Monthly Garden Checklist
March
On your mark, get ready, GROW! Spring is coming!!!
Waiting for spring is the hardest part of gardening! To pass the time constructively, you need to do a little planning. Knowing when to start your seeds and transplant them outdoors will help to maximize your harvest. There are no hard rules for this, it’s dependent on the climate for your particular area, as well as the weather at the time.
- When the growing cycle for your current vegetables is over, yank ‘em out, cut, and compost. If you’re still waiting on lettuces, carrots, beets, etc., go ahead and leave them in until the weather gets too hot.
manure are good additives.
3. Start seeds indoors, if you haven’t already. Tomatoes, summer squash, melons, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant are a few
examples.
4. Grow seeds indoors for 6-7 weeks and protect from cold nights when you finally plant them in your garden.
5. Start saving clear plastic milk or water bottles to use as mini-greenhouses. Remove their caps and cut off their bottoms to cover
the seedlings when planted in your garden. This will protect them not only from the elements but from ‘critters’ as well.
Successful gardens result from both planning ahead and paying attention throughout the growing season until harvest. The
amount of time and effort you’ll be able to give to your garden this year should determine how extensive it will be.
It’s very hard to resist planting a lot, especially when the seeds are so small and the tiny plants are so cute! Come spring, a lot of us
are eager to overplant, only to be swamped with tomatoes and overwhelmed with zucchini. Limit yourself to the amount of space
and number of plants you’ll be able to take care of well when they’re mature. Then you’ll be pleased with your successes rather
than disappointed with your attempts.
Also, try something new, if just for fun. Adding something new will give you a new adventure. Maybe you might even discover a
new favorite!
Maintenance:
- Harvest peas as they are ready, depending on the variety. Allowing them to mature too fully on the vine will stop further
blossoming.
- Pluck off strawberry blooms through May. This helps to concentrate the plant’s first real burst of fruiting energy into large sweet
berries rather than small tart ones.
- Roses - Fertilize and mulch when there is 4” of growth
- Weed, weed, weed (weeds go in the green waste barrel and NOT in the compost
