March is my one of my favourite months for gardening. The winter longings are finally soothed by the first planting in March. Not only are we looking at seeds growing indoors, but we can see all manner of plants coming to life outdoors too!
Planting in March
When I am planting in March, I feel the winter blues being cured. Every garden activity in March hypes up the expectations for the garden year ahead.
In March, our cold hardy seedlings are ready to embark in the big world. The potatoes are laid out to continue making “eyes” for planting.
Last year, I wrote a post about a few of the seeds we start in March, both indoors and outdoors. You can read that post here.
West Coasts Seeds is a seed company local to us and we buy some of our seeds from them. They have a helpful post about all the seeds you can start in March here.
Seeds to start indoors in March
Right now, we are starting our “heat loving crops” that grow quickly. This includes things like pumpkins, cucumbers, and beans.
Storage Potatoes & Preparing for Planting
Our potato varieties this year are only storage varieties. We are growing:
- Russet
- Bintje
- Kennebec
If you are also looking for some storage varieties to plant this year, look for potatoes that will be ready mid-late season, or late season.
Now these varieties of potatoes may not have sprouts on them just yet. So we have packed out our potatoes in bright light where it’s warm so that they can sprout so long. As soon as it gets a bit warmer outside, we will be ready to plant them.
Organic Matter for In Ground Beds
We purchased some organic matter to heap up the beds a little more and mowed the lawn around the beds for the first time.
Hardening Off Seedlings
For about a week, we were carried seedlings in and our of the barn suite to slowly get used to the temperatures and light outside. This is necessary because the conditions outside are much different to those of the seedling cabinet indoors. This is called “hardening off”.
Once this has been done for several days, they can finally be planted outside!
Spring Plants
A part of my gardening routine is some “admin work” to keep the progress moving forward.
I check my garden calendar and map to get an overview of the month ahead.
I refer back to it often and also make changes to the gardening map as things change.
Watch the full garden update
We make Youtube videos once a month updating what we planted and did over the course of the month in the garden. Follow along at the Youtube clip below.
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