My March Gardening Calendar

My March Gardening Calendar

Planning and planting in early season

Whether March comes in like a lion or a lamb, it invariably comes with plenty of mud, cold, and all the weather you can name. March is an exciting month for the gardener because you can see the ground, and we are teased by a few warm days that remind us spring is right around the corner. As winter draws to an end, it's tempting to go out on the first nice day and start planting all the seeds you have. Unfortunately, Mother Nature usually has different plans for our warm season favorites like Petunias and Peppers.

If you are itching to get your hands back in the soil like I am, it just takes a little bit of knowledge about your climate and the types of seeds you can plant. Something about March always makes me want to get outside and organize my work area for the upcoming year. Usually, in October I am ready to burn the fields down, so cleaning and sharpening my tools is low on the priority list.

On those warm days, I like to head out to the barn, look through my supplies, and make a list (usually on my phone) of what I need more of, such as fertilizers, potting soil, tomato stakes, twine, plant markers, and new gloves. I enjoy going to the garden centers BEFORE the mad rush of people hits the stores.

If you have been gardening for a while, you probably have a stockpile of seeds leftover from past years. I know I do! Before you head to the garden center, look through those seeds and see what you have. Don't worry if you aren't into collecting seeds; the stores are already filling up with lots of varieties for you to choose from. Leftover seeds are most viable for 3-4 years. As the seed gets older, the germination rate will drop, just something to keep in mind.

The next thing I do is thoroughly clean all my tools from the last season. Sanitation is key to reducing the spread of disease in any garden. This includes hand tools and long-handled tools such as shovels and hoes.

Tools can make or break a garden or your back, no exaggeration, and once you have the right tools, you want to keep them in tip-top condition.

Here are 3 tools I can't live without in my garden.

1. Tiller or something to break the soil up with. Depending on your garden size, this could be a hoe, a mantis tiller, or a full-size tiller. This is the perfect time to beat the rush and get your hoe sharpened or tiller serviced; most hardware stores will do this for you.

2. Digging tool. If you have been to any of my workshops before, you have heard me talk about my favorite digging tool, the soil knife. Soil knives are so versatile I can't garden without one. They're perfect for planting, weeding, surface cultivating, and making holes to plant in. If you don't own one, go buy one, you'll thank me later.

3. Invest in a quality hose. There is nothing more annoying to me than fighting a kinked-up garden hose. A few years ago, I finally upgraded all of our hoses around the farm to my favorite brand at Lowe's. Here is the link. Don't be fooled into believing the marketing lies; NO-kink means it will still kink.

Once my seeds and tools are ready for the season, I move on to my pruning and bed clean-up chores. What to prune and when is a big topic and deserves an entire blog post to itself, so for the meantime, I will speak in generalities. And for ease of conversation, when I use the term pruning, I am referring to shrubs. A good rule of thumb for knowing when to prune is that the shrub is pruned in the opposite season it blooms. Lilacs, Forsythia, and Azaleas are examples of shrubs you should wait to prune until after they bloom. Evergreens, roses, Spirea, and some Hydrangea are okay to trim up now. Check out this video I did a few years ago on cutting back rose bushes.

I leave my perennials up for the wildlife to enjoy for the winter, and since I mostly garden with perennials, my beds can look bare during the winter if I cut everything back in the fall. I also think cleaning up the bed in early spring is easier than in the fall. Maybe because I am rested and ready for the new year. So don't worry if you didn't do fall clean-up; now is a great time to cut back things like sedum, daylilies, echinacea, and ornamental grasses.

After I clean up the loose leaves, I put a thin layer of mulch or compost on my landscape beds and garden. This helps with early-season weed pressure and is much more enjoyable to put down when it's not 80 degrees in May.

Once my beds are cleaned up, I am usually itching to get plants in the ground. Here in southeast Ohio, we are in hardiness Zone 6a, and our last frost date is generally around the beginning of May. If you don't know your zone, it's easy to find online; just click here, enter your zip code, and voila, you have your zone.

You might have heard that you should plant potatoes on St. Patty's Day. This is actually true. As a gardener, March 17th is burned in my brain, not just for the green beer but because I know I can start putting a few seeds in the ground. The vegetable seeds I typically direct sow during this time are snow peas, beets, kale, leeks, lettuce, and carrots. The flower seeds are bachelor buttons, nigella, larkspur, calendula, and forget-me-nots. In my previous blog post, you can find more information on a list of cool-season seeds that would be good to start in March.

One important thing to note is if the soil is hard to work, this means, even slightly frozen or muddy, you probably shouldn't be planting. If the ground is hard to work, the seeds aren't going to enjoy it any more than you are. Waiting a couple of days until the soil dries out can mean preventing your seeds from rotting or not germinating.

March is also the time to start warm-season seeds inside if you want to have plants ready to set out after our frost-free date. If you are starting seeds inside, you can start basically anything at this point. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumber, squash, herbs, greens, and flowers.

I am certainly not trying to add to your busy overflowing to-do list but reminding you there are a few things you can get outside and do on those warm days. Most of all, enjoy the beginning of spring, get outside, take one task at a time and soak up the spring air, or say the hell with it and hire a landscape crew to do it all.

For the love of flowers and ourselves,