March is a very busy month in the garden for me. I spend every available minute spring cleaning my beds ready for the summer season. I begin the month intending to work around all my beds, weeding, pruning, cutting back and splitting perennials – although I never quite make it around everything the garden is looking a much tidier place than a month ago.
Whilst I am working I can enjoy the sights and sounds of early spring that are all around me. This weeks highlight has been the arrival of the cherry blossom. This cherry tree was in the garden when we arrived, but was a very young tree. Gradually, year by year, she is maturing and this year has a very fine display. She is always the first tree to blossom, followed closely by the forsythias. Although she does produce a crop of cherries, these have always been eaten by the birds long before they are ripe enough for me to pick.
When I am not outside preparing the borders, I have been plugging on (excuse the pun) with seed sowing in the greenhouse. All the sweet peas are growing away nicely and I have just put up a support in the greenhouse so that I can try growing a handful of plants in the greenhouse bed. I am hoping that these will flower a few weeks before the outdoor plants, so giving me a longer sweet pea season.
The first sowings of all my hardy annuals for the Cutting Garden have now been finished and I will be moving on to the half hardy varieties next week. I now have lots of little plants including cornflowers, nigella, english marigolds, salvia patens, blue clary, larkspur and ammi majus coming up. These will be moved into the cold frames at the end of March and planted out into the beds around mid April. Hopefully the first flowers will appear in May if I am very lucky. I always plan to make a second sowing of hardy annuals in May or June to ensure that I have fresh plants for late summer when this batch will be starting to flag.
In the Vegetable Garden the garlic planted before Christmas is growing strongly. In the same bed I have added the early potatoes (which are the only type of potato I grow). This bed is now full, but will be harvested towards the end of June when I will then fill it with spare dahlias that have not made it into other beds.
The broad beans sown last autumn have survived the winter and I have uncovered them from their fleece tunnel. In the cold frame there is another tray of baby plants sown in February, which I will plant out in the next week. I will sow another row of broad beans direct into the soil at the same time. It will be interesting to see which of the three sowings of broad beans crops first. I also have young pea plants ready to plant out and I will start sowing the peas directly as well.
As the soil is quite warm and moist for the time of year I am going to try some early sowings of carrots, beetroot and spinach. I will cover these with the fleece tunnel and hopefully have a very early crop in late May/early June. Often these early sowings fail as the temperatures can be too low and the seed rots. I still think it is worth a go as very early crops are such a delight in the years that they do succeed. I will sow another batch in April, which will have more certainty of success.
The crop of the moment is my rhubarb. That started to sprout very early this year and is now ready for eating. One of my favourite uses for rhubarb is too make Rhubarb Syrup. This pale pink liquid is beautiful diluted with sparkling water as a late afternoon drink after a long day in the garden. I also love it mixed with prosecco for a more decadent evening refreshment. I am planning to make my first batch next week, so will try to include photos and the recipe here for you.
You will remember that I bought a rhubarb forcer in the winter in the hope of encouraging an early crop. That has proved unnecessary as I have so much rhubarb without it this year. We will be taking it off this weekend, so it will be interesting to see what has happened to the plant it has been covering. I am hoping for long thin pale pink stems – I will let you know.
As I have been writing this I have just noticed a new post from Belinda Gray on her blog The Grower pop into my inbox. Her news this week is that a new series is starting on BBC2 in April called The Big Allotment Challenge – it sounds very interesting! The Grower is a fantastic weekly resource for anyone growing their own vegetables. It is full of tips, recipes and inspirations to keep your growing year on course and I highly recommend subscribing.
I hope you have a lovely weekend!
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Sounds like you have been very busy – I think we all get a bit of seed sowing fever at this time of year.. Lovely pictures of the blossom – no sign of mine yet – shame it is over all too quickly.
I agree that it is all over too quickly Elaine – since my cherry tree has blossomed we have had wind, rain, sleet and today heavy hail so it might be over even quicker than usual this year – I wish it had waited a bit longer before flowering!
Your Cherry blossom looks very beautiful. I am holding back from outdoor sowing in my vegetable garden for another week or so, with the exception of early potatoes, which have already gone in. Interesting also to see you start your flower annuals in the greenhouse first. Do you ever sow them directly to the ground outside?
It is very rare that I sow flower seed directly Julie. I prefer to grow individual plugs so that I can set them out exactly as I want (as I would with a perennial flower). Also I tend to put annuals in ground that is currently occupied with bulbs. As the bulb foliage dies down my little seedlings are growing nicely in the cold frames. With vegetables I take the opposite view – I will direct sow as much as possible to save time and space in the greenhouse.
March isn’ t over yet. I am like you, spending every day trying to catch up. Every year at this time I think, this year I’ll keep up with it, and then at the end of April and May away it goes and there is always some shameful corner of neglect that I just didn’ t manage. You are well ahead with your seed sowing, I am very impressed.
I do agree Chloris – every year I think I am going to get ahead, but as summer takes over everything runs away from me. Maybe this will be the year that we get on top of our gardens!
Your cherry is lovely and beautifully photographed! This is the first year ever that I feel that I am ahead with the spring clean-up but I’m sure something will happen that shows me I’m wrong!
It sounds like you are doing very well Chloris – I don’t think I will ever get ahead with the spring clean up but at least I can see that I have made some progress this year.
Your photos are wonderful of the cherry. I admire your diligence in preparing for spring. I’ve been sitting back waiting and now need to double up efforts. Have a good weekend.
Thank you Susie – hopefully there will be some nice weather to tempt you out into your garden.
You have taken such beautiful photos of your cherry tree. You are certainly up to date with your gardening jobs, March is such a busy month isn’t it!
Thank you Pauline – it may sound like I am up to date, but my garden is a bit overwhelming. Things are going well in the greenhouse but there is still a lot of preparation needed to get the Kitchen Garden ready for this years crops. I am looking forward to the hour changing next weekend – that extra daylight somehow makes all the difference.
Wow – and I thought I was on top of everything this year, Julie! Well done for your industriousness and your lovely photos 🙂
I think I am giving the wrong impression here Cathy. As I said to Pauline there is still a lot to do. Fortunately I am a ‘glass half full’ type, so tend to focus on what I have done rather than what is still outstanding – and there is quite a lot outstanding!
Julie, Your cherry blossoms looks are so freshening. You do click them well even before the Emily’s casses.Here in my place there are plenty of blooming trees .Honestely. I do not know their names . I do refer in magazines buy keep forgetting it . To me it all looked same with different colours. At least now I will never forget cherry blossoms.Hope you will post pictures of vegetables too as I love vegetable gardening too.