March Direct Sowing, Nursery & Greenhouse, & Seed Planning 3-8-24- Garden Ramblings Tips & Tour E-18

Welcome to the Rusted Garden Homestead. In today's episode of Garden Ramblings, I want to give you an entire tour of my garden. Go over what you can plant in March. Now is a great time. I'm in Maryland Zone 7. It's about 40 degrees right now. Nights are staying in the 40s, you know, dipping into the 30s, chance of frost. Days are getting into the 50s and 60s. That's the perfect time to get your cool weather crops out. I want to start off with my nursing area. I'm going to be growing plants this year. Just set up this space. A lot of the plants here I dug and divided from last year. Did some seeding in the greenhouse, so I'll show you those. But in the back, that's holly seafoam, which is a great plant, holly seafoam, for attracting beneficial insects. I laugh because the flower scent sort of smells like chicken manure, so not great for people. Beautiful flower, but pollinators just love it. Tons of bees come in, all kinds of beneficial insects, so the scent's not the best, but it's perfect for your pollinators. Strawberry plants that I just cut and pressed into here last year, they're all starting to take off. I just gave them a drink of water-soluble fertilizer. Found some clumping grass randomly growing on my property, planted that up. Sweet William. I have berry canes over here, raspberries. These are goji berries. I mean, we might as well come over here too. This was a little storage unit that I wasn't using. All of my containers are going in there. This way, this whole space is kind of getting set up and organized so that I can just propagate and plant for 2024. Potting area, seed starting mix back there. Potting up soil, just combinations of all kinds of different things. More of the canes and stuff in there. Oh, and just real quick, blazing star or liatris or liatris, however you want to say it, are perfect for butterflies, even hummingbirds. They love these plants. They are perennials. They come back year after year. But you can get 80 of them. I got these at Costco. 80 of them for, I think, $13.99. And I just planted them up into these little three and a half inch pots. So I'm going to have 80 blazing star perennial plants to put out that butterflies love, pollinators love, and they'll be covered in bees too. So you will definitely get, even hummingbirds, you'll get nature coming in for what I think is a pretty good price. I mean, bulbs can be expensive, but the blazing star, I mean, 80 of them are really inexpensive. And they're great to sell too if you're going to be doing a plant sale. More goji berries, raspberries coming in. Oh, I just bought a gooseberry too. These were, I think, $12.99. Get a little bit closer. This is going to grow up here to block this part so my wife doesn't see it when we're sitting at the gazebo behind us. So I'm using plantings to kind of hide this growing area behind the plants. This way you don't really see it from the rest of the property. Although I love the look, a lot of people, I guess, don't. Gooseberry, $12.99. There's a lot of fruit canes at Home Depot right now. Get it in the ground as quick as you can. That's going to get about four feet tall and that will just block this whole area right over here when you're sitting behind me. In the greenhouse, I cleaned it up. Got all the pots out. Everything that I'm going to be doing will be outside. All the potting up because this is not a very big greenhouse. But just look at the beautiful transplants. These all were grown in the house. This is my broccoli that's going to be going out. You can't buy, I don't think, a better transplant than that. So acclimation, one, two, three flats. They've been out here getting used to the cold, the sun, all that for well over seven days. Some of these have been out for two weeks. Ready to go out into my garden. All the herbs here were actually planted in October. I don't know if you can see that, but it says October 19th. Overwintered. I heated this a little bit in February, but for the most part, the temperatures would get into the low 20s here in Maryland and these would freeze. They're coming back beautifully. I'm going to be watering them again with a water-soluble sage, purple coneflower, all popping up, chives, peppermint, more chives, lemon balm. Now you can see everything didn't germinate, but this is plenty of plants for me. Oregano. I think that's thyme. This is sorrel. More mixed cool weather crops. Real quick in there, that's globe artichoke. More thyme, catmint, and just look at how beautifully mint does outside. This is peppermint. Looks really, really good. Nice and green. One more drink of water-soluble fertilizer and I'm going to have plenty of plants to put in my garden and also sell. I just wanted to stress this because if you're growing for your own property, that's one thing. If you're going to grow for your own property, to give to friends, to sell, a little greenhouse is perfect because all this really pretty much survived itself out here. Even though that says $7.98, that's just a reused pot. This is a grapevine that I bought at Home Depot. It's really important when you're buying vines and canes at the big box stores and they're inside that you don't buy plants that have been growing indoors for two, three weeks. They're all going to take off in there because it's warm. You want to try and get the canes or the vines, when they just have little flowers on them, get them outside as quick as you can. Let them grow into the sun, into the cooler temperatures. They're going to be stronger plants. Let's go over to the front of my garden. I've been doing a lot of work there. The other thing I did here was I brought in a place for a 50-foot hose, cemented it in. I can take my main hose, hook it to the back of that, and now I can water everything in the greenhouse, everything in the nursing area without having to fill containers and drag them up there. It's really important that you come up with a strategy to make