March
Right after the ground thaws from winter is a good time to edge the beds. The soil is soft at this time.
- Edge beds as soon as the ground thaws and the snow melts.
- Pull winter weeds, but don’t mulch yet. Wait a few more weeks until the soil dries and warms a bit.
- Hold off digging or tilling if the soil is wet. You’ll force out crucial air spaces and destroy soil structure. Damp is OK. Wet or soggy is not.
- Before new growth starts, prune summer-blooming flowering shrubs such as abelia, butterfly bush, beautyberry, caryopteris, clethra (summersweet), smooth hydrangea, tree-type hydrangea, rose-of-sharon, St. Johnswort, crape myrtle, summer-blooming spirea and vitex. Also prune grape vines and raspberries.
- Inspect the trees and shrubs for winter damage. Prune off any broken or storm-damaged branches.
- Tamp perennials and young shrubs back into ground that were forced partly out of the soil by freezing and thawing.
- On above-40-degree day, spray dormant oil to smother eggs of overwintering pests such as scale on pine and euonymus, spruce gall adelgids on spruce and Douglas fir, and woolly adelgids on hemlocks.
- Finish pruning fruit trees and spray with dormant oil if you didn’t do it in February. Use lime sulfur or fungicide to prevent leaf curl on peaches.
- Toward the end of the month, cut back ornamental grasses and liriope to a stub. Cut back perennials that have browned but weren’t trimmed in fall. Most perennials can be divided late this month through April, too.
- Make size-control and shaping cuts to evergreens such as arborvitae, boxwood, holly, yew, falsecypress and hemlock.
- Plant bare-root trees and shrubs late March through early April, assuming soil isn’t soggy.
- When ground thaws, use granular fertilizer on trees, shrubs and perennial beds.
- After mid-month, direct-seed peas, spinach, onion sets, lettuce, chard, mesclun, turnips and radishes. Plant onion plants, potatoes, cabbage, leeks, chard, kale, collards, asparagus, horseradish, rhubarb, chives, Brussels sprouts and parsley toward the end of the month after gradually hardening off indoor-grown transplants.
- Rake any matted leaves and other debris off the lawn when snow melts.
- Lightly scatter wood ashes from the fireplace over the lawn, unless the soil is already alkaline (over 7.0 on the pH scale). Small amounts of wood ash also are fine added to the compost pile.
- Start seeds inside of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and most annual flowers.
- Put crabgrass preventer on the lawn late in month when forsythia blooms. If you use Preen, corn gluten meal or similar weed preventers in shrub and perennial beds, forsythia-bloom is also a good cue of when to apply them.
- Late in the month, begin seeding thin or dead patches in the lawn. (Do NOT use crabgrass preventer if seeding new grass.)
- Remove winter protection from roses late in the month. Prune and spray canes with dormant oil before new growth begins.
- Pot and begin watering cannas, dahlias, caladium and other tender bulbs so they’ll be ready to go outside in May. Toss any that rotted.
- Repot pot-bound houseplants.
Hi George and Happy Spring! When you refer to hardening-off plants like parsley and others before planting them outdoors, how would I do that hardening-off?
“Hardening-off” is gradually getting an indoor-grown seedling used to the outside before planting by giving increasingly more light and exposure each day over a 7- to 10-day period. I start by setting seedlings outside in a shaded, wind-protected spot for about 2 hours the first day, then increase to 3 or 4 hours the second day, then 4 or 5 hours the third day and so on. I also move them into slightly more sun and slightly more open air around the third or fourth day, too. The last two days are overnight and out in the open, unless they’re shade plants, in which case they get no more light than they’re going to get in the ground. Hope that helps…
Ok, so I potted up cannas and elephant ears in the fall and hoped they went dormant. Do we water them and place in a sunny window until May or under lights or average light?
The first week or two of April is ideal for starting cannas and elephant inside. They only need 4 or 5 weeks of growth until you can start hardening them off outside… enough that they get a jump on the season but not so long that they get too big and leggy.
If your window is a sunny one, that’s fine. Otherwise, under lights with temperatures on the cool side are more ideal. Upper 50s to low 60s is good.
George — strange question of the day.
Like the hat very much. Would you please provide a location for purchase?
Thank you
Jack,
I bought it from a vendor at a garden show, but if it helps any, the brand is Dorfman Pacific. They make a variety of hats of that type.
It’s definitely not a fashion statement for me. I have no fashion sense. I like the idea of having a wide brim to shade my ears and neck to prevent sunburn and skin cancer.
Could I put cannas and caladiums in pot and put in high tunnel in mid march or beginning of April without heat
Hi Diane,
So long as it doesn’t go below 40 at night (and definitely not below freezing), that would be fine. If temperatures really nosedive after you get them going, you could always take them inside on nights that go below 40. The way we’re going lately, spring is already here.
TruGreen was in my neighborhood yesterday between predicted heavy downpours applying granular crabgrass preventer/fertilizer. (I asked the workman.) When I commented that it is much too early for pre-emergent crabgrass treatment, the workman said emphatically that it absolutely was not. I don’t know if TruGreen is a franchise operation or regionally directed; at any rate, no use giving the man the reasons why not, and anyway other lawn care companies will soon be around doing the same thing if past years are any indication. Temperature tonight is to be around 20 even though we’ve had a record warm February. I feel bad for my neighbors who’ve just wasted their money on a worthless application and for the environment with all that fertilizer washed away to pollute our streams. I know businesses have to adhere to a schedule and can’t tailor applications to the weather anomalies, but really! Crabgrass is a warm weather annual and won’t germinate when soil temps are this low; also I’ve read that the treatment is most effective shortly after application. Have you done a column on too early crabgrass treatment recently? Yes, my neighbor had an inch of rain in her gauge after TruGreen pulled out. (Don’t have ours out yet for fear I’ll not dump it before a freeze.) Just had to sputter to someone! Incidentally, we apply pre-emergent/fertilizer combo when the forsythia blossoms start to fall and then a late fall fertilizer and dig the few broadleaf weeds that show up, and that’s all! And we live next to a poorly maintained public golf course that does next to nothing for weed control on their area abutting our property.