5.16.26 - Prune Spring Bloomers

Transcript

[Intro Music]

Hey folks, welcome back to the Keep Growing Podcast, your weekly guide to gardening in the Mid-Ohio Valley. I’m your host, John Morgan, coming to you from Bob’s HQ.

We’re starting a new week on Saturday, May 16th, and there’s plenty to do in our gardens right now. Saturday brings the New Moon, which is a fantastic time to plant seeds and set out transplants. The lower gravitational pull during this phase encourages strong root development, giving your new plants the best start possible before the big growth push of the full moon.

This week, I recommend planting basil, echinacea, and rudbeckia. Basil will thrive in the coming heat—go ahead and start seeds or set out transplants now, and remember to pinch the tops as it grows to create bushier plants with more leaves for your summer cooking. Echinacea, or purple coneflower, is a tough, drought-tolerant perennial that pollinators love. Rudbeckia, also known as black-eyed Susan, is another reliable native that will give you bright golden blooms from midsummer into fall. Get these in the ground while the New Moon energy is strong.

If your spring blooming bushes and vines have finished flowering, now is the perfect time to prune. Go ahead and shape up your azaleas, viburnum, lilacs, and forsythia. Pruning right after they bloom ensures you won’t remove next year’s flower buds. Clean out any dead or crossing branches and give them a nice, tidy form for better blooms next spring.

Here’s your weather outlook for the Mid-Ohio Valley: Strong to severe thunderstorms are possible Saturday afternoon and evening, so hold off on planting until the storms pass and bring any potted plants to safety. Then we’ll see well above normal temperatures from Sunday through Tuesday, with some spots possibly reaching or breaking record highs on Monday. We’re talking temperatures in the 90s! That heat will be great for warm-season crops, but keep new transplants well-watered and give them some afternoon shade if needed. Midweek, a front will roll through and temperatures will finally settle back to seasonal norms.

That’s your gardening plan for May 16th through the 22nd—plant under the New Moon, prune those spring shrubs, and stay flexible with the wild temperature swings we’re expecting.

A big thank you to everyone who stopped by your local Bob’s Market for our Mother’s Day Weekend Sale. Your support helps make this podcast possible and helps our whole community of gardeners … keep growing.

[Outro Music]

End of Episode