things as simple as possible for you because we all have busy days, busy lives. This year I'm starting from this part of my garden and cleaning it up. I have day lilies right in here. Day lilies, and again I want to stress day lilies, are edible, delicious flowers if you want to add those to your landscape. This is a black carrot that I planted last year, taking off doing really well, horticultural oil that I left out from yesterday. I'm spraying my trees right now. Coming into here, this is where I've been doing all my work, and gardening is an ongoing process. You're going to see stuff laying around in my yard. My goal is by April 1st is to have everything transformed over for the growing season, and maybe when you watch a video then you're going to be like, wow, this guy really keeps his garden up nicely. It usually looks like this. Everything is in transition. You just do a little bit when you can, and everything will eventually take care of itself. It doesn't have to be pristine and perfect all the time. Apple tree I just pruned, just pruned my grapevine, dropped in another rhubarb plant right there, so I'm going to have two. I think that's going to be great. These are lilies. They are not day lilies. The lilies here, if you eat these flowers, they're toxic, so you've got to know the difference. I think that's hyssop. Putting down brown mulch by the bag, a little bit more expensive, but it's like changing the carpets in your house. I want this to be a little bit darker this year for contrast in the way of mulch, and I have a lot of mulch under this, so I'm just kind of putting a little top dressing on there to change the color. This is the external part of my garden. Everything else is pretty much fenced in. Deer leave, the garlic alone. Did a video on garlic, just watering it in, freshening it up, or actually waking it up with some water-soluble fertilizer. Get it off to a great start. Some carrots in there, but you can see garlic is all over the place. Planted onions in there. These are plants that overwintered here in Maryland. Carrots look good. I left a couple of lettuce, arugula, spinach plants. They're all going to get pulled out eventually, but I'm eating those leaves now. Lots of onions just went in there. More garlic. This is from a video I was doing on teaching people what's in potting mixes, and basically it's garbage. Not the video, but what you buy in these bags. Buy yourself some peat moss, some topsoil, soil conditioner, or just peat moss, 50% of your soil. Mix it together. You can check out those videos. You'll save a ton of money, and you're going to get a better product than paying up for like bagged potting mixes and raised bed mixes and all that kind of stuff. My globe artichokes. They're doing really well. They overwintered. This is all getting cleaned up. Used to have all kinds of peppers in here. I actually turned the soil. There's nothing wrong with that. With a shovel. There are too many weeds growing. Wanted to loosen it up. I'll weed this out some more. I have a soil that's a large amount of clay, which is great for micronutrients, but it's not that loose, so I'm always amending it. After a couple of years, your soil gets better. You're not in a rush to make perfect soil the first year. Save yourself some money. Just go slow and steady. Typically I do a no-dig, and that's what I'll just be throwing compost back there, but this one I decided I wanted to turn it, get rid of some of the weeds. It's not going to hurt your garden. You don't want to get a tiller every year and till your garden and just plow it and pulverize it and wreck it. That really kills off the worms. Just taking a shovel, flipping it over, that's okay to do. Potato beds are ready. Things are getting all set up out here. Coming inside, I was able to work my way really from the front door. Got down the mulch, and then I'm working my way out this way this year. In this area, I put in, I don't know, probably 100 peas all over my garden. This is how I have them set up. Sugar snaps, green arrow, which is shelling peas, bamboo posts to support them. Now is a great time for peas. If you're looking what to plant in March, again I'm in Maryland zone 7, peas can go out early. All the plants I'm going to be talking about can take a frost, it can take a freeze. The problem with peas is if they're sitting in wet, cold soil, they can kind of get mulled and fungus and rot. I pre-sprouted some of my peas, some of them I direct sow, but in Maryland it's getting to be 40 degree nights, 50, 60 degree days. That's warm enough and the soil drains well to get your peas out. Get them out maybe a little bit sooner than you think. They can do really, really well. I had peas that survived through December, January, and February here. They were pea little seedlings that I planted back in September. I'll show you what I'm talking about in a second. My point is that they survived 20 degree temperatures, temperatures that dropped into the teens. They were beat up, I pulled them, but your pea plants, once they come out of the ground, they can take that frost. More garlic, things look pretty good. Like I'm excited. So I'm going to be working my way from where I just was all the way out to here. This whole space is really my cool weather garden. I'm going to be cleaning up this space here. I have garlic in containers, you can grow that in containers, collards that survived the winter. This is all going to get cleaned up. You can see, when I was cleaning up this row, getting in my cool weather transplants that I grew, I just threw everything over here. I'll get to that later. Nobody cares about that. Nature doesn't care about it, the garden doesn't care about it. I don't like the way it looks. But my goal was to clear out this space, and then if I spent the time having to move this, take care of all this, you run out of time. So what am I trying to say? Sometimes the goal is just to clear this area out, get your plants in, a week later, that's what I'm going to be doing for this weekend, then