had good success with Gladiator parsnips (and the name amuses me!) which provide a good size of root veg once harvest time arrives. These also see me right through the winter and I find they freeze well. To sow parnsips, use the same technique as sowing carrots - create a shallow drill and thinly sow your parsnip seeds along the drill. Parsnip seeds are MUCH easier to see than carrot seeds as they are larger and a lighter colour so you should be able to easily sow your seeds in a fairly evenly spaced manner.
3. One of the best seeds to sow for quick, reliable harvests is radish. Radish seeds grow fast, especially in the warmer months and you can have delicious fresh veggies to add to salads, to have as a snack or to share with your family in as little as 28 days! As radish seeds are so small you an sow them in a shallow drill much like carrots and parsnips, or I simply sow them on the soil where I want them to grow and sprinkle a thin layer of compost or soil over the top. Water them in and then leave them to do their thing!
4. You may have already planted out your hardened off pea plants but you can still direct sow peas and mange tout during may and even into June. Peas grow quickly, especially in this warm weather we have been having and if you sow directly now alongside your planted out peas you’ll have a nice succession of peas growing through the season.
To plant peas directly all you need to do is create a shallow hole (around 2cm deep), pop in a few pea seeds and cover up with soil again. Water these in and as the shoots grow don’t forget to give the new plants a regular seaweed feed to encourage stronger growth.
5. Last, but by no means least are our dear friends the runner beans. These bad boys grow so quickly and give a beautiful colour to the plot with their fabulous red or white flowers. As they are fast growing, you’ll need to provide a fairly high, sturdy support for them to climb up and you can do this using bamboo canes to create a tipi or an a frame, or you could use a metal arch. As runner bean seeds are pretty big as seeds go, you’ll need to drill a hole around 2 inches deep and pop in 1 or 2 seeds. Cover with compost and water them in and you should see germination within a few days. As they grow, you can tie them in to your support if needed but they often take care of themselves.
