MarchThe soil wakes up, and the hardy crops go in
March is the month when everything becomes possible, provided you don’t rush. The soil warms slowly, and squally showers alternate with fine days. Outdoors, sow whatever tolerates the cold: radishes, spinach, lettuce, peas, broad beans, early carrots under fleece. Under cover, tomatoes, peppers and aubergines come up in pots. Prepare the beds without digging them over, and plant the first potatoes at the end of the month.
Tips of the month
- Loosen the soil with a broadfork and pull the mulch back from the beds to be sown.
- Sow radishes, spinach, lettuce, peas, broad beans and early carrots outdoors.
- Sow tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, brassicas, lettuces and leeks under cover.
- Plant early potatoes at the end of the month, once the ground has drained.
- Plant onions, shallots and strawberry plants.
- Sow green manures on the beds that will wait until May.
- Tidy up the strawberries and mulch the soft-fruit beds.
In the vegetable garden and orchard
What to do in march
Sow under cover
Sowing in the ground
Plant
On the plate
Eating in march
March is the hungry gap on the plate, between the winter vegetables running out and a spring that is slow to arrive. Savour the last chicory, the leeks, lamb’s lettuce and the first radishes, and open the jars you kept back for precisely this moment.
Living well
The first hours outside, hands in soil that is still cold, feel like a new term starting. Best to go at it in short sessions: your back and your garden both prefer regularity to heroics.