Flower Friday

It has been a strange year for my Spring bulbs.  First, the warm weather encouraged the earliest daffodilsin the front near the house to emerge sooner than they should have.  Then a bizarre hailstorm knocked those earliest ones down and 3 nights in the low 20s finished the job.  The flowers bloomed, but only laying on the ground.  They don't show up very well that way.

But some of those sent up a 2nd wave of flowers, so there was something to look at, though thin.  Still, I have some mid daffodils in front, and the flowers are jusr emerging.    Even that is a bit confused this year.  The new bed in the backyard has 2 kinds also. One is early and one is late, but they are both blooming together now. 

Half of each of those were planted in Fall 2015 and I doubled each type last Fall.  New plantings tend to come up late the 1st year, so I have 4 groups this year.  So the established early ones bloomed and got knocked down.  The new early ones and the established later ones are blooming now, and the new later ones are just emerging.  Things should make more sense next Spring!

Meanwhile, in the good news department, the 6 patches of hyacinths I planted in Fall 2015 never even emerged last Spring, but I let them be hoping some would show up this year.  And they HAVE!  Not as many as I planted but some is better than none.

The Fall 2015 tulips bloomed well  last Spring, but the leaves look rather ratty for some reason.  I assumed they were dying young, but I noticed that they all have bud emerging and that is a good sign.  I can't recall if the leaves were up when the hail hit, but that would explain the leaf damage. 

The soil is not great in the bulb bed, so I plan to fertilize well this weekend and cover the entire bed in 3" of compost when the leaves die back naturally.  I think I will cover it then in landscaping cloth to kill the weeds.  A year of the compost nutrients leaching into the soil should help a lot.  Here is the entire bed.  You can see the daffodils easily; the tulips and hyacinths are in clumps (18 of tulips and 6 of hyacinths).

 I would like more tulips and hyacinths, but you have to bury them in wire cages to protect them from the voles around here and that is a LOT of work digging large deep square holes.  I may just add a lot more daffodils between the cages.  I have an auger that fits in my electric drill and that makes it really easy to plant daffodils.  Drill a dozen holes, put daff bulbs in them, shove soil back over.  Voles don't bother daffodils!

The bottom edge of the bed has a double row of various daylilies.  As they mature, I'll divide and interplant among them.  A 30x3' thick band should look nice.

Every year things will get a bit better!