March Gardening 2014: What’s Going on in My Garden!

Gee hasn’t March come around fast! Seems like only yesterday that we were celebrating the New Year and now we are talking about March gardening!

The weather has certainly changed in the last two to three weeks. The days have been just lovely lately with the temperature only getting into the high twenties or early thirties.

The garden is also enjoying a break from the heatwaves that we had in January and early February. Now that things have cooled off a bit we can now finally start organising the garden for autumn and winter.

We are going to put our tulip bulbs into the fridge at the end this month which should give us a better display of tulip flowers. The roses need deadheading again to encourage some more flowers and as the Salvias finish flowering they can be pruned back to about half their size. We will also be able to prune back any shrubs that were burnt off during summer.

The summer vegies are slowly finishing up, so we can start working out what vegetables we want to plant in autumn. As the vegie beds are emptied we can prepare them for the next crop. I have really enjoyed growing vegies over the summer so I can’t wait to try some different ones over autumn and winter!

While I say that the summer vegetables are finishing up, we still have more than half the patch occupied by pumpkins, gourds, and watermelons. The watermelons are a bit late but that is because they are self-sown and came up mid-summer! We are hoping that we continue to get some warm weather for a few more weeks so we can harvest some watermelon. Check out my recent post on Growing Watermelon at Home.

Now that the really hot weather has finished, the pumpkins and gourds have gone mad! We were starting to wonder if we would get anything to harvest from these. But now that the weather has cooled a bit we have heaps of gourds coming and a few pumpkins.

We planted some bought gourd seeds as well as some butternut pumpkin seeds that we collected from a bought one. So far there are about five butternuts growing which we are happy with. There are lots more gourds but they are going to be dried and used for decoration only.

This year we will have a couple of little helpers in the garden. Earlier in the year we adopted two cats from our local RSPCA. We adopted a tabby girl (Maddy) and a black and white boy (Wally) and they are settling into their new home nicely now.

Maddy is a bit of a scaredy cat and she will dive back inside when she hears a funny noise but Wally is a lot more daring. He loves being outside – he lines up in the morning to get out and we have to drag him in at night!

Wally really loves company so he loves having someone outside with him – which is a bit hard when you are trying to get some work done inside!

Now that the weather has cooled down a bit we will be able to spend some more time out in the garden so that should keep him happy!

In this post I also wanted to pay tribute to the wonderful men and women of the CFA. We live in a bushfire prone area and each year we have to keep an eye on the situation and be ready to leave if necessary. Early in February the weather was really hot and the potential for a bushfire was high. During previous summers we have never needed to evacuate, but on the 9^th of February this year we had a nasty scare.

A grassfire broke out only about 1km away from our house. It was scary to see large plumes of black smoke just over the hill at the back of our property. As we prepared to leave we could see water bombing helicopters attacking the fire! It was the closest we have ever come to a bushfire. We bundled the cats up and went to stay with family, all the while hoping the house would still be there when we got back.

The firefighters were great and they actually had the fire under control shortly after we left. After evacuating around lunchtime the fire was all safe by around 2pm. We were so grateful for the quick response of the CFA. We were more than happy to show our support on National Red Balloon Day on February 28.

With summer now behind us and the weather starting to change there is a lot that can be done in the garden. One job that we are still doing is watering! We can’t wait to get a decent rain so we can cross the watering off our to-do list!

If you would need some further inspiration for some March gardening jobs I can recommend the following links: