lizzyq

Today has been seed planting day. We are frost free on/around Memorial Day so starting seeds any earlier than this just leads to leggy weak seedlings. I have started tomatoes, sweet & hot peppers, aubergines​, brassicas, squash (may be a bit soon for these), herbs and various flowers. Last year I was still picking a few tomatoes & peppers in early November! Once I have built some more raised beds and had a cubic yard of compost delivered I'll get the root crops underway.

Bob

I started seeds in a box a couple weeks ago which have been going great. Garden is still a mess but dried out a lot today....just don't have time to do anything with it and transfer the plants yet.

Nutmegger

The marsh marigolds are in bloom! Along with the daffodils, they are my favorite flowers, although they last far too short a time. So in celebration I have broken out my "spring is finally here" marsh marigold avatar!

WEBlue

Daffs, hyacinths, and forsythia are blooming like crazy. Hostas & iris are sending up little leaves.

I got my peas planted, and a bit of lettuce. Lets see if the chipmunks, woodchucks, and deer can leave those alone this time!

lizzyq

While away for the weekend I called in at a garden centre I had visited back in the fall. As I hoped they had just had fruit bushes delivered so I bought two redcurrants and a gooseberry.

Pulaski

The daffs are long gone here, the pear blossom came and went before the cold snap a month ago, and the cherry blossom has all gone in the past few days.

The azaleas are in full bloom and some of our bushes are absolutely covered this year, giant balls of blooms, and some that have been unmemorable in previous years are heavy with blossom.

A couple of weeks ago there was a green mist in the trees as the leaves started to burst their buds, but now our winter view of perhaps a quarter mile through the trees is almost gone and we can't see much beyond a couple of hundred feet, effectively barely beyond our lawn.

The hostas have suffered in recent years, some have died and disappeared, others are weak, not least because the deer graze on them.

WEBlue

The differences are interesting, because I think your area & mine are only one full (?) growing zone apart at the most.... My zone is 7a, and from what I see on the USDA map most of NC is either 7b or 8a.
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

We've had such a late, cold spring here! Today it'll get into the low 60s, one of the hottest days we've had in recent weeks.

Maybe the rains have beefed up the azaleas' bloom. We had some azalea bushes years ago when we lived in Houston TX and they always seemed to bloom best after hurricanes & floods....

Our woods here in New England are just beginning to acquire that "misty" look--it's not even a green mist yet, but now you can see the budding "lace" along some tree branches interfering with the view into the depths of the forest....

Nutmegger

I think you must be closer to the coast than me, WEBlue -- that new leaf haze hasn't started at all yet. But it is almost 80 degrees today and I am hard at work clipping off the dogs' winter coats. So our five day spring will probably have come and gone by next weekend!

Pulaski

Yeah, we're in zone 7, and many plants that need zone 8 object to the number of frosts we get most winters, but this winter has been exceptionally mild, with only a few days of frost, I doubt more than twenty and probably only around ten, and I was worried that the peonies might not have had enough frosts to make them flower, but the early ones are loaded with flower buds. Anyway, so everything was a month or more ahead of itself by the end of February, and would be still were it not for three or four days of frosts during the second week of March, which set things back a bit.

WEBlue

Yes, we're just a couple of miles from the ocean. Weirdly, however, our high today was only 70 (in the warmth of the back garden @ 3 pm).

If your area hit 80 today I'll wager your green forest haze will arrive soon....

Nutmegger

Just back from a walk and it says 84 degrees on our outdoor thermometer -- and it felt like it! You are right, the leaves have to start bursting this week.

username.exe

Yup, because when i develop an interest, i tend to turn it into an obsession pretty quickly.

(I have about thirty plastic cups with citrus cuttings and avocdo seeds in them at the moment).

Leslie

Tell me how you do with the avocado seeds. I bombed badly with them last year.

WEBlue

Yes, peonies are pretty fussy; they seem to need a 'real' winter. Maybe yours liked that March freeze.

I planted several two years ago & in spite of our long winters with lots of freezing days & nights, I've had only one blossom to date. Hoping for a few more this time around, but I may be disappointed....

Pulaski

Hmmm, I don't know then, but it doesn't sound like a shortage of winter frosts, because obviously you get more than we do. ..... But ours are loaded with blooms all summer, and often so heavy that they pull the stems down.

We do nothing for them, no fertilizer, just planted in the ground, which is mostly heavy clay, then mulched around. The previous owner had scattered them here and there, but we moved them to make a row near the house, just outside the screen porch, where they get direct sun from mid morning to mid afternoon.