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March is the time to plan for spring flowers and vegetables. Give your flowers and vegies the head start they need to have blooming colours and a bountiful harvest this spring with these great tips from Bunnings horticulturalist Mark Dedman. It would also be great if Workshop members could add their tips by replying below.
What To Plant
March is the time of year to plant bulbs like daffodils, tulips and hyacinths in your garden.
In the tropical north, sweet potatoes, squashes, melons, cucumbers and capsicums can go in your vegie garden while impatiens, marigold and petunias can go in your garden beds. These can also look great in pots and troughs to brighten up a courtyard or balcony.
A bit further south in the sub-tropical zone, leeks, rhubarb, zucchinis, artichokes and capsicums planted now will give you a bountiful spring harvest. Salvia, verbena and lobelia will add colour too.
Temperate regions should look to beetroot, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, carrots, cauliflowers, onions and peas for their vegie patch and calendula, pansies, dianthus and sweet pea in the garden.
In cold climates, sow broad beans, cabbages, lettuce, shallots, spinach and turnips. In your flower beds polyanthus, poppies and primula should be planted.
If you are growing grass from seed, especially kikuyu, now is the time. The bit of growth you’ll get before winter means that your grass will be ready to thrive as soon as spring arrives.
What To Pick
Potatoes should be ready to be dug up now. If you are unsure, wait until the plant has completely shrivelled. That is when you should break out the shovel.
In the vegie garden, late-season tomatoes and zucchinis are ready to harvest as are pumpkins.
Early season apple varieties are also ready to be picked.
What To Do
Fertilise your lawn now so it gets one last spurt of growth that will see it through winter.
To ensure your berries are ready to endure the winter, tidy them up now. Remove any dead leaves and trim off the tops. Give them a good feed with an organic fertiliser like blood and bone.
You can also improve the soil in any empty beds of your vegie garden to get them ready for spring. Plant wheat or oats, let them grow to about 20cm high then dig them back in. This will organically add humus and nitrogen to the soil, giving your spring vegies the best possible start.
While the weather’s still good, take the opportunity to get out in the garden and get busy. Come springtime, you’ll be surrounded with colour and life and be glad that you did.
Check out Garden Corner on the Bunnings website for planting advice tailored to your area and climate.
Feel free to let us know what you're up to in the garden at the moment by replying below or hitting the Start a discussion button.
We're enjoying a cooler day down here in Melbourne after a scorching week. Hopefully the cooler temperatures will help the fireys get on top of the bushfires out east. Unfortunately we didn't get any rain last night with the cool change so our water tank is getting low. Fortunately we've been managing to keep the garden looking good and the vegies productive. We've had plenty of cucumbers, chillis, mint, basil and jalepenos, and there's lots of capscicum nearly ready.
Jason
The weather has been so hot here (Vic) over the last few weeks and summer overall that it's good to get a few cooler days and some relief for the plants that are still producing.
We went away for a fortnight and the daughter couldn't keep the water up to a lot of my pots in the heat and I've lost a lot of cuttings that were coming on strong and the climbing beans and tomato plants were hit pretty hard. My chillies survived and the carrots. I had already picked the pumpkins and set them aside to ripen fully.
I'm getting plenty of chillies and tomatoes now and have harvested about six kilo's of beans and what's left will be next seasons seeds for planting.
Will start pickling the exess for a supply over winter.
We need plenty of RAIN badly. We've only had 14mm so far this year where our average is about 106mm at this time of the year
Cheers @bergs 
How is everyone's garden looking at the moment?
At our place, everything has been growing like mad thanks to recent rain (especially the weeds!)
Let us know if you need a hand with anything.
Jason
My back lawns properly established since we bought the place a few years ago (took a bit of effort as we bought the old lawn back to life rather than laying new turf just to save costs I guess, and we weren't in a rush anyway)
My vegetable patch was doing much better since I got some copper tape from Bunnings to stop the snails and slugs getting into them - but then the wife bought a few chickens home.....copper tape didn't stop the chickens hahahahhaha
Good stuff @Prawns.
Love the difference in the lawn and I can imagine how stoked you would be with it.
I'm in the middle of a similar process.
We built and moved in just over 18 months ago and the site was just sand. We noticed a couch grass popping up a bit later on, so I've been encouraging that to grow front and back, rather than seed or turf. Taking a while, but it's getting there.