clean up the mess that you threw everywhere. You don't have to do it all that day. So I have spinach, endive, romaine lettuce, looks like something came in, oh no, I thought that, I'm always looking for rabbits, I thought that was some romaine, it's not, that's just some sort of flowering plant coming up. So I thought a rabbit chewed some stuff down. So far so good, I don't have any rabbits getting in here. Just planted this off of a video, these are pre-sprouted peas that were put in there. And you want some sort of trellising, those are closet racks, dropped in my butter crunch bibb lettuce right in there, and one of the things, like, you know, I mean it's hard to, everything you see is like, plant your lettuce four inches apart, six inches apart, with rows that are eight, whatever. Sometimes that doesn't work. So what I did is I put my peas in right there, and then with the space here, I'm doing about probably six inches, so that I get full size bibb lettuce heads, but I'm just squeezing them in where they fit. I only can eat so much lettuce in a day. I have lots of greens going on, so even if I planted 24, you know, bibb lettuces in here, I'm not going to eat all that. So part of my strategy this year is to plant less, but be able to eat, you know, what I want just about every day. By just squeezing them in this space, the peas are going to come up, these will be eaten and harvested over the next 60 days. Then I'll be dropping in my cucumber plants right there. The peas will still be growing up here. As they're dying off, the cucumbers will take over. So I have a plan on how I'm going to use this little space. Radishes in here that overwintered, they're going to all be pulled out, because the radish itself isn't really edible. I don't need all those radishes, I need that space. This is the area that I planted back in September. Put in some bunching onions, the spinach back there was protected, and it's doing really well. Turnips are doing well. Spinach that wasn't protected, it's growing, looks good. But these all went in on September 20th, actually. That is a butterhead lettuce, carrots, romaine, they all survived without protection, although the spinach back there was protected, for December, January, and February. This is just beautiful growth. This is going to give me stuff to harvest, I'm actually taking the spinach now, over the next two weeks or three weeks while my other stuff is growing. But because this did so well, the temperatures are changing, clearly, throughout the United States, I'm going to be building some sort of high tunnel, maybe low tunnel, and I'm going to grow through the season. I'll be able to really have lettuces and core the crops, I think, through December, January, and February, because these survived without any protection. Imagine if I give them a little bit of protection, how well things are going to be. So I'm going to come out to about this far, beets are going to go into there, and over to here, and this is where my cool weather garden is going to end. So it's the cool weather crops, and then behind me will be the warm weather crops. So I'll get to that part of the garden later in March, getting it set up and everything like that. What I'm doing is keeping this space, let me get my shadow out of here, this space is going to be really for, obviously, cool weather crops, but this is my lettuce garden. So I've got lettuce, I've got peas, my salad garden, I have endive in there, I have celery. Endive takes longer to mature, it's a nice, delicious green, a little bit bitter. I'll be growing different crops up here to create shade, keep the soil cooler, maybe grow greens longer, we'll see what's going on. But the space in here, when the endive is done, will be other crops that prefer a little bit cooler summer weather. Dropped in carrots, mustard greens, those are probably, no I thought those were radishes, those are onions, and then I have carrots back there. So I'm going to be able to just come in this space, basically, you know, make a bowl of salad. Endive, kale in the back, leafy greens over there, buttercrunch right there, celery, carrots, everything that I really need. From this point, this is everything that's going to be more the warm weather crops. You know, in the years when I grew too much, I'd be tucking in some lettuce over there, I'd be putting more peas over there, I'd have some stuff over there, and it was a little bit disorganized, or, alright, a lot disorganized. I loved it. I like the way it looks. I like the kind of sculpt in nature, but I'm trying to be a little bit more organized. Tomatoes are going to go in over there, peppers will be in a certain place, but for right now, this can all be taken care of later. You know, I'm doing some mild weeding and stuff like that, but it's really, my concentration is going to be in this part of the garden. Alright, let's go to another place. Coming around here, a couple more metal-raised beds with garlic. This was all overgrown, it's laying in a pile, like I was saying, piles are just getting thrown around, everything will be picked up soon, go into the compost. But I had garlic in here, it was being shaded out by the bok choy and the mustard greens. Growing garlic, onions, anything leaks eventually too. Anything that the deer leave alone are going to be outside this space. Over here, I have a lot of containers of plants that I divided up and put out here. Those are actually garlic chives, I mean they look beautiful, they're taking off. These were inside the greenhouse for January and some of February, just because I wanted them to stay a little bit warmer, get a nice jump on the season. Like the mint, wouldn't look like that if it wasn't in the greenhouse, unheated for those, I don't know, six weeks or eight weeks. This is what the mint looks like, this is where it came from. So it's been too cold, this will all take off soon. But protecting them in the greenhouse, January, February, everything really is taking off. This is again for plants that I may be selling. More