March Gardening Tips- Gardening Tasks & What to Plant in March.

Spring is just around the corner and arriving rather quickly!! Didn’t we just celebrate the New Year? Life has been resurrected, bringing life back into what was dormant. Mother Nature is truly waking up from her sleepy slumber. It gets pretty busy around here in the gardens of Life Beyond The City. In fact, I call it “the spring hustle and bustle dance in the garden”. It may seem like there’s a mile long list of chores to do, but it’s also a creative time of the year in the garden by designing and arranging a color scheme of the annuals flowers. Think of it like a blank canvas and your painting the garden canvas with shades of green leaves and hues with the flowers. Pretty soon you’ll have a garden masterpiece. I’d like to share a few gardening tasks that I have in my yearly gardening task calendar for March.

Garden Maintenance

• Plant cool season vegetables that were sown indoors during the winter.
• Sow warm-season vegetables like eggplant and peppers indoors, see below for details. Check February garden tasks for detailed estimated sowing dates for outdoors and links for your forecast frost dates.
• Add organic matter to the garden beds.
• Before planting vegetables, do a soil test to see what nutrients you need to add. you can save money by adding what the soil needs, and get better yields, and we all want better yields, right?
• If you have roses, fruit trees, kiwis, evergreens, strawberries, and cane berries, this is the time to start the fertilizing schedule. Citrus plants are heavy nitrogen feeds. Mature trees need 1 1/2 lb. Nitrogen per year. Divide this amount by 4 and apply each quarter on month apart for 4 months beginning of March.
• Fertilize Daphne and Camellia with NPK bloom.
• Fertilize Azaleas and Rhododendrons after bloom.
• Spring Boost! If your cabbages, purple sprouting broccoli, kale, or overwintered onions or garlic have yellowing leaves, it’s a sure sign that they could use an early spring boost. To perk them up, apply a balanced fertilizer this month.
• Roses: I’m thinking of adding one or two in the garden. It’s not a Potager (kitchen) garden without a water feature or a rose plant spotted here and there. If you currently have roses. Spray roses with a fungicide to prevent black spot and powdery mildew.
• Spring weeds: pull weeds picking by hand or by hoe. If picking by hand you can give the weeds to the hens or feed it to the compost pile. It can be a constant battle of spring weeds, it’s better to start early before the weeds bolt to seeds.
• Clean-up: remove mummy fruit and blighted limbs on a stone fruit tree to reduce brown rot. remove and destroy fallen leaves to reduce peach curls.
• Mulch cane berries, cut out all old canes and reset the new canes in twines.
• Check irrigation systems and perform maintenance as need.
• “Spring showers bring May flowers”. With rainy days in late winter and spring, there will be more pools of standing water, a breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Eliminate any container of standing water as best as you can.
• Herbs- Encourage a fresh cluster of fragrant leaves of perennial herbs such as, rosemary, oregano, sage, and thyme, by pruning them back before new growth starts. This treatment also helps keep plants compact and an attractive shape. With perennials that die right back, such as mint and fennel, clear away any of last years dead stems to make way for new shoots. Divide and replant herbs.
• The days are getting longer, to prevent sunburn and borers problems, painted young trees trunks with equal parts of water and white latex paint 1:1 ratio.
• Spray all fruit tree, nuts, roses, with 50% wettable copper powder. See Guidelines for applying Copper Sulfate.

WHAT TO PLANT OUTDOOR IN MARCH

• potted roses, shrubs, and trees.
• Grapes, cane berries, and rhubarb.
• Flowers: Below 2000 ft. canterbury bells, forget-me-nots, foxgloves (poisonous), pansies, primula, and other available perennials.
• Above 2000 ft. you can still plant flowering sweet pea seeds.
• Sow from seed outdoor.: radish, lettuce, chard, and snap beans.
• seed and renovate the lawn.

WHAT TO PLANT INDOOR IN MARCH

• Sow Indoor, greenhouse, or cold frame: hardy annuals from seed such as delphinium (poisonous), nemesia, mathiola (stock).
• Below 2000 ft. sow eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, all melons, and squash family.
• Above 2000 ft. Sow lettuce and cabbage family; broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, collard greens, mustard, Chinese cabbage, turnips, radish, and or horseradish.

Don’t forget, even the hardy crops planted out now can be damaged by severe frost. Always check the weather forecast. Clear any heavy snow on the greenhouse, tunnels, and cold frames to prevent its weight from damaging them. Find the late frost date and your plant zone by zip code to help plan your garden.

Guidelines on Applying Copper Sulfate

Copper Sulfate occurs naturally in the animals and plant nutrition had has many uses in the garden. If can be used as a fungicide, it controls leaf spots, apple scab, blights, mildew, and other annoying fungal and bacterial disease. Copper sulfate mixed with water and lime becomes Bordeaux mixture that helps protect plants from a fungus disease attack.

Timing is an important key when applying copper sulfate

Copper Sulfate spray is applied during the dormant season of the fruit trees; generally in the winter months of November through February. I personally like to apply the first treatment in November, and then again in February. The second application may be eliminated if the season has been dry. However, excessive rainfall in the spring may require a third application before the bloom stage. Below are some tips on when to apply the final copper sulfate spray.

Stone Fruits: fixed copper when buds are swollen and starting to show the first color to control brown rot, peach curl, Pseudomonas, blossom and canker infections.

Apples: When apple buds first show signs of green. Repeat spray every 10 days until bloom where scab is a problem.

Roses: Check roses for black spots, mildew, and rust and spray if needed.

Watch out for early signs of powdery mildew on grapes, currents, gooseberries, roses, and other ornamental plants. Treat at 2″-4″ of growth if needed. Apply Sulfer or potassium bicarbonate when the temperature is below 90 degrees.

Considerations and Precautions

Before begging any fungicide treatments, refer to the instructions on the packaging label.

Copper Sulfate is corrosive to the eyes and skin and can cause irritation and burning to the epidermis. To prevent exposure, wear safety goggles, chemical resistant rubber gloves, a long sleeve shirt, and pants when working with the fungicide.

I hope you have found the information that I have experienced over the years are helpful. I’d love to hear how your garden is coming along, don’t hesitate to share your experience. Happy Spring everyone, let us get the spring hustle and bustle dance started in the garden. Music, please…