Planning Ahead
- Prepare beds for the garden 1 – 3 weeks before planting.
- Organize your seed collection and find the seeds that you need for the year.
- Compost and collect organic matter for the compost pile
- Turn your compost pile
- Clean out your mason bee homes
- Watch the weather. Check air temperatures and soil temperatures. Beware of frost.
- Compost and amend your soil.
- Add lime to sweeten your soil if needed.
- Patrol for slugs.
- Weed while the ground is soft, wet, and warm and the weeds are young.
- Mulch to prevent weeds. Rake back mulch and warm the soil before planting seeds.
- Protect your plants from deer and other wildlife.
In The Vegetable Garden
- Monitor your soil temperature to know when to plant your vegetables.
- Make sure that the soil has dried up enough before you plant.
- Direct sow cold-tolerant vegetables outdoors, such as arugula, beets, parsnips, carrots, lettuces, radishes, spinach, turnips, and shallots outdoors
- Soak your pea seeds in preparation for planting. Just before planting, cover in legume inoculant.
- Start tomatoes, peppers, leeks, onions, tomatillos, celery, and brassicas indoors.
- Pre-sprout your potatoes. Plant around mid-March.
- Build cloches.
- Plant asparagus crowns and rhubarb.
Fruit Trees and Berry Bushes
- Fertilize and prune your berry bushes & strawberries.
- Protect early blossoms on fruit trees from frost.
- Divide and transplant strawberries and raspberries.
- Graft rootstocks. The Home Orchard Society Scion Exchange is on Sunday, March 16, 2014.
- Plant bareroot trees.
Perennials
- Divide and transplant perennials.
- Direct sow hardy annual flowers, such as Calendula, Poppies, Pansies, Alyssum, Johnny Jump-Ups, Bachelor Buttons, Clarkia, Sweet Peas, Love in a Mist, Larkspur, Lupines, Snapdragons, Mallow, etc.
- Plant summer blooming bulbs or tubers including Gladiolas, Crocosmia, Dahlias, Calla Lilies, etc.
- Take cuttings of early flowering perennial shrubs and bring indoors for forcing into bloom.
