I havent seen much greening here but did find some Bind weed argh

On a happy note I got 126 onions in Yayaya! Finally got the ground ready. We are expecting rain Sunday so I am trying to hurry and get them done may turn cold again next week

All the early weeds. The grape hyacinths have already shot up their grassy leaves and were burnt overnight sometime last week. The tiger lilies are crazy pushing up through the soil in protected and unkempt areas. We've cleared away entire sections of the old house and uncovered who-knows-what. I look forward to seeing old bulb plants come up.

Kim, Yay for getting some onions in the ground. We are expecting minor rain (slim chances, small amounts) on Sat and Sun, but not expecting the heavier rain until Sunday night or Monday, so I'm hoping to get a lot done between now and then.

Bon, That's going to be so much fun, watching to see what in the world comes up around the old house. You never know what you'll get. I see irises and daffodils blooming every year around the remains of what once were homes...not a lot of remains as the house are gone, just sort of an outline of what once might have been a house. It is so fascinating that the flowers outlive the homes sometimes.

Dawn

Kim, your onion planting is contagious. I keep reminding me that you are WAY earlier in your climate than mine. I'd really love to get these onions in the ground, but nope. I just keep starting more seeds. LOL

Bon My soil temp is 57 today. The wind was no fun but not as bad as it could have been. tomorrow I will get more done.

My herbs are showing signs of life. (I didn't buy basil seeds and am hoping that volunteers will come up).

The horseradish is making new leaves.

Some seed that I planted last spring, but it didn't come up--I think kale--is showing it's face. Is that right? Why would it skip a year and decide to grow now? It doesn't look like a weed--I'm pretty sure it's the seed I put there a year ago.

I'm not good at recognizing weeds. I do see the ferny parts of yarrow coming up in the garden.

And some garlic that I must have missed last year.

Our soil temperatures (even the 3-day averages) were in the 60s last week, which makes a gardener dream of planting tomatoes, corn and beans, except that I knew those soil temperatures wouldn't last, so I didn't plant those things. The recent cold nights have returned the 3-day temperature averages to more typical soil temps in the 40s, which is at least warm enough for most cool-season things. I expect the soil will be a bit warmer today and tomorrow before the next round of rainfall arrives. I hope to get all my onions planted today so I can get ahead of the rain. Potatoes are chitting, but I probably won't get them in the ground until after the rain. Our ground, even in the raised beds, is really wet and I don't like planting potatoes into very wet ground if I can avoid it.

Hazel, I get busy volunteers all over the place every year, but usually don't see any until at least March. I'll be surprised if you don't get basil volunteers. They seem to sprout sporadically and I often see new basil volunteers throughout March, April and May.

Your kale could just now be sprouting. Sometimes cool-season seeds don't sprout well in spring because the soil temperatures quickly warm up above their ideal soil temp for germination. Then, if the seeds survive the whole year, and they often do, they'll sprout when the conditions are right for them. A friend of mine sowed brussels sprouts seeds one spring and none came up. (I suspect the soil was already too warm by the time he planted the seeds.) That autumn, the brussels sprouts seeds germinated, the plants grew, and he was harvesting sprouts beginning in December and carrying over into the new year. He was pretty excited about his surprise brussels sprouts.

I love watching all the little surprises sprouting in Spring. It is fun to see what comes up, and I've gardened here long enough, I think, to recognize all the bad things and yank them out before they can grow very much. I've already pulled long bermuda runners out of one garden pathway. I didn't know they were there (but assumed they would be since I abandoned the garden late last summer to work on remodeling the kitchen), but the minute I saw one little bermuda sprig pop up in the mulch, I reached down and found the big long runners and removed them all. There was weedblock fabric on the ground covered with autumn leaves/grass clippings so the runners, which came in through the eastern fence line, were running west as hard and as fast as they could to try to find some actual soil to grow in. Those silly bermuda runners should have known I'd spot them and take them out. I'll give them an A for effort though.....and it is just wrong that the bermuda grass is greening up in February, but that's what the occasional hot and sunny February day will do for you.

I'm looking forward to spending a whole day in the garden today, and hoping there won't be any interruptions because the weather is supposed to be beautiful all day long.

Dawn

"Bermuda!" I'm shaking my fist at it right now.

Brussels sprouts. How are they on the 'easy to grow' chart? (if such a chart exists). My husband and son both eat brussels sprouts. Which is surprising that my son likes it. Anyway...I need to grow it.

Have fun in your gardens today, people. I am at work. :(

I have gotten marble sized sprouts a couple of times, but they are one of my nemesis plants. I'm pretty sure I don't give it enough room. Dawn did a pretty thourough how to last year for me, but time and weather did them in. It was too hot to plant, for too long, last fall. They froze in the cold spell (or DH thought they were dead and pulled them up). I will try again in the fall.

Brussels sprouts very, very, very often bolt in springtime, no matter how early we plant them. They do a lot better in fall. The issue is the temperatures---in the fall they get to form sprouts in cooler temperatures and decreasing daylength, which is good. What normally happens to them in spring is that about the time they start forming sprouts, we get insanely hot and they bolt and are done. They also are huge space hogs. Even when I plant them 3' apart they sometimes crowd one another.

lol tree I can't imagine the difficulty with pigs!

