March

In March, the water oak drops its catkins all over the roof, front yard, driveway, and east yard. There is often dew in the mornings. Early March has the year's last chance for a freeze.

Weather Conditions
3/20/2017 - 3/22/2017 - A lot of dew was in the yard in the morning, and it got pretty hot later in the day.

Non-Garden Plants

Leafing Perennials

Ferns along the back of the garage.

Flowering

Dallisgrass (Paspalum dilatatum)
Tenpetal Anemone (Anemone berlandieri)

Fruiting

Hairyfruit Chervil (Chaerophyllum tainturieri)
Carolina geranium (Geranium carolinianum)
Tenpetal Anemone (Anemone berlandieri)

Garden Plants

Perennial Leafing

Annuals Emerging

Flowering

Fruiting

Mature

Domesticated Capsicum (Capsicum annuum)
Leek (Allium ampeloprasum)
Mustard Greens (Brassica juncea)
Acorn Squash (Cucurbita pepo var. turbinata)
Fava Bean (Vicia faba)

Arthropods

leaf-footed bug
sawfly with a red thorax.
wireworm, the larva of a click beetle.

leaf miner in the leaves of a common sunflower seedling.

wood louse, 
a centipede baby, 
ants that were in the leaf mold I added to the 4th bed.
orbweaver spider was at the back end of the western hedge. 

Crane flies

Liris partitus burrowing wasp

june beetles


tiger mosquito.

first mosquito bite of 2016.

3/26/2014 - Scarab beetles and mosquitoes started showing up in the house when I kept the door open.

3/26/2016 - A cloudless sulphur landed near me, then flew off. They are fond of lantana and turk’s cap, which I have in the back yard.

3/27/2016 - A monarch butterfly larva was crawling up a milkweed plant.


3/27/2016 - Honey bees and bumble bees flew around the remaining azalea bushes in the front yard as I talked to a neighbor in the driveway.

3/28/2014 - Five scarab beetles were on their backs on the kitchen floor.

3/30/2014 - A Euodynerus bidens, a black and white mason wasp, was in the back yard.


3/30/2014 -A braconid wasp was in the yard.

Other Animals


 3/1/2017 - Female Raccoons are pregnant and looking for shelter.
3/1/2017 - I saw robins dig shallow holes in my beds as they searched for food.
3/9/2017 - Robins have been digging around in the raised beds and finding some worms.
3/10/2017 - I took a video of a kind of garden snail on a leaf, holding the leaf in my left hand and my phone (camera) in my right. I have had a surprisingly hard time identifying the snail. 
3/25/2016 - At night, a large possum was walking around the back yard.
3/27/2016 - A robin flew to the back fence, making me wonder how much longer they will be in town.

Fungi

3/10/2017 - I found a mushroom on a stick that was shallowly buried in the 4th bed. With help from folks on Reddit, I identified it as Polyporus arcularius.
Powdery mildew was growing on the mustard greens.

Activities

Sowing

New pole peas or beans
canteloupe (should have started indoors in January)
cucumbers
watermelon

Thinning

Beets

Transplanting

Peppers
Eggplant
Parsley
Kale

Harvesting

lettuce
Winter snap peas
Fennel

Removing

Arugula
Coriander
Old lettuce

Other

Create leaf mold pile
Leaf mold is ready for spreading.

Collect leaves
2nd mowing
edging
collect catkins
mulch with catkins
Check for mildew on plants and replace if needed.


3/2/2017 - March plantings and bed clearings.
3/7/2016 - I started thinning the beet seedlings.
3/9/2017 - I picked a lot of lettuce in the morning. As I was doing this, I discovered that some of it had aphids on it.

