March Garden Guide: The Ultimate Guide to Florida Gardening

Wondering what you should plant in your Florida Vegetable Garden in the month of March? Check out this Florida Gardening Video where I give lots of Florida Gardening Tips to help you have a successful Florida Garden. When you are new to Gardening in Florida, you need all the help you can get so that you start a Florida Food Forest, grow a Central Florida Vegetable Garden, add color in your Tropical Garden, enjoy the best Florida Friendly Landscaping, and add Florida Native Plants.
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0:00 What to plant in March?
0:17 Florida Vegetables
8:10 Florida Herbs
8:56 Florida Fruits
11:58 Florida Flowers
18:48 Florida Gardening Tips

Howy neighbors how was your garden growing in my garden today we’re going to be talking about the fruits flowers and veggies that you should be adding in the month of March so that you can create the garden of your dreams in the Sunshine State and as always I’m going

To be using my handy dandy wild Florian planner to help us with this discussion let’s first talk vegetables whether you live in North Florida Central Florida or South Florida everyone should be considering doing hot weather crops that may seem a little weird because we’re technically still in winter and we’re

Thinking about crops that are going to make their way through the heat and humidity and intense Sun of Summer but no matter where you live you you should be considering starting things like Roselle okra sweet potatoes and seminal pumpkins all of these are what we would call hot weather crops and the reason

That they are kind of the difference between warm and hot is because they originate out of the tropics so whether you’re past your last frost Daye or even have a frost date by starting your hot weather crops now you’re going to have some something to put in your garden in

The summer months now some of you might be saying um I’ve never heard of some of these crops what are you talking about wondering what you could do in place of like a cranberry substitute use something like a Roselle it’s in the Hibiscus family and it puts out these

Awesome little cxes that look really crazy but they’re so so pretty you boil them down and you can make your own cranberry sauce alternative it tastes really good even my dad who’s super super picky like loves it another staple the is okra it’s another plant that

Comes out of the Hibiscus family and I would say this is kind of one of those LoveHate crops of the South many people really just can’t get past its like texture it has like a mucogenic factor and if you don’t know what that means it’s kind of like the sliminess that you

See in aloe you can find that on a lot of different plants and actually it’s that kind of characteristic in the plant that glows it to like deal with the the Heat and the humidity and all the craziness that we get in the summer which kind of feels weird right now

Because like look at me I’m wearing a sweatshirt cuz it’s actually cold today but I actually enjoy fresh oak rot and eating it totally raw I like getting them when they’re like baby baby ones and just snapping them off In The Heat Of Summer other ones that I would

Consider adding I’ve done loofah before and you can both eat these and use them as sponges in the shower it really depends on how much work you want to do but if you’re looking for those squash Alternatives lofas in the Squash Family and you can use it like a fresh squash

When you get them really really small so use them like a summer squash zucchini alternative and so some of you might be feeling pretty good about this idea because if you’ve been struggling with Summer squashes and zucchinis because of Vine bores and all the pests that go

After them loofah is way way way way more resilient to pest activity it really honestly takes no effort and if you’re looking for something even more like classic squashes I highly highly highly recommend seminal pumpkins seminal pumpkins if you like butternut squash get a seminal pumpkin they grow

Ridiculously well where I live in zone 10 I basically have planted them once and they keep coming back and coming back and coming back they kind of die back in the winter time but right now they are I’ve got like 10 12T Vines and I didn’t plant one seed and if you want

To learn way more about seal pumpkins I will link this video at the end everything you need to know about seminal pumpkins and of course go ahead and get yourself some sweet potatoes started sweet potatoes are ridiculously easy and especially for my Central and South Floridians this is one of those

Similar to sual pumpkins once you get one bit in your yard it can honestly keep going and going going and going and then still keep going now when it comes to warm weather crops it’s a little bit different depending on where you live both North and Central Florida you guys

Can pretty much start all warm weather crops I would be focused way more on transplants at this time of year hopefully you already got your seed started but if you didn’t go ahead find your local nurseries or if you need to run to one of the big box stores and

Snag some warm weather crops from there this can be anything from beans corn tomatillos eggplants cucumbers peppers and tomatoes a lot of varieties now when it comes to some of these plants like your Tomatoes you do want to focus on the varieties that have smaller tomatoes on them I wouldn’t be starting anything

Like beef steaks at this point maybe you can get away with that in North Florida my zone 99’s my zone 10s like you should not be touching a large tomato with a 10ft pole right now there is way too much warmth there is way too much insect

Activity they will are very unlik to make it all the way to ripe I would stick to more things that are like in that 4 oz 2 oz 1 oz range you know you want to look at things like your cherry tomatoes grape tomatoes your pear Tomatoes currant tomatoes that would be

