I think northern gardeners can relate to the “Snow-crusted moon” (Onaabdin-giizis). March is normally the time of year when the snowpack is crusty and hard, forming a seemingly impenetrable cover over our flower and vegetable gardens.
Of course, this year is an exception. The snow is almost gone and it’s tempting to start doing some gardening. Alas, we need to be careful! The weather is about as predictable as the next presidential election. The mild days we’ve seen this month may not hold through April. We can all recall those years when there was snow on the tulips!
Still, we might say that March is to gardeners what April is to a golfer. In April, a golfer starts thinking about getting the ol’ clubs out. But they know getting on the greens is still a little way off. Similarly, a gardener starts thinking about ordering seeds and maybe even purchasing a few plants, but knows we can still get snow or at least a frost.
Are the trees “budding or are the buds swelling?
I’ve heard a lot of people saying the “trees are already budding.” I have to ask, “are you seeing buds or are the buds swelling?” Trees and shrubs actually form buds in the fall and then go dormant in the winter. In the spring, when the frost is out of the ground and it warms up the buds start to swell and start showing a little green before they open up to form leaves or flowers (the two types of buds on a tree or shrub). I checked on my apple trees and a maple tree in the yard, and yes, I see buds, which I should, but they have yet to swell or produce leaves or flowers. Let me know if you see buds swelling or opening up. It will look like this:
Laughs in the garden
Besides being good therapy, gardening can have its humorous moments. A few years after I left my parent’s home I was working at a large foster care home in Brimley, called Iroquois Lodge.
I’ve always managed to find a place to garden, even in those first years after I left home and was moving around. My year at “The Lodge” was no exception. That year the owners bought about 75 tomatoes plants. With the help of some of the more able-bodied residents, we planted all of them.
By late August we had some nice plump, GREEN tomatoes. One day a rather mischievous but likable fellow named Gary, who had cerebral palsy making it hard for him to speak and walk, came into the lobby of the Lodge with a big bucket full of green tomatoes. Boy was he proud! He had picked all of the green tomatoes. I don’t know if they would have ripened on the vine that year, but they never got the chance. It was one of those things where it wasn’t so funny at the time but later we had a good laugh.
If you have had difficulty getting your tomatoes to turn red through no fault of your own or an overzealous tomato picker, try growing a short-season variety. My favorite is Celebrity, an All-American Selection that has produced red-ripe tomatoes for our salsa and canned tomatoes for longer than I can remember. Some of the local nurseries should have them, if not, give me a holler, I usually have a few extra plants. Early Girls and other short-season varieties are also a good choice for the northern gardener.
Check off list for gardeners for March:
- Order seeds
- See what tools or equipment you’l need for the season
- Design a flower bed and/or plan a vegetable garden
- Read up on seed starting
- Pray for an early spring!