EP215- What To Sow In March & Other Gardening Jobs!!

What vegetable seeds to sow in the month of March? That's the topic on this weeks episode.  The days are getting longer and the seed sowing list for March is also increasing. The big point to note is March is often described as "March of many weathers" and because of that we need to take care of our tender seedlings and young plants in the coming weeks.  Here is a list of some of what I will be sowing during the month ahead.

Seed I am sowing Indoor in Module trays for Planting out In April.  

Spinach, Lettuce, Scallions/Spring Onion, Early cabbage, Early Cauliflower, Calabrese, Onion, Broad Bean, Celery, Leeks  

Seed I am sowing Indoor in Module trays for Planting in tunnel.  

Parsley, Dill, Coriander & Celery 

Seed I am sowing Indoor on heat for Planting in tunnel. 

Tomato, Chili Pepper, Bell Pepper

I am direct sowing in my polytunnel. 

Beetroot, Radish, Carrot & Turnip 

I will also plant early potatoes (Sharpes Express) into my polytunnel late in the month and I am currently heating up the ground where they will be planted with black plastic, so the temperature is nice and warm at planting time.  

Brace yourselves, green thumbs and gardening enthusiasts; this episode is your ticket to mastering the mercurial March garden scene! From the frosty threats to your tender seedlings to the strategic sowing of spring onions and cauliflower, I'm dishing out all the must-know advice to prepare your vegetable patch for a bountiful harvest. You'll find out why sowing in small, manageable batches isn't just a recommendation—it's a game changer. And if you've ever wondered about the sorcery of multi-sowing, prepare to have that mystery unraveled. Plus, I'm pulling back the curtain on my own sowing habits, sharing the tweaks and refinements implemented to make this year's garden my most efficient yet.

But it's not all about veggies – herbs and flowers are stepping into the spotlight too. I'll guide you through the delicate dance of sowing peas and disclose why your celery seeds might just be craving that extra bit of warmth. For those eager to cultivate a taste of the exotic, I explain how to give your peppers, tomatoes, and aubergines the heated embrace they need to thrive. So grab your trowels, set up those propagators, and join me as we sow the seeds of success for the fruitful months to come.

For those of you looking to join my "Grow Your Own Food Course" you still can it includes

Option 1: Grow your own food online course, this is a self paced course with over 4.5 hours of tutorial videos taking your through each step of growing your own food from sowing your first seed to harvest and everything in between. Including monthly sowing guides and additional modules to be added throughout the year. This course is available for €97 and is available for the lifetime of the course.

You can purchase these course here;
https://mastermygarden.com/grow-your-own-f

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 215 of my garden podcast. Now, this week's episode being the first Friday of March, we're doing the usual what to sow in the month of March, and this will predominantly be about the vegetable garden and so on, the edible garden, but we'll also mention maybe some of the flowers that we can be sowing this month. The reason these are popular is that it kind of gives, as I said, people something to work towards in the month ahead and, yeah, it keeps people on track, because sowing, if you fall behind on sowing, that's a mist crop, that's a mist harvest somewhere down along the line. So it's a part of the stay on track with the sowing the guide. I'll give you a broad list of what we can sow this month. It's much bigger than February, but given that I'm recording this and it's actually pelton snow outside as we speak, it has been a bitterly cold day, and so as we enter March, we're looking at cold, and March is what they call March of many wetters. We've heard that so many times and if you think back over the years, we've had the really warm balmy Marches, which gives you sort of false hope, and we've had snow. We've had the beast from the east a couple of years ago in March, so March can give you absolutely anything, having said that. So with that in mind, you're proceeding with caution, all the time, taking care of seedlings, watching out for frosts, watching out for cold snaps, because we're definitely going to get some of those.

Speaker 1: 1:54

As I said, the month of March is starting off looking like that, with snow falling outside as I record this. So proceed with caution. However, we do need to be sown at this stage, so starting sown. The days are really stretching now, so that's a huge advantage for sown seeds. Obviously, temperatures we want them to be creeping up a bit and if you're sown seeds in a polytoluble, just make sure you're protecting them, covering them, making sure that you're getting them as warm as possible and protecting them from frost as much as possible. So proceed with caution, but definitely we do need to be sowing, and sowing quite regularly during the month of March. If we go sort of four to six weeks from now, you're looking at, that's the time where you be planting out a lot of these transplants or these vegetable plants, and that's going to take you to mid April and there's no guarantee. But nine times out and we're looking at a lot more settled, warmer, more garden like weather at that stage. So that's why it's really important now to be sown, seed, but proceed with caution. That's the sort of name of the game at this stage. So what vegetables can we sow this month, and we'll chat about some of the herbs as well, and then we'll get into the flowers.

