By Oscar Phillips, For The Guardian

Now is the time to divide crowded clumps of early perennials as they finish flowering

Roses: Continue your regular program of fertilizing, watering and spraying to control insects. Remove suckers that sprout from beneath the graft union. Continue your regular program of spraying to control "black spot" fungus. Remove spent flowers and diseased leaves. Remember to seal all wounds with pruning paint or sealant.

Flowers and bulbs: Continue to plant summer annuals such as marigolds, impatiens, zinnias, phlox, petunias and verbena. Apply organic mulch to plants in order to retain moisture and reduce weed growth. This is the time to check for insects on your flowering plants and bulbs.

Flowering trees and shrubs: Continue your program of fertilizing and spraying against pests and disease, especially aphids and white flies. This is a good time to plant palms. Place organic mulch around these plants and feed with a good soluble flower fertilizer (18-24-16). Remember to add the spreader-sticker.

Vegetables and herbs: Continue to harvest your early crops of vegetables. Continue to transplant your young seedlings and protect them from the attacks of slugs and snails. This is a good month to plant beans, okra, pumpkin, sweet potatoes and tomatoes. This is also an ideal month to plant seeds of herbs which will provide a valuable companion to your vegetable plants.

Fruit trees: Now that your fruit trees have completed flowering and they begin to shed unwanted blossoms, spray them to control insects and pests attacking your young fruits. Provide your fruit trees — except citrus with lots of organic mulch — spread out one foot from the tree trunk to three feel all around. Citrus trees do no appreciate having their feet covered as they will suffer from root rot.

Lawn: You should begin your regular program of watering as this is a dry month. Continue your program of weed control and look out for chinch bugs and other lawn pests. Continue to spot spray to control nut grass in your lawn and continue your program to eradicate weeds. Continue to mow your lawn to a height of 1 1/2 to 2 inches and fertilize your lawn with a soluble fertilizer of 36-6-6.

Watch for: Aphids, mealy bugs and thrips. Spray with an insecticide containing Diazinon, Black Leaf 40, Malathion or Orthene Systemic Insect Spray and remember to add the spreader-sticker of two teaspoons of dishwashing liquid to every gallon of solution.

Slugs and snails: These pests will attack your young plants and seedlings.

Control: Use Ortho Bug Geta Plus or Mesurol pellets. Spreading the bait in the evening as these pests come out to feed will kill and control them. Remember to protect the bait from your pets and young children.

Planting guide for MAy

Vegetables: Beans (lima, pole, snap), cabbage, cantaloupe, collard, corn, cucumber, eggplant, okra, peppers (hot and sweet), sweet potatoes, radish, summer squash, tomato, watermelon.

Flowers: Aster, balsam, bachelor's button, begonia, candyturf, celosia, cosmos, cornflower, dahlia, daisy, gaillardia, marigold, periwinkle, portulaca, Queen Anne's Lace, verbena, zinnia.

Grasses: Centipede, St. Augustine, Zoysia

* For help with your garden problems, write to Garden Korner, P. O. Box N-3011, Nassau, Bahamas.