garlic chives, mints, this is a type of Russian sage, peppermint over there. Everything looks really good. Everything got a drink of the water-soluble fertilizer. Any water-soluble is going to work. Cleaning up this space, the plants that are in here, the canes and the trees have been sitting there for so long, they've rooted through the pot into the ground, so I have to dig them out. That's a red currant back there, more peppermint, nothing sprouted, well here's a seed that laid on the top, I don't know if you can see that, that's a radish, but I have three kinds of radishes in here. You can grow them, I do this every year, this is about, I don't know, four inches, five inches deep, a couple inches across, you can grow radishes in here. It's just a fun way, if you have limited space, to grow some radishes. Let's go into the other side of the main garden. Strawberries look good, they've been cleaned up, different kind of containers, I love strawberries so I'm growing more strawberries. Blueberries look great, I'll be talking about what I do with them, but they're basically going to have some granular fertilizer scattered around, get a drink of myrrh acid, which is a water-soluble fertilizer that's a little more acidic, right around the base, that helps them kind of pull in nutrients better. But these plants, these blueberry bushes are pretty much left alone, except for what I just described, and they do really, really well. More strawberries, let me spin around this way. This is a little bit like what I was doing earlier in the video when I showed you, about kind of planning how your plants are going to go in here. So this is five rows of different strawberries, strawberries, different radishes, planted on 2-26, I think today is maybe the 7th or 8th of March. Radishes, this is where I love putting in my pepper plants, I do that every year. These will probably be gone, but if it's warmed up and I can put in my pepper plants, I'll just clear out a space where they're going to go, drop the pepper plants in, they'll establish, they'll start growing. By the time they get big enough to shade out these radishes, the radishes will be gone. So I'm really using this space, rather than just letting it sit here and wait until the peppers go in, I'm going to have five rows of radishes. This is my first wave, so definitely you can direct seed radishes now, pak choy, carrots, beets, lettuce, spinach, you could do your kale. Only thing in Maryland that I really like to use as transplants are the brassicas, because they can be a little bit slower to sometimes germinate and grow, and then the warm weather comes and I don't get nice heads of cauliflower and broccoli because it gets too warm. So like Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, I like to grow as transplants indoors. More strawberry towers, or more strawberry plants in towers. Be doing the next round of growing vertically in these green stalk garden towers. Put in some peas right down there. Up top I have some kale and celery in there, I'll be talking about that in the next video. But everything is starting to really come alive. These have been cleaned up, water-soluble fertilizer. This is where I'm at. So I encourage you guys to have fun in your garden. Don't look at like, you know, for me that I have to have everything in perfect shape now. Get everything done within a weekend. Just do it in bits and pieces. This is all going to come later. Let's just finish up down here. These are more, and this is a little bit about how I planted chaotically. Like all the way down here I have radishes that overwintered, I have carrots coming up, more radishes, some pak choy. This all really has to get removed because it looks nice, I love watching stuff grow, but it's not going to really provide me a whole lot. And I have that all the way down there, you know, where I'm working on the cool weather crops, the salad garden, the greens garden. So rather than like popping stuff all over the place, I'm trying to stick with my plant. Want to come around, let me get my shadow out here again. Apple tree's been sprayed. Another round, actually it's not, these are radishes that I put in on 226 too. These are the icicle deep radishes, they get like 4 feet deep, more like a carrot. I like planting them in 17 inch raised bed, the soil's really loose. And one of the things I did here, I think there's about, I don't know, there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 rows times 6 or 7, so there's about 35 radishes here. In the past, I would have planted like 100 of them, I'm never going to use them. I would have ended up using this whole space. I can plant more stuff back there. I can put in cucumbers, they're going to trellis right up here. By the time they get big enough, the radishes will be gone. So I'm really working on controlling my love of planting. There's a whole lot you can plant in December, no, not in December, in March. You're looking for the nights to be, you know, in the 40s, sometimes dipping into the 30s, occasional frost is okay. But as the days are getting into the 50s and low 60s and you're getting warm rains, all the cool weather crop seeds can go out, they're going to germinate. So I can't tell you, like in March, do this, because your zone might be covered in snow right now. But look for those temperatures to be increasing at night, the warmer days, the warmer rains. And you're really close to being able to put out probably most of your cool weather crops. Definitely get them out, experiment, put them out at different times, take notes, and then each year you'll know when you can start seeding your cool weather crops. Thanks so much for watching. Please check out my seed shop at therustedgarden.com. Have fun in your garden, go slow and steady, and then after you've accomplished something, come back to it and just take a look, you know, at what you've accomplished. I really like the way this looks. I'm excited about everything. This is going to be a great year. Thanks so much again for watching.