Gardening Jobs for March

Hello March! The days are getting longer and Spring is arriving. Longer days provide more opportunities to get out in the garden, here's our top jobs for the month 👨‍🌾

1. First Earlies

Potatoes grown from specially prepared seed potatoes are usually planted in spring. With early varieties, the seed potatoes can be 'chitted' (or encouraged to sprout) before planting, to get them off to a head start and produce an earlier crop. As the plants grow, soil can be gradually piled up around the stems, known as earthing up, to bury the developing tubers.

These will be ready to harvest as new potatoes in June/July. If you don't have room for a whole row of potatoes you can grow just a few in a small bed or large container. You can even grow a winter harvest by planting in a large tub in late summer, then protecting the plants from frost in a greenhouse or sunny porch.

2. Mow time

On a dry day, you can give your lawn its first trim of the year. For the first cut, use the highest setting on your mower, to avoid choking the blades with cuttings.

Strim the grass first if it is really long, then rake up the cut grass and go over with the mower to tidy up as best you can. It can often look a bit scruffy and yellow, but will soon green up and look neater with more regular cuts.

3. Delightful Dahlia's

Start off dahlia tubers in pots or trays of damp peat-free compost. Dahlias are tender perennials, which means they can live for many years, but do need protection from freezing temperatures. They grow from underground tubers, with the top growth dying back in winter and re-sprouting in spring.

4. Prune Buddleja

The classic summer-flowering buddleja or butterfly bush (B. davidii) is easy to grow in a sunny spot and just needs some annual pruning to look good.

Most buddleja flower on the branches that grow in early summer, so can be pruned hard to a low framework of permanent stems in early spring (late March-mid-April).

5. Divide Summer Flowering Perennials

Perennials benefit from division every two to three years to maintain health and vigour. Dig up the plant you're splitting with a spade or fork on a cool, cloudy day.

Lift the plant to remove any loose soil and to tease the roots apart. Separate the plant into smaller divisions, making sure each piece has growing shoots and roots. For clump-forming perennials that have spread out, you can use a garden fork to remove whole sections, without disturbing the rest of the plant - simply cut right down through the roots, and lever out the section. Plant divisions as soon as possible and water them in well.

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