Something like your everglazed Tomatoes stuff like that is going to be able to have time to mature and get to ripeness before you get the push of the pest activity because pest activity is going to increase dramatically in the month of March the big thing is is we now have a

Lot more days over 60° so all the bugs that went dormant through the winter are starting to hatch and when they are babies they are hungry and they are looking for things to eat and that might be your Tomatoes or your tomato leaves or your broccoli leaves anything is fair

Game at this point for them so just be ready they’re coming when it comes to things like peppers and eggplants depending on the variety often times the ones that we tend to stick to like Ping tongue or you want to do something like a cubanela pepper they have natural deterrents like capsum

So you’ll be more okay there I definitely if you’re thinking about a pepper right now do Cuban L peppers they will go the distance through not only the end of the winter time but spring time and they will even head into many places into the summertime so my South

Floridians you might be feeling sad you’re like it’s March I’m already done how can that be but there are a few warm weather crops that you could consider think of things like corn and beans and for everyone sweet corn are great Florida is actually one of the top

Producers for sweet corn in the nation the other thing you should be considering is beans there are tons and tons and tons of options when it comes to beans the beans that I will be doing are more of going to be used like a hot weather crop that’s going to be Puerto

Rican black beans but there are a lot of other varieties please share what beans you like to use and if you’ve been loving all the tips and suggestions I’ve been giving you plus you want to track your own Harvest and keep note of what’s going on in your garden I highly

Recommend grabbing your own copy of the wild Floridian garden planner you can pick that up at www. Wild floridian. planner which brings me to my next tip which whether you’re going to be starting new warm weather crops like tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers or you already have them in the ground one

Of the things you need to consider doing for March in order to have really successful Harvest throughout spring is you need to start adding flowers one of the key differences between your cold weather crops and your warm weather crops is whether they need to be pollinated in order for you to get a

Harvest things like your cold weather crops like your beets your carrots your onions those are all root crops they’re going to grow whether you have bees in your yard whether you have butterflies in your yard but in order to get things like your peppers your eggplants your

Tomatoes you’re not going to get a good harvest if you don’t have those bees in the area to help pollinate the flowers one other thing it’s technically a cold weather crop but we’re going to like sneak it in here for everybody is you still could get away with carrots

Whether you’re in North Florida or or South Florida or Central Florida if they’re your little especially my South florans if they’re the little Quicky guys you know like your sweet and shorts they’re going to have like a 60-day turnaround you’re still going to be cool enough another one if you’re feeling

Like e buying plants I don’t know what to do and you want a really simple one to start that you can still get a good harvest on and it’s still really really easy you can still get green onions in the ground not your classic large bulbing onions but yes those green

Bunching onions you can buy them from theore store use them in a dish and then go ahead and just replant them it’s warm enough now that transplanting out these little little kitchen scraps still works so go do it now of course beyond all of our classic vegetable crops one of the

Things that you should consider adding to your garden is Herb because nothing gives you a better return on investment when it comes to fresh herbs versus how much you’ll pay at the store now we’re kind of in a unique period of the year cuz we’re technically winter but we’re

Kind of heading into the warmth that we would see in spring so you’ve got a a lot of options for herbs that you could plant this month you can of course just like last month still plant things like coriander thyme parsley fennel and chives that’s both garlic chives and

Onion chives in addition especially my Central and my South Floridians there are a bunch of other herbs that you should also consider adding especially things like basil Sage Dill Teragon lemon Bal oregano and lavender you can either start these by seeds or go ahead and just grab yourself some transplants

Now let’s talk fruits these of course are the the plants that you plant them once and then you’re going to get Harvest year after year after year you live in Central and South Florida and you’ve been thinking you want to do Food Forest some ideas for you of course I’m

Going to recommend the banana bananas are of course people’s favorite fruit in the United States actually across the whole world and what can be better than having your own fresh bananas and while you consider bananas I know y’all are going to go out there looking and you’re

Going to see someone say you can only get one bunch of bananas from one banana tree and you’re going to be devastated and it’s so confusing but let me set your mind at ease you will get many many Bunches of bananas from your banana plant so check out the video so you can

Learn way more about bananas and consider adding them to your garden if you live in Central and South Florida another really great one especially my Central and South floridans who get really sad that they cannot grow a lot of cabbage here in Florida let me recommend papaya to you and papaya is

Great because it grows fast it usually produces juices in the first year you can eat the fruits fully ripe or you can use them as green papayas and this is where if you’ve been wondering and worrying about your cabbage plants that get eaten by cabbage moss and you’re so

