New bulbs for the garden. Crocus and Iris. These are both miniature flowers that will bloom once in Spring, and then become dormant for the rest of the year.

I just planted these. The soil was very thick mud with a thick layer of leaves on top. I took a hoe and raked through as deep as I could. Since the spot I picked was close to the base of two trees, I ran into a few thick roots right away, so I could only dig down about three inches. Still three inches of top soil and leaves all fluffed up nicely should make a better growing medium than solid muck.

The bulb of a #crocus is called a corm. Crocus flowers have a neon #orange stamen and pistol. On some varieties this part is picked and used for making the rich spice Saffron. The pollen of #Saffron stains anything it touches, and cooks like to use it because it dyes food orange.

There is another area of my yard where I planted the saffron variety of crocus last year, but they never even sprouted, even though I gave them great soil, bloom starting fertilizer, and protected them with a screen to keep squirrels out. Strangely, too much care and prevention is not always good for the health of a plant as it tries to adapt. Today I had the itch to try again, so that why I bought these pre-spouted crocus and iris flowers today at the garden center. All I did was loosen the ground soil, remove the pots, and planted them. Cross your fingers they bloom for us!

Sorry about the motion blur. My only camera right now is my phone.

These #Iris flowers are supposed to be a very deep color, almost blue, with a yellow/orange design in the center. Not very many flowers have a deep #blue color, so this one is a knockout.

Iris is well adapted for growing around marshes and swamps, so it should adjust well to these wet ground conditions.

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Garden Update

Almost every vegetable has rotted away in the garden except for the Brussels Sprouts.

So many of the leaves were decimated by aphids. Many of the aphids are gone now, and I have pruned off the older yellow leaves with holes. Most of those old leaves are sitting inside my compost bucket feeding the worms.

A few weeks ago I harvested half of the sprouts because they were opening up, even though they were no smaller than marbles. They were covered in aphids, and rinsing couldn't even remove the bugs completely.

Yet, they are still growing!

Now the sprouts are starting to look like bigger marbles, and much cleaner looking leaves. These look much more edible than the last batch I harvested. I wonder how many more weeks they will continue to develop before the buds open up and flower.

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Here's some of the first flowers in our yard that bloomed from last year.

Tulips and daffodils are starting to sprout from the soil, but this flower is always the first one to bloom.

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Thanks for viewing my post. Always a pleasure to share some of my activities for those with similar interests.