Speaker 1: 3:16

I'll tell you as well what I'm sowing. Won't be sowing everything, but I will be certainly sowing quite a bit of stuff. I have a nice bit done already. Having said that, I probably am tapering back slightly what I've done. Last year. I probably saw too much for the purpose of demonstrating a little bit and just with things the way they are at the moment, things that are a little bit hard to manage. So I'm trying to keep things a little bit more manageable this year. I am sewing and sewing regularly, but maybe just lesser amounts and certainly things that I don't get huge use out of. I'm sort of leaving behind and just sticking with the ones that we just use all the time. So there's not much grown, something and then not getting the benefit out of it or passing it on to someone else. So definitely tapering back slightly on that. So what can we sew this month? It's quite, you know, some of it is quite similar to February, but we are extending it out much, much more now and then, as we go into next month, we'll be extending it out further.

Speaker 1: 4:23

For anybody that's on the Grow your Own Food course, I've just uploaded the complete sewing guide for March and that's given you a comprehensive guide what to sew, the methods of sewing, when we'll be planting out and where we'll be planting out. You know whether that's outside, in the open ground or into a tunnel or outside under cover or whatever the case may be. So it's a complete and comprehensive guide. But we'll touch on the varieties that are the. You know the types of vegetables that we can be sowing now. So, to start off with, we can still saw spring onions.

Speaker 1: 4:56

Spring onions is one that I will be sowing kind of every two to three weeks, pretty much right through until, you know, september time, because it's one that you know we use a lot of. I'll be multi-sewn, so in other words, I'll be sowing a lot of seeds into the same module initially and planting them out into the polytunnel and later on outside. I'll also start direct sewing, probably in April time, maybe mid to end of April, depending on what the weather is doing at that stage. So I won't be just doing spring onions in modules, later on it'll go direct sewing. Next one is cabbage. I've already sowed some, but I've got to sow more. So started sowing that three weeks ago and now I've got to sow more and little enough, and it's the way I'm going to do that.

Speaker 1: 5:49

So an early variety again, I'll be going with a greyhound again and, as I say, a little enough. And Calabrese is the next one. Again, I've already sowed some and I will be doing some again in the next week or 10 days, and again, little enough. And on that, the next one on the list is cauliflower, and a bit like the cabbage and the Calabrese, I'll be sowing that, you know, small amounts, little enough I might do. You know, four, four heads or four seeds, six, six cells, every probably three weeks or so, and that kind of gives me enough of a space and that, generally speaking, I'll have some cauliflower, some. I might harvest some heads that are quite small, allow some of the rest of them to go quite big, and then just by using, you know, small amounts and sowing at a regular interval, I'll have enough kind of all through the season.

Speaker 1: 6:42

He is not to miss your sowing dates at any stage during the year. As I say, a missed sowing date is a missed harvest or a missed opportunity down the line. Next one I've already sowed mine, so I won't be sowing any more this month, but you can still do. It is sowing a Vognant and I have found, you know, I did plant autumn, autumn sets and they're doing quite well, but I still find that the best quality onions for storing, the ones that don't bolt very easily, are the ones that I sow from seed and the most successful ones are the ones that grow from seed. So onions I won't sowing any more, but if you are sowing them you can sow multi-sowing, some kind of four seeds to a cell and then plant out that as four seedlings all in the one spot and they will mature in the one spot. Next one is spinach and again I'd probably do one more sowing in module trays and then hopefully I will start going direct into the ground. Certainly the first sowing direct into the ground will be in the polytunnel and then after that outside potentially.

Speaker 1: 7:47

Next one for sowing this month is leeks, and I haven't saw these yet, but I will sow them early in the month and I'll sow an early variety and then later on I'll switch to sort of a mid-season and then after that a late variety. So kind of three sowing of leeks will do me for the entire year. I'm still harvesting some leeks from the garden as we speak. They didn't end up being very big in terms of thickness, but they're still very, very good, they're clean and I've enough of them there to get me through for the next kind of month or six weeks. Obviously, if we get any real growth in the next month or six weeks they'll start to look to bolt. They're not yet, so that's good, but I'm still harvesting away at leeks.

Speaker 1: 8:35

Broad beans you can do these in the month of March, either outside, directly into the ground, or into a deep pot or module tray. So you know the deep-selled ones are a pot. Radishes is another one. Again. I have sown some already directed into the ground, just clashed them over as well so that they get an extra keep, a little bit extra heat in there. Quite turnip Again. Haven't sown it yet but will in the coming weeks. Lettuce in module trays will become one of my regular ones throughout the year, a little bit like spring onion. Every three weeks or so I'll sow that Beetroot.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Directs on in the polytunnel would be the ideal one. I'm still harvesting beetroot from the polytunnel, so they were sown last kind of August time. I'm still harvesting them. They're actually really good. They've formed nice size beetroot and they're exceptionally tasty. So all good. There you can still sow a small few. You know the winter type salads, the rockets, the mizunas, you know you get kind of one cropping of those. They can go into your greenhouse or outside under cover. Probably in the next, you know, by the end of the month you could be getting those outside. So an early sowing and then sort of plant them outside at the end of the month, covering them over or clashing them over.

