10 Crops You'd Be Foolish Not to Plant in May

What's going on growers? It's James Frisione coming to you live from Jersey. Today I'm going to share with you 10 crops you gotta get planted in May. Let's go! I'm in New Jersey, zone 7a, and May is when the garden really starts to come to life. The frosts have passed, the soil has warmed, and it's the perfect time to get a bunch of crops The first crop to get planted in May is summer and winter squash. Although it's common, zucchini tends to be my favorite summer squash. But don't underestimate some other fantastic varieties like the yellow scallop squash. An interesting shape, beautiful color, great flavor, and is a prolific producer. Also try out the white scallop squash, an old Native American variety that tastes great and kicks out so much food it's hard to keep up with. Winter squash are great as well, like the butternut squash which is highly resistant to vine bores. While not totally immune, their tough stems make it much harder for the vine bores to cause serious damage, especially compared to summer squash. One thing to note, if you start squash from seed inside, make sure to use large cells because the plants can easily get root bound and they do not like that. Also, when transplanting out, make sure the soil is warm and any danger of frost is far past. They are summer veggies, they hate the cold and thrive in the heat. I will direct sow squash in the garden now and plant another round of squash in late June or early July to make sure I always have young, healthy, thriving plants growing. A later planting will also help reduce vine bore pressure because it will fall outside of the peak window when the adults are laying eggs. Vining summer squash grows well vertically, so if you want to save space, train it to climb. Squash are heavy feeders and the summer ones will continue to kick out fruit for us up until the frost. So when planting either from seed or transplanting into the ground, we want to make sure we mix in some all-purpose fertilizer. It's also a good idea to give them a top dressing mid-season. This way we can keep the plants fed so they keep us fed. For early plantings, you can cover your seedlings with insect netting or even use team grow plant armor clay to spray on your young plants. This will make them much less attractive to squash bugs, cucumber beetles, and vine borers. May is a great time to get some melons planted. Grabbing a fresh cantaloupe, slicing into it, seeing that golden color, and tasting the fruit is such a treat. Or grabbing some homegrown watermelons in the heat of the summer and biting into the juicy flavor-packed fruit is truly living. Melons are a summer veggie and they hate the cold. In fact, the vine may not set fruit if the seedlings are chilled too much when they're young. What you want to do is you want the soil to heat up to at least 70 degrees Fahrenheit before planting. Also, it's best to plant them in the sunniest spot possible that also gets good air circulation. This way when the leaves get wet, they can dry out quickly. That will help prevent disease. When growing in raised beds, I like planting them in the corner of my beds so they can grow out and don't take up a lot of space in my bed. Then, as they continue to grow, you can top dress them with some fertilized soil, water that in, and then add some mulch on top. Last year, I grew cantaloupes that trellised out the side of my bed. It was a good way to save space and produce some excellent fruit. I also like growing melons up a trellis and I tie something like a piece of cloth or cut up insect netting underneath it to help support the fruit. To get a head start, you can plant seeds indoors about two to four weeks before transplanting out. Always be sure to harden your seedlings off before transplanting them out into the garden. Be patient. It's better to transplant late rather than too early. The next crop we can get planted in May are cucumbers. Not many summer crops can compare to a fresh cucumber on a hot day. They're one of my favorite summer veggies to snack on. Cooling, delicious, and they produce prolifically. Plus, they fruit quickly. A couple of weeks after your last expected frost date, you could start to direct sow cucumbers or you can start them inside. Just like melons, they hate the cold and love the heat. The biggest mistake I see people make when growing cucumbers is just planting them out too early. If you start your seeds indoors, I suggest waiting three to four weeks after your last frost date to transplant out. It's much better to wait for the soil to heat up because, like melons, cucumbers do not like getting cold feet. The best way to grow cucumbers is up a trellis. This makes them easier to harvest and it helps prevent a lot of disease issues that can occur when cucumbers are sprawling on the ground. If you let your cucumbers sprawl along the ground, make sure you have a mulch down. I like using wood chips. It will help keep the fruit clean. It will prevent soil-borne diseases from splashing onto the leaves of your plants every time it rains. Additionally, it will help keep the soil moist for a longer period of time and keep down the weeds. Cucumbers and melons both can be