My first thing to do in March is to feed it with a good quality fertiliser that was suggested by members here.
Wife picked it up today (love Bunnings Click and Collect), so I'll spread that tomorrow and hope to see things looking better in the near future.
Love the chickens too.
Hello everyone, great work there @Prawns well done. The chooks will help fertilise and keep the bugs and other nasties down in the garden if they don't scratch everything out.😮🐔
I've been so busy since our holiday to out back Qld. last year.
Got back in September and the vege garden was over grown, so spent a lot of time and effort into tidying it up.
I had hit and miss with my own seeds. 
I'm now staring to reap the benefits from my crops.
My tomatoes, carrots, chillies, climbing beans (I just picked two kilo's Tuesday), beetroot and cucumbers are still growing strongly.
By my calculations I'm about a month behind this year from last year. All these were being harvested in February last year.
I will be trying to make space for broad beans over March.
I generally work the soil over and add plenty of compost and manure for next spring season. I only have broadies, carrot and some beetroot growing through the colder months. I haven't the room to put too much in because it's never finished in time for my spring sowings.
Cheers @bergs 🍻
Cheers guys
@Aussie-Garden We are all sand here as well mate (unfortunatly) I thought the issue here was mainly going to be how fast sand can drain water away - and maintaining some damp ground to help the grass start - but our main issue here turned out to be lots of the yard was water repellant where the water would just sit ontop of the sand and refuse to sink in lol. We fixed this issue by putting a bucket under the washing machines water output pipe - and the sudsy water we threw over problem areas over a few months and the detergents seem to have worked to help the sand suck the water straight in now
@Jason Yep mate! Strawberrys were their absolute favourite for quite some time, they have since moved onto corn kernels as being their favourite - so i can get the odd strawberry to myself again these days hahahahha. They have a "free roam" area behind the sheds but i let them out a couple times a day onto the main lawn (as their area no longer has any grass from their scratching hahahha)
@bergs Thats a awesome setup mate - and looks like your getting some great sized/amount of produce out of it as well! I might have to copy your fencing idea at a later stage I think so i can have some garden thats "chicken proofed" your setup is pretty much what I would like to have eventually I reckon Keep us updated on it mate what a happy strong growing garden you have Im defiantly jealous
Hey @Prawns
The set up is pretty simple and didn't cost much, but it works well to keep the birds (especially black birds) from scratching out seedlings.
I used old fenceposts to raise the bed up a bit and originally I used an old gazebo frame that I had plus another one I got from the Tip shop for $5.
They eventually rusted out so they were replaced with 25mm Duragal (square galvanised tubing) which I had, but had never used for the project intended.
I screwed the framework together using self drilling screws.
A few star pickets to screw the leg supports to and the netting from the market, over and around the outside and pulled down over screws in the posts to secure the bottom and still give access when rolled up.
If you use netting try and get the black because you can't see through the white properly.
As the netting gets older it gets ripped by the wind and possums climbing on it, so I will eventually replace it with bird wire.
I will sus out second hand if I can because the new is not cheap and after all, it's only for the garden.
Now back on subject of what's happening in my garden.
At the moment I'm still harvesting tomatoes, beans, carrots, beetroot, cucumbers and chillies. I have at least 5 pumpkins still growing.
Once the nights and days get cooler the season will be gone.
The chillies should eventually all ripen right up to May.
March is the time of the year all the summer sowings have come to fruition, but now are slowing down as the weather cools and slips into autumn.
I will be sowing more carrot and beetroot to give us some fresh goodies over the cooler months and preparing a patch for some broad beans.
I will need to feed and then prune back my native plants once they finish flowering.
A couple of Pandorea creepers have to be trimmed every few weeks to keep them under control because they grow rampant.
Sometimes I have to trim off some of the flowers, otherwise it gets to much to keep under control.
The Grevilleas and Hakeas are starting to burst out, giving a great display of colour.
There is a lot of work to do in the garden at this time of the year, including keeping the weeds down.
The lawns need to be treated with some sort of weed & feed especially now because the paspalum and burr clover are staring to run.
All the work you put into your garden now and through the Autumn and Winter months make for better harvests and your ready for the Spring, to start all your warmer weather crops.
Cheers and happy gardening🍻
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