March is finally your time, gardeners – but you still want to be selective about what you seed this early.
If you are a gardening enthusiast, you have been waiting anxiously throughout February to start putting seeds in soil. March is finally your time, but you still want to be selective about what you seed this early. The number one problem gardeners have when they first start seeding is starting everything at once and starting too early. Some plants need more time and space than others. Also, your planting date will be determined by your growing zone and last frost date.
Asparagus, potatoes and onions
While it might not feel these items are related, they are in the simpliest way. You won’t be putting seeds in the ground. Onions are grown and cut back to the point you buy a bundle of 25 or so five inch long starts, ready to go into the ground. Potatoes are cut up so each piece has eyes and then allowed to heal over and plant them. Asparagus come as crowns. You plant them in a trench and they will come back spring after spring. They are quite inexpensive, and while you could grow asparagus from seed, since you don’t get harvestable stalks for the first three years, it’s better to get a jumpstart by buying crowns.
Fast-rotation crops
There are certain crops like lettuces, radishes, scallions and carrots that will grow constantly all season. As soon as the ground is workable, put out a short row of radishes and scallions and then seed a few lettuces each week at this point. Carrots aren’t fast, but you can get a number of successions in during the summer. Get a row of them in every few weeks starting now.
Short spring crops
There’s enough time between now and summer season to get another crop rotation in. Seed cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, spinach, kohirabi and chard to go outside as soon as they are ready. They are all pretty cold hardy. Spinach loves the cold.
Long summer crops
Two crops that must be planted now are parsnips and brussels sprouts. Both take forever, so get parsnip seeds in the soil and buy brussels sprout starts at the nursery.
Summer crops
Some summer specialties require a longer nurturing stage, like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. Many people wait until April to plant. Peppers first, then tomatoes, and finally eggplants. They’ll go into 50 cell trays to start, two seeds a cell. Within the first few weeks, cut out one seedling from each cell and up-pot them into four inch pots by the time they are six weeks old. Don’t seed other summer crops like pumpkins, corn or beans until much later.
Flowers
The earliest flowers can be planted now – snapdragons, poppies, bells of Ireland, larkspur, dianthus, bacheolor buttons, love-in-a mist and celosia. These are the most stubborn to grow and are spring hardy so the early start is warranted. You will be able to move them out relatively early in the season to make room for zinnias and sunflowers, which will be seeded later in the season.
This time of year, as a gardener, it always feels like you are behind. You are not. It’s still very early, but take this month, and get your seeds in order.
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