3/9/2017 - Pick early winter snap peas.
3/10/2017 - I removed all the arugula from the 4th bed (plot 8), added leaf mold to the bed, and transplanted the peppers and eggplant I had growing under lights indoors. This mostly completed the season's indoor growing. I still have onion, parsley, and collard transplants, but I already have a lot of those veggies in the garden.
3/10/2017 - I pulled some dallisgrass tufts out of the ground and stacked them on each other at that spot.
3/13/2017 - I planted Kentucky Wonder seeds under the trellis in Plot 2.
3/13/2017 - I finished transplanting the last of the indoor-raised seedlings from last fall: parsley and toscano kale. To make room for them, I removed more of the radish plants, as well as the harvested broccoli in the S bed. I don't need any more parsley or toscano kale, but I hated the idea of letting the seedlings go to waste! They are also good plants to have outside of the rotation.
3/20/2016 - The leaf mold pile has already settled significantly since I finished topping it off last weekend. I could add about 10 more bags of leaves to it after shredding them.
3/20/2016 - After pulling out the large fennel plant for use in smoothies, A few smaller ones remain in the S garden and the herb garden.
3/20/2016 - Over the last couple of weeks, I have kept pulling star jasmine as well as violet wood sorrel flowers from many areas of the yard.
3/22/2017 - I mowed the front yard for the 2nd time and edged for the first time this year. Grass, bur clover, and other plants were spreading pretty far over the sidewalk.
3/22/2017 - I gathered bags of catkins mixed with leaves from around the neighborhood and put them on my driveway for now.
3/22/2017 - I swept the street and sidewalk, but didn't get far on the driveway or front walkway.
3/22/2017 - I used the catkins on the street, sidewalk, and driveway as mulch in my garden beds.
3/22/2017 - I pulled some of my lettuce and used it as mulch even though I could have eaten it.
3/23/2017 - I sowed corn "Delectable" (Botanical Interests) among my tomato plants. I will fill gaps once all the lettuce is gone and I can see the corn seedlings from today's sowing.
3/23/2017 - I sowed bush beans "Contender" and "Roma 2" in the 1st bed (Plot 2), using all of the beans in both packets.
3/24/2017 - I went out to harvest some snow pea and sugar pea pods, and I discovered that some of the pea plants had powdery mildew on them. The flowers were getting sparce anyway, so I removed all the plants and harvested the healthy looking pods, which amounted to a few pounds. I threw most of the vines in the trash to reduce the chance of spreading the powdery mildew.
3/24/2017 - I changed the pole snap beans under the trellises.
3/24/2017 - In the space between the trellis beans, I sowed edamame in two rows.  
3/24/2017 - After removing some old lettuce from plot 3, (bed 1, north half) I made three mounds of leaf mold in gaps among the artichokes, lettuce, and clover, then sowed "Crimson Sweet" watermelon seeds in them.
3/24/2017 - I then made mounds and sowed "Hale's Best Jumbo" Muskmelon (canteloupe) in plot 6 (bed 3, south half), among the onions, garlic, leeks, carrots, and fennel that were already there. I will have to remove all those other plants once the muskmelon grows much past the seedling stage. Ideally, I would have started the muskmelon inside in January and transplanted them; that will be an activity for next year.
3/24/2017 - In plot 7 (bed 3, north half), I sowed two north-south rows of "Marketmore" cucumber seeds, with one row shortened by a chard and the other by lettuce and carrots. Still, there should be a lot of cucumbers in the end.
3/24/2017 -I sowed muskmelon and cuke seeds at trellises by the West Fence.
3/26/2016 - I removed a lot of violet wood sorrel bulbs, developing an efficient way to do so in the process.
3/26/2016 - I weeded most of the backyard bed with the crepe myrtle, carefully removing wood sorrel bulbs and yanking out the St. Augustine grass.
3/27/2016 - The neighbor gave me three bags full of leaves and oak catkins. I mixed them with juice pulp and coffee grounds to start a new compost pile near the water oak where I had removed the loropetalum and Texas sage.
3/27/2016 - I observed a black jumping spider with white marks and pedipalps.
3/30/2017 - I pulled up several of my bolted coriander plants in plot 6 (south half of bed 3) to clear space before my canteloupe plants start spreading.

3/30/2017 - I picked a couple of onion plants in plot 6 and used them like scallions. 

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