5 Gardening Jobs for March
March has arrived and with it, the promise of spring! The air is warming, the sun feels wonderful on our faces, and more importantly, it’s time to get sowing those seeds! Depending on where in the UK you live, March is the perfect time to start off some seeds indoors on a windowsill, or in a greenhouse or polytunnel if you have one. Check out my blog post ‘Seeds to sow in March’ for more information about what you can get sowing this month.
The warmer weather of March means that we gardeners need to get cracking with our to do lists to make sure everything is prepared and ready for the coming months when we will be planting out our carefully nurtured seedlings and carefully sowing our favourite vegetable and flower seeds directly into the ground. With longer daylight hours we have more time to be outside in, whether at the allotment or in your garden, here are 5 things you can do this month to get ready for the coming growing season.
My allotment in late March 2023
Finish preparing your beds.
If you’re anything like me you may have completely neglected to mulch in the autumn and winter months and now be panicking that putting this job off will put your beds and plants at a disadvantage…but don’t worry, I forget to mulch in the autumn most years and my plants do just fine! In fact, while most people mulch in the autumn and winter months of the year to supress weed growth, retain moisture and soil temperature and to protect perennial plants, the RHS recommend spring as the another great time to mulch your garden or allotment beds. Mid to late spring is an ideal time to mulch as the weeds have not quite started to poke their tiny weed heads out of the soil yet and while autumn mulching gives the trusty worms have enough time to do their thing and pull down the freshly laid compost into the lower levels of earth thus improving the soil structure, the wet weather we often have in England over the winter means the beneficial nutrients of an autumn/winter mulch can be washed away. Once you have finished mulching, rake over your beds, removing any large debris or any weed seedlings to prepare them for sowing and planting.
If you’ve have kept your beds covered over the winter months, March is the ideal time to uncover beds allowing the sun to warm the soil and enabling you to rake and prepare the soil for planting.
2. Prune fruit bushes.
If you haven’t already given your fruit bushes and raspberry canes a well deserved haircut, this month is the last month you can prune fruit bushes such as blackcurrants, gooseberries and blueberries. Pruning is essential for promoting healthy growth and fruit production. For blackcurrants, it is best to prune in late winter or now in early spring. Start by removing older wood and retaining 4-5 of the healthiest, youngest stems to encourage new growth. If you’re lucky enough to have a gooseberry bush, focus on cutting back overcrowded or old branches to allow sunlight to reach the centre of the bush. This helps to improve air circulation which will encourage better growth in your plant. Pruning blueberries is fairly straightforward and you should remove any dead or weak growth while shaping the bush to encourage an open structure.
March is also the last chance to prune back your autumn raspberry canes and you can do this by chopping them right down to the ground. It feels harsh but this will encourage new canes to grow and you should see these emerging soon. Then it’s just playing the waiting game before you can stuff your face with delicious, homegrown raspberries! Mine never make it home from the plot….a gardner needs snack fuel right?!
Autumn fruiting raspberries.
3. Feed overwintering crops.
As the years have gone on, I have become so much better at planning my crops so that I have things growing over winter to feed us through the darker, colder months and in the hungry gap. With the amount of rain we get in the UK, our garden crops pretty much take care of themselves through the winter and the thought of watering, or feeding my plants completely falls out of my head! So now is a perfect time to get back into the watering and feeding routine, especially as we have had a pretty good run of dry days now this year (in Devon at least!) so far.
Feeding your plants is the process of adding a fertiliser to your watering can on a regular basis to support plant growth. I use organic seaweed feed but you can also make your own fertiliser from nettles, comfrey, banana skins and even the excess liquid from bokashi composters. Adding feed to your watering routine once a week will strengthen your crops and increase yield.
4. Take care of your tools!
Cleaning and repairing garden tools and equipment now, so they are ready for the busy gardening season ahead is a job that we all want to put off but you will thank yourself for later on! I am awful for leaving my tools outside and not looking after them and am frequently visiting the repair café in my village to plead with the amazing people there to save my poor tools yet again from the scrap heap! First and foremost my advice would be, don’t be like me!…make sure you put your tools away in a dry shed or storage area every time you use them so that you don’t find them rusting in an allotment bed 2 months into winter when you haven't even noticed that spade you left out every time you were popping by to harvest veg. But, if like me you neglect your tools and leave them to rust and decay in the winter weather, spring is a great time to bring them back to life. Whether you oil and sharpen them yourself, ask a good friend to help you in exchange for some veg 9or maybe a bottle of wine!), or are fortunate enough to have a repair café in your town or village, taking care of your tools ahead of the busy planting and growing months is a must!
Garden snips - a must have tool for any gardener or allotmenteer!
5. Start weeding!
As the daffodils, tulips and violas are springing to life and bringing beautiful, vibrant colours to our gardens and plots, so too are the dreaded weeds that have mostly laid dormant over the colder months. Weeding is, as I’m sure you can agree, the bane of our lives and one of the most disliked gardening jobs there is. So now is the opportune time to get on top of those weeds early as they poke their unsuspecting heads through the soil to greet the sunshine. While hoeing is a quick way to disrupt smaller, more tender weeds, you may find that you’re going to need to crack out the big guns for some of those more established weeds like creeping buttercup or thistles to make sure that you get the full root system out otherwise those tenacious plants will pop right back up again! I use my hori hori knife to dig down under the roots and lift the entire plant out, shaking off the excess soil back onto the bed.