In areas where there are cold winters, March is time for gardeners-at-heart to be planning and getting ready to plant the coming summer’s bounty! Your soil should soon be workable for planting your first cool weather seeds and preparing your garden beds.
March Gardening To-Do List
1. As early as possible, think of the veggies and greens you would like to plant this year. Check out online catalogs to get ideas and consider a garden record book with spaces to record the dates of first and last frosts, starting seeds, direct-sowing seeds and other information.
Get your seeds!
It’s not too late!
Keep Monsanto out of your garden when you buy your vegetable seeds.
Many of the old-time garden seed companies have been bought out by the voracious mega-giant Monsanto. Here is a list of those that haven’t been.
Define Your Needs
2. Then think about your family’s veggie needs; decide what and approximately how much to plant to meet it.
I’ve compiled a list of helpful links for you to consult from other knowledgeable gardeners. Be sure to bookmark the ones you find especially helpful.
Layout Your Garden
3. Plan your vegetable garden on paper or use the interactive garden planner and allow for rotating crops.
4. Find out your planting zone with the National Gardening Association’s USDA Hardiness Zone Finder. Not understanding this concept if you are new to gardening is a sure fire way to get disappointed, especially with perennial flowers, shrubs, and herbs.
5. Find your frost-free date in order to know the earliest date to plant in your area.
Think about Tools
Know the tools you’ll need for your projects, and have them ready. You wouldn’t begin a project or class with you children without having all the tools required supplies for the job. The same should be true for your outdoor/garden projects. It would be wasteful and frustrating to get halfway into a project and realize you have to clean up and head into town for ………
First weeks of March:
- When weather permits, empty compost bins and place about a 1 to 2 inch layer of compost over all garden beds.
- Carefully divide & replant perennials as they emerge. Save money by dividing your own perennials (and swapping with friends).
- If you have a frost-free cold frame, plant early spinach, lettuce and other hardy greens (cilantro, beets, chard, kale, mustard).
- March 1-15, begin to sow radish seeds and garlic bulbs tip up {4-6″ deep} directly into soil if it is workable. Within 2-3 weeks you should be able to add spinach, kale, lettuce, cilantro and other cool weather edibles.
radishes grow in very early spring ~ as soon as you can work the soil
It’s traditional to plant potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day, but if your garden soil feels tough like Play-Doh, wait until later to plant [and if it’s like chocolate cake, go ahead]!
Third and Fourth week in March:
You may plant blueberries, strawberries and grapes as soon as the soil is workable.
March 25-31, begin successive sowings of peas, spinach, leaf lettuce, onion sets, turnips and shallots.
Start seeds of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and other warm-season veggies indoors in little peat pots or your own starter kit. They will be placed outdoors after your frost-free date.
Clear away debris from flower beds and cut back any old tops of perennial grasses and plants such as sage, hydrangeas, etc. to allow the new growth to come up cleanly.
I saw new buds on the clematis yesterday. Prune all the dead vines away, but leave these buds which will provide you with with flowers this summer.
For Bulbs:
- Tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths, and crocuses should be beginning to appear now.
- Deadhead and feed spring bulbs after flowering but do not remove leaves until they turn yellow, as that also feeds the bulb for healthy blooms next year.
- Pot up some spring bulbs like hyacinths, daffodils & tulips to bloom indoors. Plant Paper White Narcissus bulbs in gravel & water for fragrant indoor blooms in 6 weeks.
- After Amaryllis finishes blooming, cut old flower but not the leaves. Put in sunny location water & fertilize until end of summer so it will bloom next year.
- Plant summer bulbs such as day lilies, trumpet and Asiatic lilies, and corms of gladiolas.
Acidify Soil:
- Azaleas, Rhododendrons
- Holly
- Blueberries
- Camellia
- Dogwood
- Gardenia
- Lupine
- Hydrangeas – to make pink hydrangeas turn blue (or to keep your blue ones from turning pink), increase the acidity of soil.
- Lily-of-the-Valley
- Magnolia
- Phlox
- Pieris
- Raspberry, Blackberries
- Strawberry
This hydrangea needs more acid to make the flowers blue!
There is more than I can list here that can be accomplished during these warming March days to ready the garden and yard.
Throw on a jacket, your garden clogs, grab your gloves, breathe in deeply, and smile for the gifts from God right there outside your door.
“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.” ~Henry Van Dyke
Christina
Thank you for this Jacque!
Do you plant your onions and potatoes directly in the ground or do you start them before? The Robbs are generously letting me plant at the farm and I was planning on starting them but I have NO ROOM to do so! 🙂 If I can place them in the ground that would be wonderful. Lori said she is starting her’s indoors but we have such a long growing season…
I’d appreciate your thoughts on this 🙂 I MUCH prefer sowing in the ground directly to starting seeds! Though I have started egg plant, Italian tomatoes and peppers because they can take a bit longer to mature.
Jacqueline
Christina,
Hi, there 🙂 Well, I personally start all my potatoes and onions right into the outdoor garden as soon as the soil is workable. I will be planting the seed potatoes with 2 eyes per piece this weekend. the ‘Candy’ onions I ordered will be here in 1-2 weeks and I’ll put them out as soon as they come. If you have them, you can get them in once you have the dirt prepped.
I thought it would be fun to learn to start onions from seed, but I am lazy, I guess 🙂
hope that help! I’ll head over to see the progress on your blog! Blessings to you all.
Tamara
Thank you so much for sharing. I’ve been chomping at the bit, pouring over beautiful seed catalogs and weeding the ground, etc. Hoping to put some spinach and lettuce seedlings in tomorrow!
Lisa
What a helpful post you’ve shared here! Thanks for the links as well as the gorgeous photos. 🙂 While spring and planting season are still a little ways off here in the Cascade foothills, we’re busy gearing up and are looking forward to getting a little dirt underneath the fingernails. Blessings, ~Lisa
Karen
Thanks so much for sharing! You have me stirred to get moving…I even made another order for seeds. 🙂 I went outside yesterday was weeding and tilling my beds. The top 4-5 inches is loose, but underneath that the soil is still frozen. I’m really looking forward to planting. The year before last, I started my seeds indoors at the beginning of February, which was way too early and I had a great germination, but lost a number of plants because I started too early, so this year…I am just starting! 😀 Last year we knew that we wouldn’t have the time to keep up because our daughter was getting married, so this year, I hope to make up for last year, the Lord willing!
Kasey
I love the play-doh and chocolate cake comparisons! That is just exactly how simple I need it broken down…in words a child would understand! Thanks so much for all the great tips! This wanna-be gardener appreciates your wisdom and especially the fact that you share it!
Jacqueline
Oh, Kasey, Please don’t compare yourself to a child! You are SuperWoman…just keep telling yourself, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. ” Lol
Sara Shay @ YourThrivingFamily
Love hydrangeas – thought there is something about the green ones that is appealing to me 🙂
Hoping to get some time this week to do some more futzing in the garden. I am slowly preparing 4×4 plots in the 12×16 area my husband gropher-proofed for me last summer. Though I have a few things I need for fix for our chickens first.
Jacqueline
Sara, I do declare, I think you are a gardening nut like me 🙂 Have fun!!
Rhonda Devine
I love having a garden journal to record bloom times and other things I want to remember like where I planted those lily bulbs last year-lol!
I have kept one for over a decade now and enjoy going back every year and comparing what was happening in the garden:)
Jacqueline
I wish I did a better job of recording things. Last year I forgot where I planted some bulbs until this spring 🙂
Amy
Thanks for this great list! I’m just trying to write all sorts of things down so that I can have plenty of information ready for each season as it comes now that I will have actual land to garden in =)