attacked by the cucumber beetle. A couple of ways I prevent beetle damage is by using an insect netting when the plants are young and highly susceptible. Then, I take the netting off when they flower so the bees can pollinate them. I also spray my plants with team grow plant armor clay which acts as a protectant and discourages the beetles from going after my cukes because it gums up their reproductive organs. Plus, I use trap crops like amaranth which draws the cucumber beetles in and steers them away from my plants. We have a winner for the most recent giveaway of a medium-sized raised bed. I'm going to announce that at the end of the video. Also, we're going to do another giveaway where there's five people who are going to win a plant armor and also some fertilizer. All you have to do is go to teamgrow.us to submit. Now that the last spring frost has passed, it's time to get some green beans planted. Most green beans that I like aren't even green. A few of my favorite varieties are the dragon tongue bean which is one you need to try if you never have. They look incredible and taste delicious. Additionally, I grow some purple bean varieties which also look stunning and taste great. Beans really hate the cold. That's why right now in May is the ideal time to get them planted. I consider green beans to be one of the easiest crops to plant. Maybe not necessarily to grow but definitely plant. They do not like being transplanted though so when it comes to beans it's best to direct sow. When growing bush beans, I like to plant them in this square foot method and sow nine seeds per square foot. Then I water them in. About a week later, they'll sprout and boy do they grow quick. Beans are nitrogen fixers and they don't really need an additional fertilizer. You can give them a little bit if you want but make sure it's one that's not too high in nitrogen. If you give them too much nitrogen, what's going to happen is they're going to focus mainly on leaf growth instead of on the production of beans. Make sure if you're planting pole beans that they have some kind of trellis to grow up. If not, they could strangle out the plants around them and that's not a good thing. Especially some beans like the scarlet runner bean. Those things are so prolific if you let them sprawl they'll yank at some of the plants around them and possibly negatively affect them. In May is when I plant out my sweet potatoes. Sweet potato vines look beautiful and the tubers are packed with vitamins and minerals. They also grow great in A patio is enough space. Like most crops we're planting this month, sweet potatoes are warm weather crops and they hate the cold. So be patient when planting yours out. We grow sweet potatoes from slips and you can either start your own from a sweet potato or you can order some great varieties online from a reputable company like Fedco. Because we're growing sweet potatoes for the tubers we want to make sure we have a soil that's loose that drains well and has a lot of organic matter. This will ensure us the highest level of production. Also we want to add a fertilizer that's not super high in nitrogen because again we want our plants to focus on tuber production not on leaf production. You can use an all-purpose fertilizer that's a good option. I have also used in the past a potato specific fertilizer that I get from Fedco called Turbo Tuber. In May we still have time to plant out some regular potatoes as well. I have shown you my lazy way to grow potatoes and still get massive harvests and I have also shown you what happens when you grow potatoes in only leaves. Plus last year I planted a whole bed of only potatoes without hilling. After this video go check those ideas out. Regular potatoes are a bit more cold hardy than sweet potatoes but the regular potatoes don't like a frost either so in the late April or now in May is when I like to get my potatoes planted. Growth will shoot up from the eyes of the potatoes. When planting we want to cover them with about four or five inches of soil. Like sweet potatoes we want our regular potatoes to focus mainly on tuber production and root production not as much on leaf production. So we want to make sure we're not adding a fertilizer that's too high in nitrogen. I suggest using something like an all-purpose fertilizer like the JP Secret Stuff or a more potato specific fertilizer like that Turbo Tuber I shared with you. You can probably hear we've got this cardinal she's singing so loud above me. It's truly spring here the weather is looking fantastic we've got a lot of plants in the ground now things are starting to grow so it's really starting to heat up and so is the growing. It's important to come out and add soil around the growing potato plants. This is called hilling and will give you bigger harvests and will also prevent the potatoes from turning green and developing a toxic substance in them called solanine. In May we still have plenty of time to get some flowers planted. Some gardeners don't see flowers as crops but I do because they're so additive to the production. I see them as more like a part of the fruit and vegetable harvest. When it comes to an incredible flower a useful perennial that comes back every