Thank you, commentor JeffG166:
2.10.2023
It’s Spring in Philadelphia.
This year’s pot of tulips. They are early due to the mild winter.
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It’s been an extraordinarily warm winter just north of Boston, too. But since I was living here during the April Fool’s Day Blizzard, I’m still flinching at the possibility of a correspondingly cold March (… April. May… )
Also flinching: I NEED MORE PHOTOS, gardening comperes!
What’s going on in your garden (planning / memories / starting), this week?
satby
We’re starting a spell of temps in the low 50°s here too, always dangerously seductive to those of us who just can’t wait for spring. I see daffodils starting to peek up out of the soil on the warm south side of the house, but it’ll be weeks before they bloom I hope. A tree trimming crew working in my area gave me a great (practically a gift) price on cutting back some huge elm limbs hanging over my yard from the vacant lot next door. Now I get even more sun on that side. Really looking forward to how that affects those flower beds.
WereBear
@satby: I love daffs. They are also deer proof, which means a lot in my area :)
Gave a friend a gift certificate for heirloom seeds. I told her to get some tomatoes with funny names.
satby
@WereBear: I do too, daffs are also squirrel proof 😉I lose a few tulips per year to them, but never daffodils, so I have about 10-12 different varieties planted.
Edit: about funny tomato names, Hillbilly Potato Leaf is a beautiful and delicious heirloom, so is one called Tie-dye. Both beefsteak varieties.
Spanky
We’re having a rain/snow mix atm. A brief respite from the 50s/40s forecast for the next couple of weeks.
Gonna be some boxwood moving in the near future
Oh, and the daffs on the south side of the house are about 5 inches high now, and headed. Too soon. Too soon.
raven
It’s been very wet here and I suspect it will make for a beautiful spring.
satby
@satby: dammit, just ordered that Tie-Dye tomato from Baker’s Creek, plus another bi-color called Gold Medal. Free shipping! I swear I’m going to cut back every year, but I guess it won’t be this one. 😆
sab
I had some pretty red tulips a few years back that my squirrels stole from the neighbor across the street. This year I think the theft went the other way, so I am expecting to see them pop up across the street.
satby
Yeah, spring has become so erratic! Even March is dicey, but by the end of it the bulbs can usually shake off a mild snow or very light frost. We’ll get a hard freeze then anyway, but February is way too soon.
Spanky
@satby: Down here along the Chesapeake Bay we may not see another frost, let alone a freeze
Of course, there’s March yet to come.
Rachel Bakes
Don’t want to think of Spring without really getting winter in CT! All the bulbs I planted in the fall are coming up.
OzarkHillbilly
Guess who grows what? Also German Johnson,Yellow Brandywine, Mushroom Basket, Green Zebra (I just can’t help myself), Arkansas Traveler, Amish Paste, Purple Bumble Bee, and Yellow Pear.
Temps here have been way to warm for my liking. Other than a few brief deep freezes our day time highs have been in the 40s and 50s and next Wednesday we’re supposed to hit 70. Yeah, my Daffs are coming up. I don’t worry about them as they always seem to survive the late winter cold spells but my Spanish Bluebells are coming up too and I don’t know how well they handle it. Covered them up with a 4-5″ layer of leaves in the hopes that gives them enough insulation.
Geo Wilcox
This is the first year since we moved here (25 years ago this June) that the daffs have come up and headed in early February. With three days of mid 50’s coming up we are going to start the spring chores early. We don’t do a lot of gardening, most of our planted flower beds are now all native wildflowers. I am too lazy to bother to keep them out and they serve the wildlife much better than the crap I planted.
WereBear
@satby: Well, you know how it goes. Seed catalogs in February…
WereBear
Daffs are so popular but plans for a festival were dashed upon the rocks of mountain weather. One side of the house budding out and the other not up yet: gardening in an Alpine zone with considerable micro-climate considerations.
narya
In a weird way, I’m grateful that my only real growing space (back porch) is shaded and faces north, else I would be planting way too much stuff. If I were on the third floor rather than the second, it’d be all over.
Princess
Green zebra is delicious.
OzarkHillbilly
@Princess: It’s my favorite tomato, has a bit of a citrusy zing to it. Unfortunately, they don’t do well for me. Not sure why, the first couple years I grew them they did great. Not anymore.
But hope springs eternal, right?
Gvg
Azaleas, redbuds and Japanese magnolia’s are blooming here. Temps in the 70’s. We had frost last week but I don’t expect more. Rain all day yesterday. I would say spring is here. The oak trees are losing their leaves temporary. The new ones push the old ones off and for about 2 weeks the trees have fewer leaves and there is a lot of raking. Live and laurel oaks are evergreen but the leaves have a lifespan and get renewed. Supposedly each leaf lasts 3 years but it seems to vary by tree. Some trees seem to go almost bare for those 2 weeks, others just less leafy. There is also a lot of pollen in the air. Each tree has its own calendar so it’s not all in the same 2 weeks but for the next month I will be gathering my neighbors bags of oak leaves for composting mulch in my garden. They throw away what I consider valuable nutrients. What worry’s me is this year I have not been able to locate any horse manure for my roses and the rest of my garden. It helps so much in Floridas sand soil. I will keep watching in Craig’s list. Most seed ordered. This year trying not to buy so many flowers and spend the money on flowering shrubs that are permanent and give privacy or protect from erosion. They pay off in the long run. I got some camellias this winter, looking for a few gardenias for summer interest. Want a few Hollies
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Ha! I assumed you would! This year I’m going to try to limit myself to the ones I named above and last week, plus a Pineapple tomato or two if any from last year’s seed packet still germinate. Thinking of grabbing some chard and kale to throw in a cold frame this week just for giggles.
eclare
Spring will be here when my pecans bloom.
delphinium
@satby: Nice about the elm tree limbs getting cut back for (almost) free-hope your flower beds on that side of your house prosper! The mild winter continues here – currently 40″+ below the average snowfall for this area. No bulbs (daffs, hyacinths, tulips) have peeked out yet but I expect to see something soon given it will be in the high 40s-50s most of this week.
