March Garden: Storage Potatoes, Spring Plants and Planting in March

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.

up close watering seedlings in kitchen sink

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.

writing pumpkin name onto plant tag to plant in march

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.

up close package of bintje storage potatoes

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.

tractor heaping compost into back of truck and man flattening it with shovel

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!

planting seedlings into garden beds march

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.

woman holding clipboard with garden calendar and looking at it

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.