year one of my all-time favorites is this one right here the Echinacea. It's such an incredible plant and if you haven't grown this one before you gotta get it in the ground today. A few of my favorite flowers to plant in the garden are Borage an amazing companion, Sunflowers the other year I grew some massive ones that were over 10 feet tall, Calendula another great companion, a beautiful flower and a useful flower as well. I also like Zinnia which are probably my favorite looking flower. Varieties like the Candy Cane and the Mazurkia are so beautiful it's striking. A flower like Nasturtium I love as well. We can even eat the leaves and the flowers of them they have a nice like peppery flavor and Chamomile is another one that I love. We can make a nice tea out of this one. Mid-May is when I transplant into the garden my tomatoes and my peppers. If it's still early May you can even plant tomatoes from seed. I've done it at this time of the year and you can still get a lot of nice fruit from them. In the past I would plant my tomatoes way too early like in February then I would do so much extra work to have to put them into larger containers it ended up being a bit of a headache and then I would transplant out the tomatoes that I planted so early and then there was also ones that I planted late and it seemed like the ones that I planted late would catch up to the early ones. So sometimes in gardening being like a little bit lazy or even a little bit late ends up being a little more enjoyable and works out great. Even though May is here and we already have lettuce growing look how beautiful this is. It just looks gorgeous. We still need to make sure that we're going out and planting more rounds of lettuce so we have more of a staggered planting and can get a staggered harvest. Or we could start lettuce plants inside and then transplant them into the garden. It's always a good idea to make sure we have other plants on deck so when we pull out something like our lettuce plants we have others to replace it. This way we just have a continual harvest. We also want to make sure that we're having lettuce that is ready to pick and that fully finishes at different times. This way we're not overloaded with just so much lettuce at once we could spread that harvest out. And the same goes for carrots. I plant my first round of carrots about the second week of April then two weeks later right at the beginning of May I'll plant a round and then I'll plant an additional round the second week of May. This way there's always a fresh round of carrots growing so if you want to go out there and grab a harvest from one square foot there's already another square foot growing. Radishes are another one you need to make sure you're staggered planting in May. They grow incredibly quick they have good flavor and they look beautiful. When it comes to radishes you may have had them from the store and that might have turned you off to radishes in general but I'm telling you grow your own fresh radishes at home. They're juicy, they're delicious, they're unmatched compared to the store. Tuck used to love snacking on the radishes and I love snacking on them too. That's today's video growers. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. There's nothing like May in the garden. I love it so much. The strawberries are flowering. A lot of the fruit trees have flowered and the small fruits are forming. The lettuce is getting bigger. The radishes are swelling up. It's just such an incredible time to be out here and I just feel so grateful to be in the garden getting my hands dirty and already starting to see some of the fruits of the labor for all the stuff we started early in the season. So you guys gotta get out there, gotta get planting because I promise it'll give you so much back. I wanted to announce the winner of the giveaway of the medium raised bed and we threw it in the number generator. It kicked out the number 149 and that gave us the winner of Roger Tarpon. Congratulations on it. Congratulations on your medium raised bed. So everyone throw some hearts down low for Roger and congratulate him on winning the bed. Like I mentioned earlier we're also giving away this time five winners. The plant armor which is great to protect your plants and also the fertilizer which is great to feed your plants. So we kind of got the protection and we got the feeding both sides there for you. I also wanted to send a thank you to one of our new channel members, Victor Torres. Thanks for being a part of Team Grow. Thanks for having your hand in everything we're doing out here. If you guys want to join the team just hit the join now button in the video. Overall it's uh it's so great to be out here. The sun went in a little bit but it's still a beautiful day and things are really setting up for an incredibly productive year. I'm so excited about it. A lot of the fruit trees at the other homestead are um leafing out. It looks beautiful. I got 40 blueberries in the ground. It's uh just such an exciting time and as much as you guys can get out in the garden, get your hands dirty, spend time out there because it's just it's just overall such a blast. We'll catch you guys at another one real soon. We out!