Elegant Spring Flowers, Snow in the Woods, & Blooming fruit trees

Throughout the early Spring as the snow and cold have come in phases, I have covered the fruit trees in blankets or tree covers and any cloth I have laying around. I even covered the flowers too. Here are some pictures I took of the flowers before and after the snow, and I even took pictures of the snow in the woods and the blooming activity at night after a long day's rain. 

nectarine blooming at night

nectarine trees are blooming 

old peach tree is blooming but the younger two are not

plum tree blooming

younger plum tree blooming

Pear trees blooming but the cherry trees have yet to do so

tulips growing under both pear trees as well

this is about 100 tulips are growing at different stages, but the ones blooming are early varieties

Sewed early peas & fruit trees coming to bloom

Yesterday I sewed peas in one hugelkultur bed outside. The variety is Early Alaska pea, so I figured they could tolerate the early March weather until the Spring gets warmer. I didn't water the peas because I'm letting the rain take care of that chore for me. In the pic below, I cleaned up these two beds where I will grow plants that I have started indoors in addition to the row of peas I sewed in the bed on the right.

Sewed peas after growing broccoli last fall 

Fruit trees around the garden are budding as well and will bloom soon, such as the Plums, Pears, Peaches and Nectarines. The blueberries are budding too so they're going to bloom soon. The cherries are may bloom after the cold hardy fruit trees bloom.

Pear budding & cherry tree behind pear

Pears, cherries, plums, figs

The tulips and daffodils are still slow to bloom because of the long period of cold weather. The Parrot tulips and Aphrodite varieties are growing under the pear trees, but I'm not sure they'll flower as much as they did two years ago.

Parrot tulips under pear

Aphrodite tulips under pear

Nectarines & peach trees are budding too

This variety of tulips is my favorite: Happy generation

I don't expect the young goji berries, aronia and the younger blueberry plants to fruit for another couple of years so I'm not as concerned with keeping them covered from frost. But the goji plants are leafing out already along with the raspberries. The raspberries may flower within the next month as they are a everbearing variety that have summer and fall harvests.

Spring flowers blooming photos

Hyacinths

Daffodils

 This week the nights are in the 20s, so I'm keeping the tulips covered. But I can tell that they're getting ready to bloom and I wish I could keep them uncovered. Eventually I won't be able to keep them covered because the blooms will bend and the neck of the flower will break. This time of the month has uncertain weather patterns but I'm going to take the covers off in a couple of days.

Tulips about to bloom, but keeping them covered this week 

The wolf dog looking stoic

Granny decorated her burning bush with eggs

Early March starter plants under grow lights

The starter plants are a couple weeks old. I have been keeping them under a grow light in my kitchen. On the warm days, I take the starters out to the porch greenhouse and then back in at night. These are cauliflower, varieties of cabbage, and collards. I used potting soil mixed with seed starting mix for the starters and keep lights on the plants for over 10 hours. The amount of light varies depending on when I wake up and go to bed because I don't have the lights on a timer.

As I was passing the greenhouse center where I usually get truckloads of mulch, I bought three Early Girl Tomatoes and put them with the starters. I also have cilantro, basil, onions, and carrots growing as well.

Soon I will sew other tomato varieties indoors in recycled water bottles because they're bigger containers than typical starter cells and pots. I tend to start tomatoes and peppers indoors early in March, but I end up regretting starting early because they'll grow better, faster, stronger if I threw out a bunch of seed in the summer instead.

Come April, I'll have greens transplanted outside in the garden and I'll have summer crops started indoors. Tuesday I sewed lettuce varieties indoors along with radish, swiss chard, broccoli, so we'll see their progress in a month, and I'll transplant them outside with the cabbage and cauliflower.