My garden is slowly waking up.

[almeda]

Not that we're planning on still living here NEXT spring, but I haven't done a what-my-garden-looks-like post in a really long time, and I just got a new awesome camera for my birthday, so last week I went and took photos of everything that's actually trying to pop its head out and grow already this spring

Comments

[almeda]

We are 'past last frost' for the year, with the caveat that by that I do not mean "definitely no more sub-33degF temps between now and October" -- rather, I mean, "For most practical purposes, we can carry on as if that statement were true." Many, many plants (and other things I do post-frost, like hooking up the external garden hose again) can handle transient overnight freezes or the weird freak day here or there.

I merely note the technical distinction because I REMEMBER the blizzard we got on May 3rd when I was in late grade school ... six inches of snow in a morning, and all melted by breakfast the next day.

[zelda888]

I'm ~35 miles west of you, so outside the city heat island, but I quote May 15 as "average date of last frost." And I don't fudge on that, as I can recall an occasion about five or six years ago when we had, not a touch of frost, but a hard freeze, on May 20th.

State of the garden: crocuses over, chionodoxa and scilla going bananas, hyacinth and hellebore almost open, trillium and tulip in leaf but not bud.

[almeda]

Most of what I plant can handle some transient overnightings (which is mostly what we'll get from here till summer). When I am doing tomatoes, I do them in containers -- not PORTABLE, exactly, but if there are signs of a hardish frost they can be lugged into the basement for shelter overnight.

Haven't had time for crops since arrival of munchkin. Most everything else I do is perennials, and hardy ones, primarily native species. Except the bulbs (I'm a sucker for hyacinths), morning glories (ditto), and apple trees.

My gardening philosophy is more 'ecosystem management' than 'P. Allen Smith's Garden Rooms,' if you see what I mean. I like to stick my thumbs on the scales of selection so I end up with an environment I enjoy, while still leaving them mostly to the mercy of whatever Chicago throws at them.

[jinian]

So are the apple varieties delicious? It makes sense to focus on the flowers first, of course, but I'm always looking for new apples to eat!

[almeda]

Haven't the foggiest idea, I'm afraid -- none of them are old enough to have set fruit successfully yet. :-> The Smokehouse tried last year (and the Nied... fertilized it with its one pitifully eager flower-cluster), but they all fell off in wind; they were too big for the stems to handle, and I hadn't (a) thinned them or (b) tied them on with nylon-stocking pouches.