Sad really really consider getting a papaya you may have noticed in my garden planting that I put zero cabbage I have planted cabbage before but part of the reason is because we have papayas and we produce over 50 lbs of papaya year and often times we actually Harvest this

Green and we use it in place of green cabbage they take up so little space unlike a lot of other fru and trees which can go anywhere from 20 30 to 70 feet tall I’m looking at you liy this is a super compact plant so if you don’t

Have a lot of space papayas is a great great option and I totally recommend you look into it and here we are going to March and we’re heading away from February and a lot of y’all just got to have a ton of fresh strawberries because Florida is great and making strawberries

But maybe you did not make a really good strawberry Harvest and you’re so sad because you don’t have enough berries in your life but now might be the time to add a mulberry and mulberries so easy another one that you can have in a pretty compact space especially if you

Do something like the everbearing mberry which is actually a shrub tree so do not be moan the fact that you didn’t get enough strawberries just go ahead and get yourself a small everbearing mberry which brings me to one of my tips about fruit for the month of March because

We’re coming to the period not only where you could plant new fru and trees but also if you have fru and trees in your yard because we’re moving past has those potential freezes now is a really great time to consider fertilizing your fruiting trees especially your Tropicals

Because they’re about to wake up and they’re going to be super hungry so consider adding nutrition to that area so that you can get the most out of your Harvest for this year and I had an idea because I was thinking about how I was

Going to put at the end banana video the papaya video I have a malberry video I have seminol pumpkin video my favorite varieties of warm weather crops I was like you know what I’m going to do I’m just going to make a playlist for you

Guys that I’m going to put at the end you can get get a much deeper dive into these fru and trees plus some of the vegetables plus some of the next topics we’re going to talk about which is flowers now when it comes to flowers and your garden there kind of two different

Things you may be considering right now one is that you want to get some pollinators in your yard so you can help with your warm weather crop Harvest and potentially some of your hot weather crop Harvest down the road or two you want to add some color into your garden

Or three you want to help support Wildlife even better but regardless of which it is let’s talk about some of the flowers you should consider either adding or having in your garden for the month of March so let’s first talk about Native wild flowers that are going to

Help you with your Harvest and my top three picks for this time of year are going to be salt and pepper tropical sage and Beach Verina when it comes to the month of March all three of these blooms especially in my area are already happening they’re not going to bloom

They are blooming so if you have a lot of pollinators that are waking up or migrating into the area this is an amazing amazing set of plants first up salt and pepper minthera Nivea this plant can bloom potentially all year depending on where you live in the state

The salt and pepper is in my top 10 list for easy native plants to begin with the next one that I would recommend is tropical Sage tropical Sage is hands down an amazing plant pollinators of all sizes like it it definitely brings the tropical aspect to your garden it of

Course comes in three colors which is the coral red the flamingo pink and of course just a classic white and what’s great about tropical stage is it can take quite a bit of shade so if you’ve used a lot of your sunny space for your vegetable plants you can push this into

That semi-shade area that’s nearby that isn’t as good for your vegetables and still bring in lots of pollinators to the area my third choice of course is going to be Beach renia this one again I wouldn’t add any of these directly in the bed with your crops but this one

Also can go into a container it’s going to look really cute and honestly you could probably do like a mix of tropical stage and Beach Ravina down low but Beach Ravina is a great one for starter and it blooms throughout the winter time and why this is is really important that

All three of these have been blooming through the winter time is that depending on your pollinator needs throughout the winter time this is going to help support the pollinators when your vegetables are putting out flowers one of the big mistakes a lot of people do in vegetable gardening is they only

Really think about the food from themselves even when it comes to the flowers they only think about having flowers around when they need flowers but if you want to have a good supply of pollinators in your garden you have to plan to feed them all year round at

Least all the time when they’re awake and for areas like Zone 8 9 10 and 11 that’s most of the year so you do want to have blooms that are going even when you don’t need them because you got a bunch of you know cauliflower and

Broccoli now for those of you who are just looking to add wild flowers to your garden for color there are a lot of options that we can have right now but because we’re at the end of the winter time there is something that happens at this time of year which I find really

Interesting and it’s a lot of our late winter blooms tend to be in the either white or blue color we’ve already talked about salt and pepper but there’s a couple others that are all in that blue color that really come in right now before a lot of your other wild flowers

Come in and that’s going to be things like Stokes Aster woodland flocks and blue-eyed grass but let me add a bonus tip for you guys because we’re at March I’ve talked to you guys about pest pressure increasing I talked to you about the bugs are coming back but if we

