Gardening in March: The 5 most important to-dos

Lawns, beds & insects
Gardening in March: The 5 most important to-dos before the start of spring

March is undoubtedly one of the most important months of the gardening season. Snowdrops, spring snowflakes and crocuses come and go in many allotments and front gardens. Kissed by the warm rays of the sun, the first delicate green leaves peel off the buds. In short: winter creeps in and leaves the stage to spring. Now at the latest, even the sleepiest allotment gardeners should give themselves a quick shake, roll up their sleeves and get active in the garden. But where to start? In this article, we explain why the lawn should be high on the priority list and which vegetables should now be grown on the windowsill. The five most important gardening tasks in March.

Gardening in March: The most important things in brief

1. Maintain the lawn (mow & fertilize)

The sacred green usually looks a little plucked after winter. So that the lawn can serve as a playground and sunbathing area again in the summer, it must be carefully tended in the spring. Let’s start fertilizing the lawn. The best way to do this is to use the organic variant in March. Dogs, cats and other pets and garden animals will thank you. Not sure if you need to lime your lawn? The best way to do this is to determine the pH of the soil. Liming can be useful if the acidity is too high. Excessive moss infestation is a fairly certain indication of a rather acidic soil with a pH of 5.5 or below. brings certainty pH soil test.

In the second step, the lawn should be brought into shape with a lawnmower. Important: Do not mow the meadow directly with a rasp. This makes the exhausted stalks susceptible to sunburn. It is perhaps even more important that you scarify the lawn, i.e. loosen it and aerate it. Depending on the lawn area, you can remove the matted green by hand (here a Scarifier roller from Wolf-Garten) or with one electric scarifier to edit. Give your lawn a few days to recover afterwards.

2. Prepare the beds / cut the herbs

The garden year is planned and the sowing calendar is ready. Then it’s high time to prepare the beds for the new “tenants”. In order to create a first basic order, the soil should first be carefully cleaned with a garden hoe or a so-called cultivator be loosened up. Then work in compost and horn shavings. As with any gardening work, sturdy ones belong working gloves also when preparing beds for equipment.

Many herbs survive the winter in balcony boxes or herb beds without major damage. In March, however, a small grooming cut is due here as well. Shortens rosemary, thyme & Co. with a sharp secateurs by about a third. This is the only way for the plants to branch out again as desired.

3. Prefer vegetables

He who sows early will reap good things. Vegetables from your own garden or from the balcony not only taste subjectively much better than the products from the supermarket. In addition, the home-grown vegetables are much cheaper. You do need to invest some time and patience though. Some varieties should be grown at home as early as February and March. These include, for example, the vitamin C hit paprika (like this one Organic pointed peppers), but also the popular ones chillies. Both germinate rather slowly and are also not the fastest in terms of growth. So you need a few weeks to arm yourself for the time in the fresh air. Therefore, the following applies: peppers and chili, which are later to be cultivated outdoors in the bed, sow in peat-free and mildly fertilized potting soil at the latest by the beginning of March. That’s how it works.

4. Prepare strawberries for spring

Strawberry plants are among the sturdiest plants you can find in the garden. Even the freezing cold can hardly harm the persistent, herbaceous creatures. But even they don’t get away completely unscathed in winter. That’s why gardeners should do something good for the sweet fruits in March. The most important work: offshoots and runners must be pinched off if this was neglected in autumn. In addition, the strawberry bed with a small garden hoe carefully cleared of weeds and fresh manure or compost applied. An additional layer of mulch is not a must, but can also be added to the bed as a kick. The way is already clear for lots of delicious summer strawberries.

5. Prepare insect hotel/bumblebee box

Most gardeners have a heart for the animals. In March it is above all the buzzing aerobatic artists who appreciate our attention. Bees, but also bumblebees, are slowly but surely becoming active. The situation is particularly critical for fertilized bumblebee queens, who are already desperately looking for food and nesting sites from the end of February to found a new colony of bumblebees.

It should be in the shade and close to the ground bumblebee house be placed in the garden or on the terrace. If a few early bloomers grow nearby, there is a good chance that a bumblebee queen will take up residence in the bumblebee house. Also one insect drinker makes sense.

This article first appeared on stern.de

Bridget