Usage notes

Overview

The following overview is an extract from the chapter, Overview of the gardening year

Jobs: Plant new asparagus crowns.  Your over-wintered onions, brassicas and lettuces might benefit from a little blood fish and bone, or poultry manure, depending on whether you applied compost and other amendments in autumn.   Cover early strawberries outside with cloches (remove during the day once they start flowering). Finish mulching (with wood chips, compost or composted manure) and feeding berries with a high potash fertiliser.  Keep an eye out for Sawfly larvae on gooseberry and currant bushes, they can strip them in 24 hours!

Everything that you sowed in February, you can also sow in March, especially if you don’t have good protected/light growing spaces.  However, you will still need to sow almost everything under cover and germination is often better in the house.

• Early March is the best time to pot sow a few summer cabbage, we don’t bother though as we have so many other brassicas available!
• Plant any new asparagus plants
• Keep sowing successions of peas, radish and spring onions
• Module sow Boltardy beetroot and plant out with protection in April, I like to plant mine at the back of coldframes or lowtunnels, especially if these will have peppers in them in May, as they love the extra protection from the low tunnels
• Pot sow celery and celeriac by mid-month. If you want celery in your polytunnel you can sow it in late February. I actually sow mine at the end of the month because it grows too fast in my warm grow room.
• Mid/Late March is the best time to pot sow your autumn/winter brassicas: red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kalettes, savoy cabbage, kale, you will be potting them on and then planting them out in early May. You get another chance in early April if they fail
• Late March is also the perfect time to pot sow calabrese and early varieties of purple sprouting broccoli (like Early Purple and/or Sante) for a summer harvest
• Don’t be tempted to sow Chard, be patient or module sow Perpetual Spinach instead
• Early March is the time to start pot sowing tomatoes (in a warm place or propagator) that will be planted out in a conservatory or heated greenhouse in May. Wait until late March if you are planting in an unheated greenhouse or polytunnel
• After mid-March module sow a few sweetcorn, and climbing summer squash to be planted in a polytunnel/greenhouse in April, but keep your fleece handy! Cucumbers that will grow in a heated conservatory or greenhouse can be sown now too.
• Early Parsnip can also sown direct in the ground now, especially if chitted first, I sow most of mine in April/early May.
• If you have space in your polytunnel I think it’s a good idea to sow a dozen climbing French beans and Runner beans indoors, to be planted in containers and wrapped in fleece if frost threatens in April when they are planted out.
• Late March is a good time to test the germination of your outdoor tomatoes, then if there’s an issue you have plenty of time to sow again in early April ready to plant out in mid May

Successions

<aside> 💡 For more details on the way I describe my successions, check out the chapter that describes my gardening framework

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Here’s a summary list of all of my successions for the month, not all of them are recommened. As a general rule “first earlies” and “super earlies/lates” are only for the keen gardener, who has lights/heat or a greenhouse/polytunnel. They yield less and involve more risk than “main crop” successions, but they are worth it if you want a rich, fresh food diet, all year round. This data is a live view onto my database and although it’s convenient to have it embedded in the book, you get a much better experience if you expand it into its own webpage. You can do that by going to the bottom of the embedded view and clicking ‘View larger’. You also have the option of downloading the successions data into a spreadsheet (CSV) format, so you can modify it for your own use.

You can also click on individual successions, to expand them and see much more information. Pay particular attention to the information on growing conditions, for example whether seedings need heat to grow, protection when planted out etc.

For more information on how all this works and how to make the best use of my database and take a copy of it - if you want to - see the chapter of my ebook on using my gardening database.

https://airtable.com/appZUuG0p5vkxzPmp/shrHSUK6vJ5VJFiMZ

Sowing guides for the month

This section provides a complete list of the growing guides that are relevant to this month. I’ve restricted this list to things that grow well when sown this month, rather than things that are possible to sow. A few guides might seem a bit surprising, because I’ve selected veggies that grow really well with a jump start from grow lights and a little heat.

Just click/tap on a guide to view it.

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Harvest guides for the month

These are the fruits and veggies that I think it’s worthwhile harvesting this month. We don’t try to harvest everything every month, but since my focus is self-sufficiency we do try to have a rich, mainly fresh food diet every week of the year. The following list we harvest fresh from the ground, our list of stored produce is further down the page.

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Food from the store

In addition to fresh harvests we will have plenty of food from the store. Each guide includes videos and tips on storage where applicable. There are a few foods where you have the option to lift and store, or leave in the ground, potatoes, carrots, beetroot being examples. Your success with these will vary depending on pests, weather and space. The data that follows is my own real-world experience, not theoretical storage timescales.

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Videos for the month

This section lists all of my past videos, released in the relevant month. I find this particularly useful when I’m planning as I can look back at how things were growing in previous years and review options for improvement. It’s also just fun to see how my world has changed over time.

https://airtable.com/shrksDhk9bmBeSHew?filter_Video month=March

My reference information for the month

This section of the monthly guide provides links to what I actually sowed, planted, harvested etc for months in the past. It also includes links to my gardening week videos, harvest videos and sowing guides. You can find all of the reference information - for every month - all together in the reference information section of this book.

To view a month, just click/tap on the image below.

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