March 2026

March is the start of our new gardening year, and weather is typically variable. We’ve had a few days in the 60s Fahrenheit and a mid-month blizzard that brought 18 inches of heavy wet snow. The spring bulbs have come up on schedule, seemingly unaffected by weather drama, as have the herbs like chives, parsley, chervil, and Welsh onions. We’ve gathered the pruned out branches of willow, cherry, and plum to force indoors, foreshadowing “real spring” to be experienced outdoors soon.

Perennial Welsh Onion; Annual Seedlings

Indoor Seed Starting

There are lots of indoor seed starting methods, but we love soil blocks for their space efficiency, limited plastic use, air pruning of roots, and easy of potting up and transplanting out in the garden.

Our indoor seed starting begins with alliums and slow growing herbs. We had great germination on the Yellow Parma storage onion (our own seed) and Ed’s Red Shallot. This season’s leek variety is King Richard. We’re trying Ventura celery, a commonly grown variety but new to us.

Outdoor Planting

Outdoors we’ve planted spinach, lettuce, cress, radishes, Johnny jump ups, parsley, and fava bean.

Also, we’ve seeded peas and oats cover crop in the beds that won’t be used until June. We’ll terminate that in late May ahead of the main crop plantings.

Outdoor Tending

Over the last couple of months, we’ve pruned in the orchard (apples, pears, plums, cherries) and berry patches (black currants, red currants, red raspberries, black raspberries, and blackberries).

Noticing that the fall-planted garlic is starting to poke through heavy mulch, we took some of it off, and de-mulched the lavender too.

Up Next

Any day now we’ll start the peppers, eggplants, basil, and brassicas indoors. Tomatoes and ground cherry will be next!

Iris Reticulata (one of the earliest spring blooms!)