6 on Saturday – 27APR2024 – Daffs etc

Chris Mousseau

Spring is unfolding as it should in the garden, with different varieties of daffodil and other spring bulbs taking their turn to bloom, creating a nice succession of colour. All the while grass is growing very quickly (code for I need to get the mower and trimmer out this weekend) and dandelions are giving the lawn areas a nice, mottled yellow hue. A mixed bag for today’s Six – to see a few other gardens around the world head over to Jim’s Garden Rumination site.

Daffodils, as I mentioned, are still the main attraction here, including ‘Quail’ (tall stems, small flowers, sometimes more than one per stem, strong Paperwhite fragrance), ‘Tahiti’ (medium height, flouncy rounded yellow petals with bits of orange stuck in them), and an unnamed, shortish daff with pale petals and a small yellow cup.

Also starting to bloom are primroses. I have a load of Primula veris, the one with yellow flowers, about to open. They seem to like conditions here and are self seeding all over. First to bloom though is this purply reddish flowering cultivar I bought at a grocery store several years ago – nice to see it reappearing!

The more common, white, Trillium should be up soon, but first to appear is this red flowered woodland trillium. I love the camouflaged leaves, and various hungry, crawly things appear to be loving the flower petals this year…

Fritillaries don’t do that well in my garden. I’ve planted F. persica and F. imperialis and although they bloom the first year, that’s about it. After that it’s just year after year of foliage with no blooms. F. meleagris, on the other hand, do bloom year after year, even if not in the same spot as where the small bulbs were planted. Many are familiar with the checkerboard pattern of the purple Snake’s Head fritillary, but they also come in a creamy white.

The kitchen garden is taking shape as well – snap peas have finally sprouted, and with much warmer temperatures forecast will likely soon be growing quickly.

To round off my SIx this week – a dose of reality. As I mentioned at the start, spring is unfolding as it should, and that means occasional overnight frosts, possibly until mid May. Spring bulbs don’t mind this – it’s quite remarkable how you see them bowed over by frost first thing in the morning, then, as the air gets warmer and the first rays of sun hit, they literally spring upright again. More tender blossoms and buds, however, aren’t quite that hardy. That’s why I noticed the short, air-moving windmills in operation at a local vineyard yesterday morning – keeping the air moving prevents frosts from settling on the emerging, tender, grape flower buds. Early flowering fruit tree flower buds can also be susceptible to a spring frost, as can the early flowering petals on my Magnolia × loebneri ‘Merrill.’  Here’s last week vs yesterday….have a great weekend everyone!!

29 Comments

  1. It’s just soooo enjoyable…and exciting to see all the shoots and flowers coming up. Would have been nice if Jack Frost hadn’t come to visit. I really hope that no farmers lost crops. The Frittilaries are pretty and funny that a butterfly shares the name. I have 11 pots with Green Arrow and Progress #9, one is snap peas (4 pots from last year’s peas)…I wish the squirrels wouldn’t sit in the pots. Looking forward to the pretty pea flowers…and the yummy eating! Warmer weather ahead!

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  2. Triliums have very beautiful flowers, with the added advantage of having really interesting foliage. Your photo is very successful at sunset (I suppose). I like the daff. ‘Tahiti’. Here too they do well and are among the first to flower. On the other hand they are always nibbled by slugs or snails! ? Madness!

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  4. I’ve not heard of windmills being used to keep air moving for frost protection. Fine misting gets used on currant crops here I believe, the water giving out heat when it freezes.

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    1. Small windmills are common in vineyards…in North America at least, in the larger operations. Less labour-intensive than maintaining overnight smokey fires at the perimeter of fields. I’ve seen pictures of orange groves in Florida being misted when frost threatens.

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  6. Tahiti is very pretty, as are the fritillary. Your peas are ahead of mine but slugs have been nibbling them here. I do have some back-up ones planted in large pots in the greenhouse to whip out when it get a little warmer.

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  11. Your mention of the windmills reminded me of something from long, long ago: smudge pots. In truth, some of them still were in use in California when I was there in the 70s, but I suspect they weren’t in commercial use by that time. We didn’t have orchards to protect in Iowa, but when I was a kid they used small, round smudge pots as highway markers! There weren’t any electronic signs warning of road work; you’d just come around a corner and find a few tiny flames as warning to drivers.

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    1. How interesting! If a winery doesn’t have windmills here (and a lot of the smaller operations don’t – so expensive!), they’ll definitely have oil barrels converted to smudge pots, using dried cut grape vines (from last year’s pruning), to protect the tender flower buds. Growers are out all night, sometimes, feeding the barrels to help protect the crop.

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  12. Oh, what a shame about your Magnolia blossom. One reason I haven’t dared plant one yet… But your daffs are lovely and if the peas are sprouting already that must be a sign of warmer weather!

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  13. Trillium seem so ‘Eastern’ to me, like something that grows only in elegant gardens of New England and Canada and maybe as far West as Oklahoma. Of course, some species are native here, an some of them are the same that are native to the Midwest. We just do not notice them much because their are so briefly foliated before they shrivel with the arid weather here.

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    1. It does seem like an eastern plant (even being on the license plate, and a provincial flower and official emblem, in Ontario). But yes, they’re on the west coast as well – I saw a few in the woods on a recent trip to Vancouver Island.

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      1. They last better on Vancouver Island. I really do not know how they survive here. They do not seem to stay foliated long enough to store many resources for their long dormancy.

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  14. Your daffodils are beautiful, also your trillium and white fritillary. My fritillaries are now going to seed so I must get sprinkling the seed around the garden.

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    1. I’ve never tried to gather seeds but what a good idea! (They seem to do a good job of scattering themselves!) Do seed pods need to ripen on the stem first?

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