Well, the last week of February in Central Missouri has passed! With a tempering of winter weather, I have plenty to do outside in the garden. It’s a transitional period.
From now to about the 15th of March, the ground will be warming to allow the earliest transplant of cold tolerant vegetables. Late February, I sowed the first cold tolerant seeds in seed trays, including lettuces, brassicas, spinach, onions, beets, cilantro and dill. Pak choy came up first within a few days of sowing, and a number of lettuces popped out the following day.
With heavy mulch, it is easier for me to transplant small plants than to directly sow them into the ground. Last year, I decided it was best to purchase seed trays and grow seedlings myself.
The trays I eventually purchased and recommend are the RooTrimmer seedling trays. Get the latest prices and more details here.
Once the seeds germinate, they are moved to finish growing in my outdoor cold frame shelf. It is a plastic-covered shelf that sits on the east side of the house. So long as the seedlings are cold tolerant, they will grow in just fine in the frame, which protects the seedlings from frost and wind.
It is great for new gardeners who are not ready to commit to purchasing a green house. View the one I purchased here.
My coldframe shelf protects seedlings from frost and wind.
Orchard Care
It is tree pruning time in late winter while the weather is nice and the trees are still dormant. I removed any crossing branches from my fruit trees, especially growing toward the center of the tree, as well as those that were damaged. To keep the interior open, I pruned branches to an outfacing bud. Then, I rubbed my loppers with rubbing alcohol and moved on to the next tree.
My apple trees are shaped on a fence in a fan shape to increase production and because it's fun. I pruned out branches that didn't fit on the fan.
Apple trees affixed to the fence in a fan shape.
Canker has appeared on one of my peach trees. This tree had a run-in with the lawn mower, so I was not surprised about that. A common treatment is to cut out the canker from the tree. Another treatment I found was to add basalt rock dust to the ground in winter, and adding several treatments of kelp spray to the leaves to help the tree fight off the infection.
I was able to find some bulk-purchase basalt rock dust. You can review purchasing details here. Hopefully we get some peaches out of the tree.
Four Season Vegetable growth and harvests
Meanwhile, under cover in the garden, I am happy to say that a few of my Savoy cabbages survived the winter, as well as Florence fennel, some spinach and broad beans. I planted small transplants last fall, allowing their roots to establish in the hopes they would finish their growth in the early spring before other vegetables can mature.
Perennial spring vegetables are an easy way to increase produce early on in the season. I have some nice patches of asparagus, arugula and strawberries, but I am most excited about my rather tiny sculpit patch. It was alive and ready to eat as soon as the snow melted at the end of February. These plants have small tender leaves with a pea like flavor. I really like them, and plan to increase my patch for next year. I am also starting a patch of nettles this year as another option for early spring harvest.
I’ve had trouble in the past with my cool season plants suffering at maturity from the sub-tropical heat that arrives here in June, so I am focusing on planting cool season vegetable varieties that grow with shorter maturity dates. I like coleslaw, so this includes some 55-day cabbages I found on the Gurney’s website. I still would like to find an early maturing kale variety.
Similarly, warm season vegetables such as zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers only have about 6 weeks before the super-hot temperatures arrive, exceeding 90 degrees around mid-June. That is also when the bugs get them. So my plan is to get them into the ground 7 – 10 days prior to the last freeze day, under a frost cover, to give their roots a head start.
I do not grow my transplants indoors, so a key component to getting an early start to my warm season vegetables this year is to place them on my hotbed outside to keep them warm. A hotbed is a compost pile, traditionally composed of horse manure. It generates enough heat to allow plants to grow under cover despite the cooler temperatures outside. I will likely keep the seedlings on flats so I can pull them into the garage if necessary on cold nights.
I am still working on getting my hotbed warm. I started with a mixture of cow manure and brown yard waste, however it was not heating up. Perhaps I didn’t add enough nitrogen-rich manure, but I’ve also read conflicting information about cow manure’s ability to heat a pile. In any case, I added a 40 pound bag of alfalfa last Monday to get it going, which you can get cheaply at a local farm store.
A four season gardener considers the whole year each season, and how to prepare early for all of them.
Cover crop and other projects
One new project last fall was to employ a cover crop on a newly tilled piece of land. This will be the only tilling I will do. I planted crimson clover and rye overtop in November. That was a bit late, but the rye and clover came up, and I will wait until mid-April to mow it down. Then I will tarp it over for a couple weeks to kill most weeds. Once I pull up the tarp, I should have a mulched fertile ground ready for planting.
I also purchased some thornless black raspberries for mid-summer fruit. I will probably place them on the west side of my garden, but I haven’t quite located a spot for them yet.
Looking forward to fall and winter, I want a sturdier hoop for my winter low tunnels. However, buying new ones are not in the budget for this year. I do have some sturdy strait branches from a bush I plan to cut down to make way for new growth this spring. I plan on bending and braiding those somehow to create makeshift hoops.
For the parsonage landscaping, the west side of my house really needs improvement. Three years ago, we came to our parsonage with virtually no landscaping, and some areas have really taken off, but the west end needs attention. My front yard burms also need protection from what I believe is bent grass that is continually creeping into my native landscape there.
There you have it: my goals for the upcoming season and year. Look for more particulars in the upcoming posts!
Below are links to the tools I have used for my March Garden. Click to learn more:
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