Flowers (annual and perennial)

Spring Blooming Dutch Bulbs

The earliest flowers in the spring are the spring blooming Dutch bulbs. Many blooms thru the snow. Snow crocus have already bloomed and now to the jumbo crocus, early tulips, and snowdrops. While many of these flowers are small, they make a statement of color when nothing else is blooming.

The smaller snow crocus


As stated above the snow crocus are the first to bloom in the flowerbed in March. They are a little smaller than the jumbo crocus which blooms a few weeks later. These naturalize well in rock gardens and in the corners of the beds.
Snowflakes are bell-shaped flowers growing 6 to 8 inches high. They are deer resistant and like most spring flowers require no special care.

Snow drops


Snowdrops are small white 4-to-6-inch flowers looking best like most bulbs when planted in a cluster. They grow naturally in high forest areas.

Snowflakes

Snowflakes are bell-shaped flowers growing 6 to 8 inches high. They are deer resistant and like most spring flowers require no special care.

Daffodils


Daffodils depending on the variety bloom from mid-April to mid-May. They come in yellows, whites, and bicolor of the two. Leaves go dormant in the summer so plant around them with annuals. All the bulbs are well suited for perennial beds, so they do not get dug up accidentally.

Scilla


Scilla comes in mainly blue varieties, however, there are white ones also. These flower stems will grow up to 10 inches resembling loosely blooming violets. Related to the lily family, the plant goes dormant by summer.

Grape Hyacinths


Hyacinths are beautiful plants growing around a foot tall. Colors are blue, white, red, pink, and now yellow. Over a period of 3 years, plants bloom themselves out so need to be replanted. Grape hyacinths (Muscari) look like a tiny cluster of grapes either in purple or white, 6 to 8 inches tall. These plants naturalize readily.

Reticulated iris


Reticulated iris are grown from bulbs and not rhizomes like a regular iris. They bloom in late March with 6-inch flower stalks in many colors. These plants like most bulbs should be planted in clusters for the most impact.

Fringe Tulips

Everyone knows about tulips coming in every color depending on the variety blooming from the first of April to the end of May. Heights vary from 1 foot to 2 feet.


With all spring bulbs do not remove the foliage after blooming until it yellows. Bulbs are good for rock gardens, under trees, perennial beds, and annual beds with annuals planted around the undisturbed bulbs.

Farm Animals

Exotic Chickens

Raising exotic chickens is basically the same as raising “regular” chickens. Like any animal, they do their best when happy. The trend is people are raising more exotic chickens as they are being bred more and coming on the market. These chickens provide a huge awry of feather types and colors. The egg layers have eggs ranging from white, purple, blue, reddish, and black.

Malay


Some different types are the Malay chicken which stands around 30 inches tall and produces 120 eggs a year. They tend to be more aggressive and chase smaller animals.

Ayam Cemani


The blackish chicken is the Ayam Cemani which has black feathers, legs, comb, and beak. They are not good setters; they lay about 1 egg a week.

Silkies


Silkies have almost hair-like feathers giving a silky look to the bird. Coming in many colors: red, orange, white, black, and blues. They lay about 120 cream-colored eggs per year.

Onagadori


The Onagadori is a long-tailed, colorful chicken coming from Japan. They only lay around 25 eggs per year.
The Kadaknath chicken of India is another all-black chicken including their meat. Meat and eggs have a high source of protein and iron. They will lay around 100 eggs per year but do not worry that the egg will be black, they have a slight pinkish hue.

Polish


Polish chickens are the most popular exotic breed of chicken. They have a large feathery head coming in many different colors and are good egg layers. The best tendency they have is that they are very calm and quiet making good pets.

French Black Copper Maran


The French Black Copper Maran lay a dark purplish-black egg that sells up to $400 a dozen.
If you are interested in where you can purchase some of these chickens, try the Cackle Hatchery website.

Garden hacks, Vegetables

Season Extenders

I used to plant everything in the garden the second week in May. Trying to get everything done in May was impossible. So, lately, I have started to plant much earlier. Last weekend I planted radish and spinach seeds. These will be followed by carrots, parsnips, peas, and onion sets by the first of April. These plants will take a hard freeze. Then by mid-April followed by onion plants, cabbage transplants, and lettuce seed. Getting this done before mid-May frees up a lot of time. There are early season extenders to keep your garden warm in the cool spring.

Floating row cover


I have used these to jump ahead of the season as an experimental, “fun” project. A lot of times they are more of a hassle but sometimes they really work. You can get floating row covers. These are transparent, lightweight mesh that goes over the row crops. These covers warm the air inside. Some gardeners use these year-round because they keep the pest like grasshoppers and aphids out.

Row tunnels

Row tunnels are like the floating row covers but use hoops, so the cover does not rest on the plants. They need to be opened with the temp get too warm.

Cloches


My mother had some old glass cloches she used. These were solid glass mini greenhouse for one plant as a young tomato plant. You removed them when the day was sunny and warm, so the little plant did not roast. Now people use empty milk jugs.

Water well


You have seen the water wells (a round cylinder with tubes, which you filled with water) placed around tomato plants. They used to be clear which allowed mold to grow in the water and now are green or red to reduce this. These really work in that the water absorbs the heat and releases it at night. The water wells may remain in place for the entire season.

Cage wrapped in plastic


I used to take woven fence bent in a 24 in circle 4 foot high placed over the tomato plant and wrapped clear plastic around the fence. There was enough plastic on top to make a lid during cold nights.