May garden chores

Region's Last Frost Date -- Plant warm-season annual flowers, herbs, and vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, basil, marigolds, petunias, and the like) as long as your region's last frost date has passed. (It's as late as May 30 at higher inland elevations.) If you're unsure, give your local garden center a quick call.

Those warm-season annuals include plants for containers, pots, windowboxes, and planters. Remove any cool-season flowers you may already have there. Work in a slow-release fertilizer. If there are plants overwintering in the container and you're keeping them, simply work the slow-release fertilizer into the top inch or so of soil.

After the frost date, plant tender summer bulbs outdoors, including glads, cannas, dahlias, and tuberous begonias.

Plant seeds for corn, green beans, squash, cucumbers, okra, melons, sweet potatoes and other heat-lovers once the soil has warmed to 60 degrees F. That's warm enough for you to walk on it comfortably barefoot, and is usually two weeks after your region's last frost date.

Planting Trees and Shrubs -- Continue to plant container-grown trees, shrubs, perennial herbs, and perennial flowers. You can try your hand at planting bare-root trees and shrubs now, but at this late date, they're less likely to thrive.

Deadheading 101 -- Continue to deadhead.

Continue feeding roses, either with chemicals or organic fertilizers, such as compost or fish emulsion.

After that frost date has passed, you can move your houseplants outdoors to a shady spot. It's a good time to repot and fertilize them to ready them for a summer growth spurt.

Keep new plantings of trees, shrubs, and others well-watered.

Annual Stakes and Supports -- Stake tall plants that will need it now while they're just a foot or so high.