Some of my favoites Pinkies!

 These beauties are all daylilies. Above is 'Braveheart,' pink-wine-raspberry colored. Gorgeous!

 Above is 'Little Fantastic,' a small bloom size, but they make up for it in numbers! Beautiful bright pink.

 Above is 'Pink Topping.' Love that name! Very soft pink color, and in certain light can look a little  more peachy. Heavy bloomer.

 Above is 'Always Afternoon,' one of my favorites! Who thought there could be so many bold colors. Love the color combo.

Country Melody so feminine and softly blended colors. Love this gurl too! Check out all of our daylilies at our website which is ready to take your order! http://www.earthworksgardens.com/

Warm weather can sometimes hurt!

Tulips, one of our first signs of spring. How can warm weather hurt us? The problem is this: regardless of continued above normal temps., we are still in zone 4. So, this means we can still get very cold temps yet. Continued warm weather, warms the soil, sends signals to plants to wake-up, which would be okay if there was a guarentee we would not get a long period of cold weather. Plants inherently are able to withstand drastic weather changes. It really becomes a temp & time calculation which can spell disaster. One night of cold temps not so bad, day & night for a week, not so good. How can we help avoid this? It's not too late. You still can cover your bulbs with straw, hay, pine needles or leaves. Don't uncover late April, sooner if plants poke through. The mulch helps to insulate the soil and keep it colder, so it doesn't warm up too soon.
We can't be fooled by warm temps into thinking we are in a different climate, frost can still hit us until mid-May, the average of the last frost date. The photo above is all I have left of my beautiful field tulips. After 2 years of the deer eating them to the ground, they got tilled up last year to make room for something not as tasty.

Guilty to Glad

Normally, every fall I purchase about 200 bales of straw to tuck in all the iris for winter. Last year, we decided not to for many reasons: It takes about 40-60 work hours to get it done, it brings in tons of weed seed with it, the straw heads also drop seed and start to grow, this process is about Thanksgiving time when it's soooo cold (I am getting to be a wimp) & finally...straw is not free. I was planning on the normal 'snow cover' to take care of the iris for me, however, that did not happen this year. So then I was feeling guilty about not covering the iris with straw. Windy days like this help me to forget the guilt. HAD I covered them with straw, and still had NO snow cover, the straw would be in the next county anyway. So now I am glad I didn't cover them!

Does 'Jane' homeowner need to cover iris? It is always helpful the first winter of the planting year. Any perennial will be happy to have winter mulch, just in case they did not get very established the first year. Do not cover until mid November (yes, that's right). In the spring, pull back the mulch from perennials and nestle a couple of inches around the base, but completely remove away from bearded iris, their rhizomes need to stay dry. Most home gardens offer some type of protection & wind block from your house, fencing, etc.,  verses a wide open field like mine are located in.