Garden notes for March

March is the time when your garden will really start motoring, providing we have seasonal weather. So it is a busy time preparing for the coming months. Be warned though, don’t get too far ahead or your plants will pay the penalty.

Many vegetable crops can be sown this month. It is a good idea, if you can, to warm the ground up by using garden fleece or cloches. Other, more tender plants like tomatoes, sweet peppers, cucumbers, aubergines, and globe artichokes may be sown in a frost-free greenhouse. In addition all the useful herbs like parsley, chives, fennel and marjoram can be sown outdoors.

Early spring is the ideal time to plant and/or to divide herbaceous plants. In so doing you will help the older plant to rejuvenate itself and to give you a much better plant for the summer, as well as pleasing friends and neighbours with the spare plants you don’t want.

Start to water house plants, but only sparingly until they come into growth. Then start them with a weak soluble fertiliser.

Make sure you have had your garden machinery serviced and ready for use. When the weather is appropriate, start to mow the lawn. Set the blades on ‘high’ for the first few cuts. There will probably be excess moss in the lawn, so it is beneficial to get rid of it by using a scarifier as it will allow the grass to grow more vigorously.

Start leeks under glass for pricking out and transplanting at the end of the month
Salad crops such as lettuce can be started for transplanting once they have established themselves. Put them into the soil that you have warmed up under cloches or fleece.

Pansies and violas can be sown now for a show later in the summer.

You should get your seed potatoes ‘chitted’, by putting them in egg trays in a frost free place and exposing them to light to get the first shoots greened up. If you are daring, plant early varieties of potato but be sure to keep an eye out for frost warnings and cover any leaf shoots before the frost comes down.

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