Speaker 1: 9:58

On the herb front you can do coriander dill, parsley. Again, I don't. The coriander is a kind of a regular once. You do it maybe once a month. But the likes of parsley I'm only doing a couple and doing them maybe once a year because it is a biennial. So you're getting two years out of your, out of your parsley, but I always do fresh ones later on there. I leave my parsley always in the tunnel so I don't have any outside, and you know, just by kind of one sowing a year you ensure that you have fresh parsley all year round.

Speaker 1: 10:35

Dill is another one of the herbs and then next month, as we get into April, we might start looking at some of the other herbs that we can sow. Then chard is a brilliant one. Again, it's only a sowing that I do kind of once a year. So at the moment I have about six chard plants and I've been harvesting off them for a number of months now, pretty much on a daily basis. So and I'm the only one in the house that eats chard, so there's not a high demand on it. But by regular small harvest and by having, you know, a number of plants, you're not cutting the head. You're just taking a few leaves as required and once sowing a year sort of covers off that.

Speaker 1: 11:17

I'll do another sowing, probably, probably in, you know, september time or maybe a little bit earlier, maybe August time, plant them into the tunnel and hopefully by that I will have, you know, 12 months constant supply of it, and then on top of that we'll start to move into the more the seeds that are going to require heat. So I'm looking at peppers again, chili peppers you can mention those last month, but they do need heat. So either inside or in a heated propagator in your tunnel or your greenhouse or whatever the case may be, my ones are on a heated propagator, they're so about what? 10 days now they are peeping up so, but they do need that constant heat and especially with the weather we're having at the moment, you just have to be really careful with these heat loving ones. Mattos, the same, I might not have some, although I am getting some yeah, tomato varieties from a listener, the podcast, some interesting, look at months to receive those and the yeah, the song does as soon as they arrive as well. Something different, something interesting. But they will also need Orber Jean is another one really want to be doing those early in the month. So Kind of last opportunity to so these because they like a long growing season. Same for peppers, like a long growing season. So the earlier in the month that you can get them so I'm getting started under heat the better you have, the longer season you have and the more chance you will have of getting those.

Speaker 1: 12:53

You know those crops to maturity, peace can be so this month. So this is kind of in, this is in your polytunnel or your greenhouse so peace can be. So I would. So I mean to either deep cell to the module trees are multi, so into a pot. So two or three seeds into a pot and then pot them out directly. Peace seeds don't like being disturbed, so you can also. So I mean to go to. So fill a gutter with your, your, your, your, cut your seeds on compost, so in your seeds, allowed to germinate, and then, when they are germinated and ready to be moved on, you just slide out From one end, slide out the whole roots of the seeds and allow them to Nestle into the, into the ground in the tunnel or the greenhouse without any disturbance, and then you should be able to grow them on quickly.

Speaker 1: 13:45

Celery seed can be done this month. Big thing with celery seed is you don't cover the seed, so the surface, so they can take a while to germinate and they do like heat. So again, these are going to be along the lines of your tomatoes and peppers, your all regimes to go to require heat to germinate. So in a polytunnel, make sure you're here, your, your, have them in heat, it on A heater propagator are, if you're so, on the inside, make sure during a warm area and that are constantly warm as well. You don't drop them and then heating up dropping and heating up because that would just delay the no germination of those, but they can take two to three weeks to germinate anyway.

Speaker 1: 14:23

I will only do Two soings, probably of celery in the whole year. I'll do one, so maybe of six or seven plants, and then later on I'll do another one of the same quantity, and that kind of does me for the season. I will harvest some of those when they're quite small and then allow some of them to go to the point where they're almost gone over, and by doing that I kind of get a longer spell out of it. I may not have celery no, every single month. What will be? Some sort of under in the pipeline all the time. Next one that you can do I'll be doing it this week is direct sawing carrots into the greenhouse in early March and then outside. You can do it maybe in late March and that give you kind of first crop.

Speaker 1: 15:09

You're looking for early varieties here, and then the last one on the list is parsnip, and that's going to be very late in the month, making sure that the ground is heated up if you have to wait until early April. Do so. You're looking for warmth in the ground and then direct saw fresh parsnip seed. Remember your parsnip seeds need to be fresh. You can't just have seed that you've had for two or three years. They really are gone null and void after. Probably okay in year two after buying them, but certainly by year three it'd be really sporadic so it's not worth it. So make sure you're working with fresh seed. There's lots of other things that we can be doing. Again, that's the seed sowing list. It isn't just probably others as well, but that's kind of the main ones. Next month, april, will be a lot more substantial and it'll be a seriously big list. Next month It'll be kind of heading for the biggest month for sowing, depending on the weather. Certainly April and May be huge months. But there's lots of other jobs we can still do. So you can still plant your early varieties of potatoes into the greenhouse or in containers. If you don't have open ground, Main cup varieties can be planted in some areas. Now.

