Sacramento Digs Gardening: May Day all about spring flowers

A sheaf of yellow roses makes a beautiful decoration for May Day. This is The Poet's Wife, a David Austin rose. (Photo:

Kathy Morrison)

Ancient tradition celebrates halfway point to summer

May Day was made for merriment.

Maypoles, May baskets and “bringing in the May” -- all are part of flower-filled May Day traditions that date back to the ancient Celtics.

With our gardens coming into full bloom, this first day in May may be as good a time as any to explore some real old-fashioned garden fun.

May Day represents the midpoint of spring, halfway between the vernal equinox and the first day of summer. For hundreds of years, this holiday has been celebrated in the British Isles as an important point on the agricultural calendar.

This is a garden lover’s kind of holiday: Everything gets decorated with flowers (especially yellow or wildflowers). Houses are adorned with floral wreaths; so are livestock and pets. People wear garlands on their heads and around their necks.

All that decorating takes many May blooms. That’s the origin of the phrase, “bringing in the May”; it means picking a lot of flowers – often by the armload.

May baskets are little gifts left (anonymously) on doorsteps. The basket – often just a colored paper cone or decorated pasteboard box – contains a small bouquet of flowers and something sweet to eat (such as cookies or candy). The giver leaves the treats, rings the doorbell, shouts “May basket!” and runs. If the recipient catches the giver in the act, they get a kiss. (Maybe not this particular May Day, but that’s the tradition.)

In the U.S., maypoles may be the best known May Day tradition. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the ancient Celtics danced around a living tree strung with ribbons while praying for good crops.

By the Middle Ages, the maypole had become a wooden pole – usually in the center of the village. The taller the pole, the more dancers could wrap ribbons around it. (That’s another tradition that’s probably being skipped this May Day.)

Instead of dancing with ribbons, bring in the May from your garden and celebrate a beautiful spring.

GENERAL GARDENING

An article about gardening.

Keywords:

gardening Sacramento floral traditions May Day roses gardening history blooms bouquets yellow flowers

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Garden Checklist for week of Jan. 19

Dress warmly in layers – and get to work:

* Apply horticultural oil to fruit trees to control scale, mites and aphids. Oils need 24 hours of dry weather after application to be effective.

* This is also the time to spray a copper-based oil to peach and nectarine trees to fight leaf curl. The safest effective fungicides available for backyard trees are copper soap -- aka copper octanoate -- or copper ammonium, a fixed copper fungicide. Apply either of these copper products with 1% horticultural oil to increase effectiveness.

* Prune, prune, prune. Now is the time to cut back most deciduous trees and shrubs. The exceptions are spring-flowering shrubs such as lilacs.

* Now is the time to prune fruit trees. Clean up leaves and debris around the trees to prevent the spread of disease. (The exceptions are apricot and cherry trees, which are susceptible to a fungus that causes dieback if pruned now. Save those until summer.)

* Prune roses, even if they’re still trying to bloom. Strip off any remaining leaves, so the bush will be able to put out new growth in early spring.

* Clean up leaves and debris around your newly pruned roses and shrubs. Put down fresh mulch or bark to keep roots cozy.

* When forced bulbs sprout, move them to a cool, bright window. Give them a quarter turn each day so the stems will grow straight.

* Browse through seed catalogs and start making plans for spring and summer.

* Divide daylilies, Shasta daisies and other perennials.

* Cut back and divide chrysanthemums.

* Plant bare-root roses, trees and shrubs.

* Transplant pansies, violas, calendulas, English daisies, snapdragons and fairy primroses.

* In the vegetable garden, plant fava beans, head lettuce, mustard, onion sets, radicchio and radishes.

* Plant bare-root asparagus and root divisions of rhubarb.

* In the bulb department, plant callas, anemones, ranunculus and gladioli for bloom from late spring into summer.

* Plant blooming azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons. If you’re shopping for these beautiful landscape plants, you can now find them in full flower at local nurseries.

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