Gin & Tonic
I have a feeling ski season will be ending very early this year here in New England.
Princess
@OzarkHillbilly: same with me. The first year, great, and ever after, nothing much. But still worth it.
kalakal
Here in FL it’s the dry season. The problem is not low temp it’s no moisture. Finally got some rain last night I think that’s twice in the last 6 weeks. As the ‘soil’ has excellent drainage* both the garden and the kalakals are happy
*It’s sand
evodevo
My tulips have been trying to come up for 10 days now…I threw a couple shovels full of wood chips on them at first, because it was supposed to go down to 5 above (and it did), but they are still persisting. We’ve had more 50’s days here than I can remember, and that’s 60 yrs worth…and it’s only Feb 12…
Spanky
@Gin & Tonic: I hear your bones sighing in relief.
satby
@evodevo: Though we had really low temps this winter, mostly overnight, we never had a long enough span of them in a row for the ground to freeze more than an inch or two deep. And except on the north deep shade side of my house I don’t think the ground is frozen at all now and hasn’t been for at least a week.
TerryC
As shocking as it seems, it seems like winter is finished here in Ann Arbor. There is simply no more really cold weather forecast until spring.
It’s cool to see all the new buds and to see the twigs changing color against the sky. My first box of scion wood arrived yesterday. I am grafting onto wild plum, wild apples, and Callery pear. Plus I have another 400+ bushes and bare root trees on order for delivery the next couple of months! This year my big plantings will be 125 paw paw and a mixture of 50 random native plums. I also have several apple varieties, some chestnut, winterberry, buartnut, and some peach and nectarine.
CCL
Envious about the tulips.
I can do them in the ground if I surround them with daffodils to help keep the deer away and interplant with crown imperial to keep the voles away. But last year I ended up with tulip fire in one bed – so those all got yanked out last fall.
We replenished the soil where the tulips were and are letting it sit. We will probably just do annuals there while we ponder what perennials and natives to put in. Started some petunias indoors – probably too early, but I gave in to the temptation of the weird warmer weather. Not my favorite annual and delicious to deer, so probably a bad plan. But it gave me something to do to get fingers in dirt (that Antaeus connection) while we wait…
oldgold
This week I ordered 500 pounds of glechoma hederacea as part of my new Tao lawn care strategy.
My neighbor DeeDee Plorable has assailed me on this plan. I responded: “Double D, to grow in enlightenment, you must live in harmony with the mystical Source of everything and go with the flow.”
DD, “OG, I thought you told me last year that enlightenment came from sudden bursts of insight when meditating on a koan.
“ Well,” I replied, “that was Zen. This is Tao.”
O. Felix Culpa
We appear to have bought a house.* The garden is nicely xeriscaped, so I see a lot of container planting in my future.
*In Albuquerque, where we recently moved.
StringOnAStick
Has anyone started their tomato seeds yet? I had great success in this short season area with cherry tomatoes so I’m not going to mess with success but I can’t remember when I started them, but I know it was because people here had started theirs.
This year I invested in season extension hardware (Wall O Water’s and pop up individual greenhouses) plus systems to grow vertically for pole beans and peas. Prior to moving here I could only do bush beans in pots, but I have real ground now and can go vertical, which should be more productive.
jnfr
Still frozen solid here and nothing growing, not even the weeds are up yet. Slowly starting to warm for part of the day, and the sun is back at last (our solar system literally produced almost no power last month between the snow and the clouds). So maybe things will start showing up soon. I’m quite worried to know how many plants I lost to our very brutal cold spell this winter.
Scout211
I’ve had a late start this year for my winter greens. The NorCal weather has been so crazy this winter, the 3 weeks of storms and then temps that have been colder than usual. I am planning to finally get the seeds in the ground today.
laura
The porch Daphne is in bloom and the scent is intoxicating! Wonderful in the daytime and even more so at night. Everything else is sad and recently sodden- see Scout211 above for details. Here in Sacramento, the remainder of fallen trees and remnants thereof are errrrwhere.
satby
@O. Felix Culpa: Woo-hoo! Congratulations!
CCL
@StringOnAStick: I can’t remember where you are – here in Southern New England, I don’t start my tomatoes indoors until last week of March/first week of April.
jackmac
I absolutely have no green thumb, so I figured I’d never have anything to contribute to this feature. But as it turns out, I DO have a story to share.
I purchased a glorious hanging Vinca at a farmer’s market last summer, hung it outside my front door and it continued to thrive well into the Midwestern fall. When it came time to decide whether to let it go at first frost, I opted to bring it indoors and see what would happen.
I placed the Vinca under a plant light, trimmed it back, watered it regularly and to my surprise it continued to thrive through the winter, only recently dropping flowers. Green leaves continue to sprout and a little Miracle Grow has seemed to help.
So the plan is to return the Vinca to the great outdoors once the threat of frost has passed (the rule of thumb in these parts is Mother’s Day). I’m hoping real sunlight and some fresh potting soil will return it to last summer’s glory!
jnfr
@jackmac:
Vincas are good sturdy plants. I hope yours does well.
OzarkHillbilly
@jackmac: Thank you.