Speaker 1: 16:22

A lot of people nail down St Patrick's Day as the date that they have to get the potatoes into the ground, and that's a kind of a traditional thing in Ireland. I would say that is a good rule of thumb for a lot of areas of the country. Not so much around here, though, because we can get frost right up until late May. So if the weather is really good and the ground temperatures are warm enough, I would plant them around St Patrick's Day. However, they tend not to be, and I'm always looking before I plant in potatoes. I'm always looking for ground temperatures to be up 10, 12 degrees for about a week, and if they're up at that sort of temperature then I'm happy enough to get the potatoes in. But if they're not and the ground is still sitting in the six or seven degrees, I don't bother, I'll just hold off for a couple of weeks. So yeah, that's the potatoes. It's a big one.

Speaker 1: 17:20

March is the month for getting it in a lot of places. Just for me it could be a little bit later, certainly be heading towards the end of the month, but the ground temperatures will be what will determine when I'll plant mine. You can still create your no dig bags through the month of March. Then that may not be the case every year. If the weather had got really warm, we may not. There might be so much growth that we might just miss the boat, but for the moment, for the next couple of weeks certainly, there's absolutely no issues still creating no dig beds. Again, if you're starting from scratch, you're cardboard down, making sure you're covering over all the gaps, covering down with a quality, quality organic matter, looking for about six inches in year one, and then you can plant straight into it, and that's a really, really good way of creating beds at this time of the year. On top of that, then seed sowing on the flower side. So, again, a lot of the bedding plants need to be sowed early in the month. So a lot of the typical summer bedding plants. You're going to need heat for those, so ensure you're using a heated propagator. Raise the seed inside if you don't have one of those, because they do like heat and they do want heat For me.

Speaker 1: 18:34

I'll be sowing things like Cosmis this month. I have a new bed around the circular patio. I need to. I should have done this in September, but I didn't. I'll be sowing perennial seeds to go in there, likes, verbena, beryances, achilles, gems. I'll be sowing a lot of those. I may not get flower on some of them this year, but I'm not terribly worried about that. I'll still raise the plants, cut them back a couple of times, let them tick and up and I'll get them into those beds and certainly by next year they'll be fantastically established plants. I like foxglove and so on. I'll be sowing some of those as well. Again, I should have done that in September but I didn't. So now that I'm in the seed sowing mood, I'll be sowing all of those for specific areas that I'm trying to flower up.

Speaker 1: 19:27

Other than that, you're looking at getting out, probably cutting lawns for the first time. If you're doing that, it's been at an extremely wet time, so lawns are typically not in the best of shape. If you're into keeping your lawn really spick and span, there's probably a lot of moss in them at this stage. You can certainly scarify it. This time of the year. You can certainly apply your bacterial moss remover which eats away at the moss. If you're doing that, you're looking to start at sort of lower levels of moss. So anything above kind of 25% moss, 30% moss, you need to scarify first and then a plant applied a product. If it's kind of 10% or 15%, then you can apply your bacterial lawn food and that bacteria will eat away at the moss and reduce it.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Cutting at the start of the year. Ensure your moss is sharp. That means that you get a clean cut, you're not sort of breaking the grass which can damage it and leave it looking a little bit yellowish. So make sure you're sharp. Don't cut too low. The lower you cut, a lot of people love mongrass, love the neat and tidy, but the lower that you cut, the more opportunity you're given to moss to develop. So I would definitely be cutting a little bit higher at the start.

Speaker 1: 20:53

Good time then to do all your edging and edging of beds and so on. Get all of that tidied up, lined up, and I'm supposed to set yourself up. Still, it's still another month of kind of starting to set up for really when things kick off and start to go up a gear through April and into May. So, yeah, busy, busy month. The seed sowing guides for anyone that's on the Grow your Own Food course is uploaded now and you can download that, you can compile them, tick them off on your list. But again, just to reiterate, try not to miss sowing dates. Miss sowing dates are, I suppose, miscrops down the line and we don't want that. We want to continue to sow so that we continue to have harvest right through the season.

Speaker 1: 21:46

So, yeah, that's been this week's episode. Next week's episode we're talking to garden designer Peter Donegan Some really interesting stories about the new garden that he's doing at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show. Yeah, really interesting story behind it and behind last year's garden which actually won a gold. So, yeah, that's next week's episode, and then a couple of other really good guest interviews coming up, along with the usual guides and gardening tips over the next few weeks. So that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and I'll tell you next time. Take care, bye, bye.