March garden calendar

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Here is March. And in the garden, and in the garden, it's time not only to restore order, but also to take care in preparation for the future harvest. And, if you manage to do everything on time, during the hottest period of garden work, there will be much less cases, and it will be easier to complete them. No wonder folk wisdom says: whoever is glad to work in the spring will be rich in the fall.

We give an assessment of the past winter

The first thing to start work in the spring garden is to assess the state of fruit trees after winter. This observation is important not only as an opportunity to plan a future crop, but rather with the aim of timely assistance to plants, if they are affected by frost and the winter sun.

To do this, young twigs are cut from individual trees and placed in water. A few days later, a kidney is cut with a sharp knife or blade in a vertical direction and a section of its tissues is examined. If the tissues are green - the plant has wintered well, if they have an unhealthy shade - it is frostbitten. At the same time, the degree of damage can be insignificant, medium or severe, which can be more accurately determined later.

Carefully inspect and cut branches. If cadmium is damaged, plants need help. If not, you can start spring pruning.

Cut fruit

It is necessary to start pruning trees when the threat of severe frost passes, but before the sap flow begins. Typically, the signal for action is a steady temperature of around 0 ° C. If, when assessing fruit wintering, it turns out that the trees are badly damaged by frost, the event is postponed to a later date.

Pruning begins with fruiting late varieties of apple trees, then moving on to earlier varieties, cherries, plums, apricots, cherries, and only then form young, not yet fruiting trees.

It’s better to start forming a crown by removing damaged branches, then remove what is directed inward, and finally, adjust the load (in this matter it all depends on the culture, variety and age of the tree).

So that the cropped shoot does not become a place of a nursery of diseases, it must be cut off close to the base, perpendicular to the branch on which it grew, but in such a way as not to damage it. Sufficiently large sections should be treated with garden varnish or oil paint, which must be applied during the first 24 hours.

On young plants, crown formation can be carried out by bending and fixing the branches in a position closer to parallel to the ground. This technique provokes an earlier entry into fruiting and provides a more intensive formation of fruit twigs.

If plants are planted in the fall, they are pruned with the prospect of forming a crown.

At the same time, if this has not been done before, they also prune the berry bushes. Excess shoots are removed from the currant and gooseberry bushes, thickening shoots are cut out, damaged branches are cut.

Formative pruning is also carried out in the raspberry. Shorten second-year shoots, thin out bushes.

Protecting the garden from the sun

Since warm sunny days are not uncommon in March, it is good that the garden is protected from the sun. Temperature differences bring with them a danger that many beginner gardeners are unaware of. But it can very much affect the life of fruit trees. We are talking about sunburn and frost.

Sunburn. Their formation occurs as a result of spring temperature jumps, when during the day the trunks and branches of the trees heat up, and at night they undergo a sharp cooling. Under such conditions, the cortex cells do not stand up, die off and eventually peel off, as a result of which, part of the wood is subsequently exposed. The result of such damage is impaired sap flow, poor winter hardiness and reduced plant yields, as well as its easy accessibility to damage fungal diseases.

Not only old trees are affected by sunburn, but also young, and even seedlings dug for winter.

Frost Frost. The same temperature differences become the cause of the occurrence of frost pits, which, in contrast to sunburns, are not just damage to the bark, but cracking of wood up to the core of the trunk.

To avoid these problems, tree trunks must be whitewashed in the autumn with slaked lime or chalk solution. If this was not done in advance, you can whitewash in early spring, or cover the trunks on the south side with an improvised shield, white cloth, straw, spruce branches, reeds, which can only be removed in April.

If any damages are found, they must be cleaned and treated with garden varieties, frost hollows can be wrapped with wide ribbons to stop the exfoliation of the bark along the edges of the wound.

Spliced on kinks

There are frequent cases when under the weight of snow the branches of old trees go to a break. If this happens, it is not necessary to delete them. Such branches or part of the trunk must be carefully cleaned, connected, secured with a wire and wooden blocks placed on the outside and greased with a garden varnish at the seam. If the broken part is too heavy, you can shorten it, or additionally support it.

Remember uninvited guests

Since March is not yet able to feed hungry hares and mice, do not forget to adjust the protective net around the tree trunks, check the storehouses. As a distraction from cultivated plants for eared pests, you can leave branches around the trunks when forming a garden.

If rodents have damaged roots or eaten the bark of young seedlings, you should not put a cross on the plants, but feed them and treat the gnawed place with garden varnish, after trimming the damaged wood and the edges of the bark with a sharp knife.

We take measures against diseases and pests

In early spring, it is already necessary to think about protecting the garden from diseases and pests.