Want to turn that negative into a positive March is a great time to start a butterfly garden because all the butterflies are not back yet it’s a good time to established host plants so for all my people who want to save the monarch butterfly consider getting your Butterfly Garden in now you should

Consider adding things like swamp milk weed or butterfly weed or aquatic milke weed those are kind of the three most readily available milk weeds in the market and if you want to learn way more about butterfly gardening I will put this video in our must know information

For March and I’ll will put this video that has a lot to do with milkweed and Marin archs so so that you can get a crash course and getting your not only your butterfly garden but getting monarchs to that garden now if you’re looking to go a little bit beyond

Wildlife and wild flowers and you want to have big bold color that’s coming in the month of March there are a lot of options as we warm up so many plants are being putting out big super blooms and whether you live in North Florida or Central Florida consider adding aelas

There are native types of aelas and then there are Florida friendly types of aelas they are both gorgeous most of what you guys see when you do see alas are the non-native type they’re from Southeast Asia they’re gorgeous there’s no issue with them the only watch out

With them is a lot of people think that that version is native but it’s not there’s two major types that you will find from the Native side that’s going to be of course the pinkster and Flame Zia both are gorgeous and both would be great additions to your landscape one

Thing that makes them so great is that these plants actually don’t want to be in full sun so if you have those shadier locations that you’re always thinking what do I do with them go ahead and think about adding whether it’s a native aelia or a Florida friendly aelia to

Those sections so you can get some big bold beautiful color at this time of year and if you’re excited about native plants that bring big bold colors a couple others for north and Central Florida would be the eastern red bud and the sweet Acacia now for South Florida

Also parts of Central Florida we’ve got a bunch of stuff going into bloom at this time of year of course similar to last month we we continue to have things like Bugan via we have exora I’m seeing a lot of my ibiscus is wake up all these

Have big bold flowers and are Florida friendly other things that are coming into bloom especially my South Floridians is a frangie panty AKA plumaria this is an amazing plant that comes out of the South Pacific if you’re looking for something to add to those areas that have sandish soil and get a

Lot of sun consider getting a frangie panty AKA plume areia we’ve also talked about other bold flowering trees like the Hong Kong orchid but there is another set of trees that are coming into bloom and those are the taboas some of them actually would have bloomed as

Early as February which is like the pink tababa aka the pink trumpet flower if you have been seeing those trees that look like they’re just covered in cotton candy that is the pink chabuya they put on these huge gorgeous bold super blooms so if you’re looking for that like fairy

Cottage Garden or just want to add a lot of color to your garden with a tree pink taba buoya in the same family of trees is of course the golden trumpet tree or the yellow tabya this one blooms usually after after the pink one and can sometimes put out two sets of blooms

With the second Bloom not being quite as strong depends a little bit on the weather but if you’ve been seeing kind of these big bold yellow trees right now that would be your yellow Trumpet trees going down the list we have so many tips in here so a couple more tips that you

Really should consider as you’re in the month of March another thing you need to pay attention to of course is water needs March is still in our drought time period And while we’re going to get rain we usually get about 2 and 1/2 Ines of rain it’s going to be super sporadic we

May have a couple days where it rains a lot and then nothing for a week or two now we talked about the heat bringing a lot of wildlife back but we haven’t really mention the fact that this is the time of year that weeds come back super

Super super strong if you have not gotten them into control they are about to take over on you so move quickly take advantage before they really really get a good strong foothold start flowering and putting seeds everywhere if you need help identify some of the common weeds

That you see in your garden I have this video here I will also add add that to the playlist so that you can start identifying weeds and making some decisions on how which ones maybe you want to tackle first but you need to like it’s going to get bad trust me been

Here done that and another thing Beyond weeds that’s about to take off is are migratory birds all those birds that have been here throughout the winter time are about to start heading back North whether they’re coming from South America the Caribbean or they’ve been over wintering here in Florida they’re

Going to head north and what most people don’t realize is that they travel at night time so if you want to help our migratory bird species besides planting native plants and helping support bugs one of the biggest things that you can do right now that’s super simple is just

Turn off your lights at night a lot of our migratory birds get taken off track by our nighttime lights and so just simply turn off your lights or set them on a timer to turn off after 10:00 and you’re going to help Wildlife out more

Than you know okay so there’s a lot to do and a lot to think about so if you want to learn about more everything from seminal pumpkins B anas mulberries papayas my top native plants to start with 30 plus weeds identified how to start a butterfly garden host plants to

Start with all those things I’m going to put them in this playlist right here if you just want a crash course on how all this Florida gardening works so you can wrap your head around it I will put this video beginner’s guide to Florida gardening okay I’ll see you soon bye