Monty Don reveals how to tell if your soil is ready for planting in March

Spring is fast approaching and gardeners across Britain are eager to plant in their soil to ensure a vibrant and colorful garden awaits them in the warmer months.

Luckily, Gardeners’ World star Monty Don has revealed when in March green-fingered Brits should get down to the task.

The British horticulturist and broadcaster, 68, instructed readers of his March blog to check that their soil is ready for planting before taking the plunge.

March marks the beginning of spring and, according to the gardening expert, this is the time when you can finally consider planting in your garden.

Before you have seeds, you need to make sure the soil is warm enough for them to germinate.

If you try to plant when the soil is still too cold to facilitate germination, you may not get the flowers or fresh fruits and vegetables you had in mind.

In its Blogspoke of how “miserably wet” the February that had just passed had been for Brits, citing climate change as the culprit.

Monty explained that you can only tell if your soil is ready to plant things by touching it.

If you pick up a handful of soil and it feels cold and wet, your plants’ roots will not grow.

But if the patch of land feels hot, you’re in luck. You should also check if it holds together when you squeeze it but if it can be crumbled to make sure it is ideal.

If your soil passes the test, your March gardening session is ready to begin.

Monty also expressed that the inevitability of climate change is ‘c“It’s clearly something we’re going to have to live with.”

“In practice, this opens up a whole new set of horticultural situations to address,” he added.

‘The novelty is that now we are going to have to encourage plants in our gardens that can cope with both extreme humidity and extreme drought.

“Until now we had always considered either of those two positions, but never both,” Monty said.

The popular speaker also explained that we now have to take excess rain into account when we think about growing plants, and think about how we can store that water in a practical way that can benefit us when a dry summer arrives.

Monty claimed that simply using a water tank, a plastic container that collects rainwater from the roof from time to time, was not conducive to effective gardening.

But Monty stressed that mushrooms need a warm, moist environment to thrive, and that this is not always a bad thing, as we need them in all gardens.