Collect, if this has not been done before, nests of silkworms, goldfish, hawthorn, destroy mummified fruits. Before the buds begin to swell, in order to protect them from the flower beetle and other weevils, attach hunting belts to tree trunks.

Spray the garden with a solution of copper sulfate or 1-2% Bordeaux liquid. From the scab, treat the apple trees with a urea solution, Scor or Fundazole. To process with Fundazolum, for the prevention of gray rot, fusarium wilting and powdery mildew, planting strawberries, for the prevention of fungal diseases - raspberry.

Inspect the shoots of currants and gooseberries for the presence of larvae of the kidney tick. If round-bloated pale yellow buds are observed on the bushes, they must be collected and destroyed. If there are a lot of them, then cut the bush to the base, leaving only a part of the lower branches and sprinkle them with 10-15 cm of earth. In the soil, the tick will die, and the plant will give new shoots.

The berry bushes are examined for the presence of bud moth, manifested as if by the tips of shoots scorched by fire, and for damage by a glass-case, the branches in which it hibernates have a hollow core. Such shoots are cut and destroyed.

Many gardeners in the early spring process gooseberry and currant bushes with hot (+65 ° C) water. This should be done during the period of swelling of the kidneys. But it is more reliable to use Topaz against anthracnose, septoria and downy mildew.

Help melt the snow

If the spring is supposed to be warm, under the young trees it would be nice to loosen the snow. If lingering and cold, snow shelters can be left. Does snow melt slowly and cover the soil with ice crust at night? It is necessary to sprinkle beds with ash or peat.

The beds with garlic, carrots and other winter crops can already be covered with a black film. This will accelerate germination and provide earlier ripening of these vegetables.

We harvest cuttings

In March, you can still prepare cuttings for vaccination. But choosing a material, you need to be careful, because frozen twigs are not suitable for this event. You can identify them by the brown bark.

For storage, the workpieces are placed in the lower part of the refrigerator, after tying the cuttings in a bundle, wrapping them with a wet cloth and a film.

We carry out stratification

If you plan to grow rootstock of fruit crops on your own, then at the beginning of spring it's time to stratify their seeds.

We plant trees

In March, in the southern regions, you can plant seedlings of fruit and stone fruits, raspberries and other shrubs. If they plant on the places of old trees, it is better to pour new fertile land into the planting pits.

Cooking houses for birds

At the end of March, many birds are already looking for a place for nests. Therefore, if you have a birdhouse on the site, you must not only clean it, but also disinfect it when the new owners arrive. If a dwelling for a feathered couple is only planned, making a bird house, remember that its size, diameter of the entrance and ease of entry will depend on who settles in it.

We sow seeds in the open ground

By the end of the first month of spring in the open ground, it is necessary to sow the seeds of such decorative crops as tobacco, marigolds, levkov, nasturtium. In the summer, they will become not only an adornment of the garden, but also its natural protection against pests.

At the same time, if the soil has warmed up enough, you can sow both radish and greens that are resistant to low temperatures.

At the beginning of the third decade of March, potatoes are planted in the south, seeds of parsley are sown.

Take care of seedlings

In the first decade of March, it is necessary to sow seedlings of root celery, as well as tomatoes, peppers and eggplants, planned for planting in film greenhouses in late April. If tomatoes, cauliflower and white cabbage will be planted immediately in the open ground - they must be sown for seedlings in the last 10 days of the month. At the same time, you can already sow the seeds of cucumbers, but given that the seedlings will be planted on the warm beds of the greenhouse.

Previously sown cabbage varieties sown in the second decade of March dive, tomatoes and peppers in the third.

In greenhouses, you can already plant seedlings of cauliflower, radishes, onions, dill and other greens. For those who plant potatoes in May, at the end of March it is necessary to take up the vernalization of its tubers.

We continue to work in winter greenhouses

In winter greenhouses, it's time to pick cucumbers. Therefore, it is very important that the culture receives everything necessary during this period: + 26..28 ° C during the day, + 19..20 ° C at night, the absence of temperature fluctuations, irrigation with warm water, and top dressing.

Fertilizing

At the very beginning of March, raspberries can be fertilized with nitrogen fertilizers. On young landings, they need to be scattered closer to the bushes, on the old ones distributed throughout the row.

At the end of the month, frost-resistant siderates can already be sown.

Other jobs

It would be troublesome March days, but in the midst of their hustle and bustle, it is necessary to find time to revise and correct garden equipment, repair, disinfect, dig and fertilize spring greenhouses, prepare beds of open ground for the main plantings