March feels like it’s starting to get warmer – sometimes! And on the warmer days, get the whole family, and neighbourhood, involved if you can. Even if you have to wear a coat, it’s good to be out in the fresh air and it’s a great time to get the kids involved.
And the oldies can do a little pottering around or sit for ten minutes watching the action.
Gardening in March -Preparation:
If it’s been a very wet or very cold winter, there will probably still be a few winter jobs hanging around. Get them done and dusted this month. Prepare flower and vegetable beds and your herb garden. Many herbs are perennial but may need a little growth encouragement. Pruning off obvious dead wood gives them a chance to grow stronger, and remove any mulch if the soil is warming up.
Flower and vegetable patches can be dug over and raked ready for planting. Don’t dig if the ground is waterlogged. Digging waterlogged soil will destroy it. It tends to dry out in clumps like stone and turns to powder. The voice of experience talking – ahem!
Gardening in March -Planting:
Go through your seeds and sort them in order of planting. If you plant a whole packet in one go, a handy tip is not to use the packet as a row marker – use a wooden stick or something else – because water will wash away the directions that you may want to refer to later. Keep the packet in a separate part of your seed box.
Many seeds you plant now will need to be sown inside, so a bright spot in the house, conservatory or greenhouse is essential. Some can be sown directly outside but always double check on the packet as different varieties vary a lot.
If you’ve been saving cardboard tubes from toilet and kitchen rolls for pots, now’s the time to use them. Try and use degradable pots as much as you can. Not only for the environment but so that you can plant the whole pot and not disturb the roots of your baby plants.
If you’re buying in plants from a local market or garden centre, get them acclimatized before you plunge them into cold ground. Leave outside during the day and bring in at night for a few days or until you feel the weather has warmed up enough. Ready-grown plants have often been grown in greenhouses or polytunnels and need a little TLC for a few days, at least.
Gardening in March -Maintenance:
Make sure any ties that are helping to support small trees and shrubs are not broken or too tight on the stem of the plant. Fix any broken edges. If you have wooden edging round a bed, check it hasn’t rotted anywhere.
Check over lawn areas, but try not to walk on the grass too much if it’s very wet. Remove weeds if necessary, although a few wildflowers scattered around look beautiful on a lawn.
Happy Gardening!
Linda x
P.S. This article appears in the must-have Garden Journal available on Etsy now 🙂
My Garden Journal
This handy garden journal is printable and usable every year. Although buying expensive journals in bookstores is delicious, printing out just what you need when you need it can be a great help to your pocket and also the resources of the planet. Not all journals you buy are recycled or recyclable after all.
A simple document folder is all you’ll need to keep your pages safe.
Every month has some gardening job suggestions for temperate climate dwellers.
Adjust to your region and weather conditions as you need to. Gardening has to be a flexible hobby simply because we can’t control the weather!
There are also a few handy gardening tips and resources you may find helpful. Keep the journal on your desktop or whichever digital space is most easy to access and print out the ‘notes’ pages as and when you need them. In busy months, print out more of the same!
healthylivingbooks.org 