March Garden Chores

Here are garden tips and schedule of tasks for March:

Mulch: Be sure to leave the mulch covering everything through this month. Even when it is tempting to pull it aside on a sunny day, it should be kept in place until we are past the frosts. This is especially true for roses; they will grow happily beneath the protective mulch during this time.

Check for frost-heaved plants, reset them in the ground.

Pruning

Clematis: Cut back all growth to a pair of strong buds 6-8in (15-20cm) above soil level, before growth begins in early spring. This is for type 2 and 3 which are the late flowering types such as Jackmanii. If you have Clematis montana, or a spring flowering type 1, do minimal pruning of dead parts only and renovate cutting back 6-12in from the base after flowering.

Remember: if shrubs bloom in spring on old wood, wait til after blooming to prune; if they bloom on new wood, you can prune them now.

Cultivating:

many parts of Ohio have clay soil, and it is often very wet in March, so check the soil before digging, cultivating, tilling. Simply make a little ball of it in your palm- if it wads up and sticks together it is too wet, if it is still fairly crumbly- you can work the soil.

Garden tip: if you add amendments such as compost, peatmoss, gypsum, it makes the soil more friable and less compact. Raised beds are sometimes helpful to allow better drainage when one has wet heavy soils.

Remember that heavy soil if worked too early will have clods of compacted soil that are hard to break up all season. Friable soil is necessary for successful seed starting. Rake the ground smooth after tilling or spading up.

Lawns can be seeded once the ground is thawed.

Have your soil tested or do-it-yourself with a soil testing kit. This way you can figure just what fertilizers and amendments you need for the season.

You can order beneficial insects now, from Gardens Alive:

• Ladybugs to control aphids.
• Beneficial nematodes to protect root crops.
• Green Lacewings eggs
• Trichogramma wasps control many damaging insects.

Tools:

time to pull out the tools and make sure everything is in good working order. Tune ups for mowers, replacement blades, etc.

Do you have the tools you will need to garden with this season? Tool Checklist.

Flower Bulbs

You fall planted bulbs are flowering this month, be sure to give them a shot of fertilizer as they are starting to show growth and bloom.

Vegetable planting:

beets, broccoli plants, cabbage plants, chard, kale, radish, spinach, turnips, and lettuce in the second half of the month.

Garden tip: Mark the rows by stretching a string tightly strung between two stakes along each seed furrow. Lettuce is often good in blocks of seeding.

Annuals to plant now

Hardy annuals can be direct sown into the garden. Be sure your sweet peas are in by St. Pat’s Day ( March 17 ), and Shirley poppies benefit from a light frost or two- so seed them in now.

Here is a large list to try and more from GardenWeb. I have personally tried a number on this list- violas ( johnny jumps ups) are successfully planted now, nigellas and many of the others, some I can’t vouch for. I have a page of much more info on annuals on the site.

Roses

This is a good month to plant bare root roses

Annuals

Thompson & Morgan Illustrated List of Hardy Annuals

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Garden tip: Some of these hardy annuals are California natives- they grow as cool weather flowers here in Ohio, but once the summer heat turns up they wilt away or are done. They are useful for early color and in a succession type of plan – like vegetables- you can plant other crops for once they vacate the area, or you can grow a second succession. The annual Iberis is an example of this.

Trees

Prune trees before new growth starts.
Fertilize deciduous, broad-leaved and needle-leaved evergreen trees and shrubs.