May is the month of garden promise. Summer veggies are in flower. Small fruits cover the branches of fruit trees. Pollinators visit blooms, doing the business that ensures we’ll be harvesting very soon. It’s hard to stay indoors, so put on your garden hat and head into the garden.

As exciting as it is to plant, take the time to prepare the garden first. Plant in enormous pots or into raised beds, both of which allow you to make the best soil mixture and water as much as necessary for a harvest, without wasting water on plants that don’t need it.

Building and planting your first raised beds? See how at tinyurl.com/buildraisedbeds and tinyurl.com/plantraisedbeds.

Revitalize last year’s raised beds by layering on compost, worm castings and organic vegetable fertilizer.

What is the best irrigation for raised vegetable beds? I like Netafim EZ inline drip with emitters spaced every 6 inches along the lines. Lay out the irrigation in straight lines, 6 to 8 inches apart. Plant, then mulch with straw.

What to plant now: tomato, cucumber, squash (winter and summer), pumpkins, melon, okra, basil, marigolds, eggplant, carrots, radishes, beets, beans, tomatillo, peppers, cilantro.

Now that the air and the soil are warm, start those summer herbs and vegetables from seed — whether they are your first crop of the year or your second — they’ll pop up and grow at breakneck speed.

Are you new to vegetable gardening? Or have you had trouble starting seeds in the past? Enroll in Easy Seed Starting Workshop Online to learn the best, easiest, and most successful way to start seeds. Visit learn.waterwisegardener.com.

Plant seedlings now, too, the smallest seedlings you can find. Start with tiny plants that are young, to spread out wide roots and long branches covered in lots of leaves. Those leaves power the plants to make the flowers that become the “fruits” we eat.

Space out plants. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a small seedling will stay small. Tomato plants grow 3 to 6 feet wide. A pepper plant can take up 2 feet easily, as can an eggplant. Pumpkin and watermelon plants sprawl over 30 square feet easily, while zucchini plants grow 3 feet across. Planting too close creates a giant overgrown jungle where plants grow into and over each other. Those are the conditions that encourage disease and pests. They aren’t fun to work in, either.

What is a fruit? A fruit is the part of a plant that contains seeds. Peaches, grapes and strawberries are fruits. So are tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants and peppers! What other edibles are fruits?

DO NOT plant tomato, pepper, eggplant, tomatillo or potato plants in the same soil where any of these plants grew last year. All are vulnerable to infection by the same set of microscopic pathogens that live in the soil. Alternate with plants in the cucumber family, annual flowers, herbs, okra, beans or anything else that is not in the tomato family.

No room for raised beds?

Issue: Squashes start to develop but stop at a few inches long and then turn brown and rot. Those squashes were not pollinated.

Fix: Hand pollinate until there are enough male flowers to handle the job themselves.

Issue: Soft brown spots at the bottom end of squashes or tomatoes.

Fix: This is called blossom end rot and results from uneven watering. Adapt your watering so soil always stays evenly damp. Straw mulch helps, too.

Issue: Lower leaves on tomato plants turn brown and die.

Fix: Those leaves touched the soil and became infected with soil fungus, virus or molds. Remove leaves low enough to touch the soil.

Issue: White powdery film on leaf surfaces.

Fix: Powdery mildew, the result of poor air circulation and too much humidity. Selectively remove branches or leaves to increase airflow through your plants. Rinse leaves in the morning to wash away mildew spores. Do it early so leaves dry by the afternoon.

Issue: Newly planted seedlings eaten to the nubs.

Fix: Check at night and early morning for snails or slugs. Check the undersides of the leaves for green worms. Once you identify the problem, find the most appropriate and least toxic treatment.

Do not use: salt, oil, gasoline, Epsom salts, dish soap in your garden. These products cause serious damage to your plants and your garden soil.

To prune or not to prune tomato plants? Experts say there’s no reason to and several reasons not to. Contrary to legend, pruning does not increase production (why would it? Leaves power the plant, so when you remove leaves, you remove the fruiting power). Pruning leaves fruits exposed to sunscald. Do remove branches selectively to increase airflow and reduce mildew. Use your fingers to break off branches and wash your hands between plants so you don’t spread diseases from one to the next.

All the summer and fall fruits are developing now: stone fruits, apples, pears, figs, pomegranates, pineapple, guava, persimmon and so much more. It’s so much fun to watch them grow!

Water stone fruits, apples, and pears deeply and regularly through the growing season. Remember to fertilize them with organic, granular, all-purpose fruit tree fertilizer. Follow label directions.

Water figs, pomegranate and pineapple guava only once every few weeks — deeply each time. There’s no need to fertilize these waterwise fruits.

Thin any tiny stone fruits (nectarine, apricots, etc.), apples and pears before they reach marble size. Leave one fruit every four to six inches along the branches. Put the excess fruits in the green waste.

