‘Plant in haste, repent at leisure’ seems to be the main message of the May missive from the Ministry of Agriculture. Indeed, it compares the ‘fickle and fitful’ month to a newlywed maid, married in haste but that doesn’t seem appropriate for these PC times!
You can view the full Allotment and Garden Guide for May 1945 here.
Despite its unpredictability, May is a busy month in the garden with important jobs to be done, including thinning seedlings, sowing winter greens, and planting Brussels sprouts and tomatoes. In the poetic words of the Ministry of Agriculture, lettuce, spinach and onion seedlings should be thinned when the weather is cool ‘with a promise of warm showers to come’. Brussels should be planted 2 ½ feet apart in May to June, which is irrelevant as I can’t get anyone in my family to eat them.
Tomatoes, on the other hand, are the perennially popular garden crop - they were ‘No 1 with war-time gardeners and allotment holders’, and their colourful fruit is still frequently found in allotments, gardens, balconies and window boxes. The Ministry of Agriculture was particularly concerned by what appears to be a black market trade in dodgy tomato plants: ‘some amateurs have been taken in every year by unscrupulous people who sell them tomato plants far too early for planting outside’. This may seem small-fry compared with the threat of enemy invasion, but planting your tomatoes before the end of May is one of the biggest mistakes a gardening novice can make, as plants left out in the cold will turn a ‘dark, unhealthy colour’. However, if you plant at the right time and follow these detailed instructions, you should have a juicy crop to see you through the summer!
