What to Do in the Kitchen Garden in March
We’ve made it. The spring equinox is this month, marking the official start of spring. Let’s celebrate by planting the seeds for abundant vegetable and pollinator gardens that will explode with life over the next month.
March Checklist for the Kitchen Garden
Here’s what you can do in the garden this March:
Audit your veggie garden set up. There are so many ways to set up a garden, but here’s the system I use to make growing veggies straightforward and successful for busy gardeners: select a location with good sunlight and proximity to water, plant in deep raised beds filled with high quality soil, use vertical supports, and include pathways so tending the beds is easy and comfortable.
Add trellises to your raised beds. If your veggie garden is lacking vertical support, add some now, before your plants take over. I bought my corten steel trellises locally from Lauren’s Garden Service and Native Plant Nursery.
Prepare a pollinator bed. Ready to level up your garden’s production and purpose? Add a native pollinator bed alongside it (or all the way around like a living fence!). Decide how big you’d like it to be (at least 3’ deep), trace the edge, and dig out any existing sod. Spread some topsoil and a few inches of wood chips, and your new pollinator garden bed will be ready for planting next month!
Buy herbs and annual flowers at the nursery. Call your local garden center or nursery to find out when they’re getting plants in. Adding herbs and flowers around the borders or in the corners of your raised beds provides color and interest, plus they help deter pests like the cabbage moth from your veggies.
Plant a salad garden. The weather this month is perfect for growing a salad garden. Fill up your raised beds or a large container with kale, Swiss chard, romaine, spring mix lettuce, spinach, arugula, mizuna, and mustard greens. Lettuce seeds need moisture to germinate, so once you’ve planted your seeds, water them gently every day to keep the top inch of the soil moist.
Schedule a personal garden consultation. A garden consultation is the first step toward cultivating a thriving, low-maintenance garden tailored to your space, lifestyle, and goals. Maybe you want a beautiful outdoor space for growing fresh food with your family, but you have no idea where to start, or you keep buying plants, and they just die. A garden consultation replaces confusion and frustration with expert guidance, clear next steps, and a personalized plan outlining your path to garden success. You can schedule your garden consultation here.
What to Plant in March
Want a list of what to grow in your kitchen garden in March? < This checklist covers the veggies, herbs and flowers that thrive in our DMV cool season, plus a few you should get a jump start on before our warm season starts. It’s broken down by whether you should buy the plant from a nursery, plant from seed, or start indoors this month.
Timing is one of the keys to garden success.
You may know our frost dates, but did you know we have three growing seasons in the DMV? Download this guide to our local growing seasons so you can save time and money by planting the right plants at the right time.