Curled and disfigured leaves on peaches and nectarines are peach leaf curl, caused by a fungus. There’s no treatment now. Wait until the tree is dormant next fall and winter, then spray with horticultural oil and a copper-based fungicide.

Pick fruits as they ripen — before critters get them. Pick up fallen fruits and set traps for rats.

Continue watering and fertilizing citrus and avocado. Water under the entire canopy to wet surface roots, and water a long time to wet deep roots.

Disfigured citrus leaves are likely caused by citrus leaf miner, a pest. There’s nothing to be done about it. The leaves look ugly, but fruiting isn’t affected. DO NOT cut off the ugly leaves. That would stimulate the tree to grow new leaves, which are the favorite habitat of leaf miners, so the problem would only get worse.

Bananas and other subtropical fruits are the thirstiest fruiting plants. Water once a week or more, deeply each time. Pile on the mulch to keep moisture in the soil.

Native perennials and subshrubs — or bushes — continue to bloom, like monkey flower, native peonies (yes, there are native peonies), buckwheat, black sage, Pacific pea, blue dicks, blue-eyed grass, and more. Take a hike and take some photos. Plan now to plant when the weather cools in fall.

Plant annual flowers in your vegetable garden: marigolds, calendula, zinnias, sunflowers and more. They attract pollinators and beneficial insects.

Inland, stop planting drought tolerant shrubs and trees, including natives, now. Continue planting in coastal gardens.

Deadhead spent flowers on roses and spring perennials to encourage one more set of blooms before the hot weather. Always cut at a branching point. Never leave a stub.

Frilly-flowered, hybrid orchid cactuses (Epiphyllum) are blooming now. These are epiphytic cactuses, descendants decedents of plants originally from Central and South America.

Lawns are the thirstiest, most resource-intensive and high maintenance plants in our gardens. This is a great time to prep for removing your lawn. Plan now to solarize starting in July.

Plant bromeliads for texture, color and interest. Many bromeliads are terrestrial epiphytes that do great in the ground, or in pots sunk into garden beds. Crumble Mosquito Bits granules into the water that collects in the center of their leaves.

What could be easier than growing a Pelargonium? These “geraniums” are native to South Africa where they tolerate heat, sun, lean soil and dry conditions. Modern hybrids bloom nearly year-round in shades of pink to white, red to purple. Many have fragrant leaves. All are wonderful in pots and in garden beds.

Holes in leaves? Plants grow many, many, many leaves — a few holes may be ugly but aren’t a problem for the plant. Just leave them alone.

Spray whiteflies and aphids off with a sharp stream of water. Their soft bodies can’t withstand the impact of the spray. Repeat every few days for several weeks to interrupt their reproductive cycle.

Eliminate ants to control aphids, mealy bugs, and scale. Ants “farm” these bugs by moving them around the garden and harvesting the sweet “honeydew” they excrete. It is the perfect ant food.

Got gophers? Protect new plants by planting into gopher baskets. Line the undersides of raised beds with hardware cloth. Catch tunneling gophers with Gopher Hawk traps.

Fungus gnats in houseplants are pesky but don’t damage plants. Give your plants an outdoor vacay now that it’s warm at night. Native predators will take care of the gnats for you.

Drought, drought, drought. Adapt your garden to use less water. It’s better for the plants, it’s better for the garden. It’s better for us all.

Maintain your irrigation system. Turn on each zone and check for leaks, breaks, etc. Check the irrigation clock to be sure each zone is set with the correct run time and run days.

Replace overhead spray irrigation with in-line drip. Inline drip uses about half as much water as overhead spray.

Put a bucket in your shower and bath to collect water as it heats up.

Cover the soil with a 3- or 4-inch-thick layer of mulch, leaving a bare sunny spot for ground-dwelling native bees. These bees are important pollinators in gardens and for native plants; they rarely sting.

Use rock mulch for succulents, wood-based mulch for nonsucculent ornamental plants, and straw (not hay) on vegetable gardens.

The goal of irrigating is to wet roots, so water long enough to get water down to the root zone — with drip irrigation that could take an hour or two. Stick your fingers down into the soil to be sure it is wet as deep as the roots go. Wait to water again until the soil dries out.

Since vegetables need much more water than ornamental plants, put them on separate irrigation zones. Stone fruits and apples go on their own zone. Citrus go on yet another zone.

Run irrigation before 6 a.m., before peak weekday water demands. Drip can run at night, but not overhead spray. Wet leaves in the cool hours are susceptible to molds and mildew.

Fruit trees do really well on grey water that comes from your washing machine, sink or bath. Do not use grey water on vegetables. See how at tinyurl.com/greyh20.

Sterman is a waterwise garden designer and writer and the host of “A Growing Passion” on KPBS television. She runs Nan Sterman’s Garden School at learn.waterwisegardener.com. More information is at agrowingpassion.com and waterwisegardener.com.

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