March is an exciting time in the backyard. The birds sing, the borders become more colorful daily as shrubs and trees break bud, spring bulbs available up in the gentle sunshine along with the greenhouse extends into full production. Ultimately we believe we can start really gardening again. Sharpen your pruners, discover your hoe and prepare for some fresh air!
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Putney Design
Plan for apple pie with proper pruning. I am not certain if I love the apple blossoms or the actual apples more, but I do know that without proper pruning, the trees will not be as vigorous nor create as much fruit as they could.
Corona Tools
1-Inch Bypass Pruner – $31.57
This is the last month to prune fruit trees, so sharpen those pruners. Entire books are written on how to prune apple trees, but here are the fundamentals of pruning a mature tree.
Remove, dead, diseased or dying branches.Remove branches that are growing toward the trunk, straight up or straight down. Remove branches that are rubbing against each other. Thin out the canopy enough to allow light to filter even when it’s leafed out.
Putney Design
You will notice two different kinds of bud:
Sharp, pointed ones, which eventually become leaves and branchesFatter, darker buds, which form fruitIs your mouth watering yet?
Jocelyn H. Chilvers
Watch out for more weeds. It’s a sad fact that weeds appear to be the fastest-growing plants in the garden this time of year. Make sure you spend some time each week removing them before they set seed.
Le jardinet
Plan for next year’s daffodils. After weeks of watching the stems get taller as well as the buds get fatter, we can finally see golden daffodils fill the backyard. If the flowers have faded, cut off the dead blooms but leave the foliage to die down naturally, so the bulbs will be even bigger and better next year.
Missouri Botanical Garden
Sow your seeds. This is the main month for beginning vegetables, herbs and summer annuals from seed. Milder places probably got a jump-start in February, but experience has told me I have to be patient till March arrives.
Renee’s Garden
Check the seed sticks. Read on the seed packets to see what the ideal temperatures would be for germination. I’ll often use heat mats to provide a gentle increase, but many times a sunny windowsill will do. Start basil, parsley, lettuce, brassicas and hardy annuals such as cosmos (shown) and marigolds this way.
Niki Jabbour
Add security for tender crops. Salad leaves and lettuces may also be grown outside in a cold frame or directly sown in the garden with protection against a floating row cover (shown), based on your climate.
Should you pay the soil with black plastic for a week or two prior to planting, it will be several degrees warmer and receive off your seeds to an even faster start.
Laara Copley-Smith Garden & Landscape Design
Sow root plants out. Root plants don’t like disturbance and have to be sown directly into the ground. Carrots, parsnips and early beetroot have become this way. Radishes are fast and simple too and will be ready to harvest in just a few weeks.
Le jardinet
Harvest rhubarb. We’ve got a serious overabundance of rhubarb — or so my family tells me. Since deer and rabbits leave it alone, I comprise many clumps of it in the backyard border for its ornamental value alone.
For the most part I harvest and then freeze the stems from the end of this month through midsummer, but I like to let just one plant to go into seed. Who can resist this play?
Fight the slugs. It’s time to undertake these slimy backyard visitors.
A well-meaning friend once suggested I just select off the slugs and feed them to the birds. Sounds fair enough, doesn’t it? Except she had a very small pocket garden and I have 5 acres.
Niki Jabbour
My birds are well fed — trust me — but I get tired of playing hopscotch as I navigate my way from the rear door into the vegetable garden trying to not step on all the slugs. I am also interested in feeding my family than the overstuffed robins, so I resort to organic slug control.
Amazon
Sluggo Plus Molluscicide – $25
My favorite method of slug control for ornamentals, edibles and containers would be Sluggo Plus. It’s safe around kids and pets but kills slugs, snails, earwigs, pill bugs and other molluscs.
Sprinkling diatomaceous earth on the ground and setting beer traps are popular methods for controlling slugs.
Le jardinet
Housekeeping for the birds. We love to encourage birds to see our backyard, particularly swallows, which help keep the mosquito population in check. March is the time to wash out their nesting boxes, to get them ready for the new brood.
Are you ready for spring? Watch more regional backyard guides