Monthly Gardening Tasks - March

Plant Woody Plants this month.

Prune your roses and feed twice this month.

Vegetables

Fertilize your Blackberry plants, and at the end of the month fertilize the strawberries.

Plant Peppers, Tomatoes, Corn, Onions, Squash, Watermelon, Cucumber, Cantaloupe, Lima Beans, Snap Bush Beans, Southern Peas, and Pumpkins.

Lawn

Continue to water your woody plants, your lawn and mow if necessary this month. Water, then fertilize, then water again.

Herbs

Basil, Bee Balm, Burnette, Chives (Garlic & Onion), Lemon Balm, Lemon Grass, Demon Verbena, Mexican Mint Marigold, Mint, Oregano, Pineapple Sage, Rosemary, Thyme

Trees

Watch out or Tent caterpillars in your Live Oak trees.

If you fig tree suffered any freeze damage, prune it off now. If you see a jelly-like substance oozing out of your plum trees, cut these stems off before the trees begin to grow.

Fertilize you Pear trees early this month.

Garden Checklist for March

By Dr. William C. Welch, Landscape Horticulturist, Texas A & M University, College Station, Texas

Prepare beds for planning warm-season flowers and vegetables.

For every 100 square feet of bed area, work in a 2- to 3-inch layer of organic material such as compost, pine bark, or sphagnum peat moss.

Select and order caladium tubers as well as geranium and coleus plants for late April and early May planting.

Do not plant caladiums until soil temperature reaches 70 degrees F.

As camellia and azalea plants finish blooming, fertilize them with 3 pounds of azalea-camellia fertilizer per 100 square feet of bed area.

Check mulch on azalea and camellia plantings and add where needed. Consider using pine needles, pine bark, or similar organic materials.

Beware of closeout sales on bare-root trees and shrubs. The chance of survival is rather low on bare root plants this late in the season. Best bets for now are container-grown or balled-and-burlapped plants.

Remember that many trees and shrubs are damaged or killed each year by the careless application of weed killers, including those found in mixes of fertilizers and weed killers.

Always read and follow label directions very carefully. Weeds in a lawn usually indicate a poor lawn-management program and can usually be crowded out in a healthy turf.

Start hanging baskets of petunias and other annuals for another dimension in landscape color.

Freeze-damaged beds of Asiatic jasmine ground cover should be sheared back just as new growth starts to encourage new growth from the base.

For early color in the landscape, try some of the following annuals as transplants: ageratums, cockscombs, fibrous rooted begonias, coreopsis, cosmos, cleomes, marigolds, nasturtiums, petunias, phlox, portulacas, salvias, sweet alyssums, sunflowers and zinnias.