Lambsquarters. Lambsquarter seedlings everywhere, ya'll! All in my milk jugs, too.

Are ornamental chives edible?

Tree, I guess the pig is quite big now?

Bon, Lambsquarters seedlings up here, including in containers with a nice soil-less mix. I guess the seeds blew into those containers because I sure didn't plant them there. There's more fruit trees, native plums (Mexican, not chickasaw/sand/hog plums) and ornamental pears blooming now. Spring is busting out all over. Dandelions blooming everywhere. Ladybugs out everywhere. Crickets and grasshoppers too. (Why did God create crickers and grasshoppers?????)

I'm happy to see signs of spring everywhere, but it is too early and a lot of these things will freeze back and we'll lose the fruit crop.

Winter surely is not done with us yet.

Dawn

I think the list of what's NOT sprouting would be shorter. Everything I walk by is trying to leaf,flower or sprout.

Daffodils, Naked Ladies and daylilies are the big winners at the moment. But as I was starting to clean up the beds this weekend I saw various rosettes popping up and spied one of the peonies popping up red spikes. Oh, and fennel!

Like brent get pin in his room storm bad . he said he is in his pig house. You never built one? Ya know the green house. Thats mine. Why know i know why all pineapple plants dead. He Hawaiian. Love pineapples. Got to lafe now. Pig in his room getying cozy.

Oh my--so much information. Thanks for posting what's popping up, Dawn, I'll be watching very closely now. Daylilies here--bee balm in the back; achillea started in clumps last month. Parsley's back this year. Chives, heucheras, lemon balm, sage, thyme was green all winter. Ahh--peonies--I'll have to go check tomorrow.

I got all the leaves I'd piled around off over the weekend, gently, as now I understand how happily so many things self-seed. It is so exciting!

I'd love to grow brussel sprouts--so glad to hear about fall planting.

I spent a lot of today completing my own seed-growing chart; I'd not found the perfect on from the many online, and so integrated a couple and added some things that were missing from them (like light or dark to germinate, for one thing).

Ha, re pigs. I like pigs (long ago I was the 4-H pig project leader. lol) but can't imagine the damage one could do with a garden!

Crickets and grasshoppers, ticks, chiggers and fleas! WHY?? We had a large urban population of crickets in the house this past fall. Kind of fun to try and stomp on them--some mighty speedy crickets! Knock on wood, haven't seen many grasshoppers here yet. I'm thinking maybe tree frogs eat them? We have billions of tree frogs, according to the volume of their songs in the summer.

I just had to order just a few more seeds yesterday--begonias, ornamental peppers, phlox and moonflower vines. That's it. I quit. Uh-huh.

Daffodils here, too, over by the patch of tiger lilies and BOY there must be 25 sprouts of Tiger Lilies. Bill says that's what they all are.

This early warm-up and green-up should make me happy, as a gardener, right? Hmmm. So, why do I feel so uneasy about it? Perhaps it is just that it feels sort of unnatural. Well, that, and the fact that experiences tells me we usually pay a terrible price in March or April for warming up in February.

It doesn't feel right to have to be worrying about snakes being out in February for the second year in a row. I cherish the snake-free winter months when I know there is zero chance of having an encounter with a venomous snake. Having highs in the 70s through the 90s in January and February, at times this year---clearly not every day---means I've lost part of that worry-free period.

Our yard is rapidly greening up. Maybe the bermuda grass will green up a lot and then get slapped down by whatever cold weather remains ahead over the next month or two. Weeds are erupting everywhere daily, and I'm not happy about that. People who generally rely on pre-emergent weed killers (I don't use them, so I don't care) may find that if they've waited until their usual time to use them this year, the pre-emergents may not be useful as the weeds already may have germinated. They sure have at our house. Soil temperatures are abnormally warm and, while gardeners greet each early sprouting of desirable plants with great delight, we need to remember the weeds are sprouting early right along with them. Cool season weeds and warm season weeds are sprouting simultaneously here in our garden.

Tree, I cannot believe Brent put the pig in your greenhouse! I hope he hurries up and gets the pig its own house built so you can use your greenhouse.

Fleas and ticks already are bad here. I even saw ticks in January. The bird population is huge this winter. Maybe less of them than usual flew south. We have six finch feeders and I have to refill them all once or twice a week, and more often than that if we have one of those increasingly rare really cold winter days or nights. In the garden, earthworms are exceedingly plentiful, reinforcing our decision to go no-till in the front garden, and there's not nearly as many grubs and cut worms in the soil as usual. Purple martin scout birds returned around Valentine's Day, which is fairly typical. We're always happy to see them. We have about 50 billion cardinals. If the old southern belief that cardinals are the souls of your deceased relatives visiting you is true, then I've got a lot of souls hanging around here every day, and apparently more deceased relatives than I ever knew existed---and they are feasting on black oil sunflower seeds in huge quantities.

The early arrival of spring weather still doesn't mean winter is over yet. Let's try to keep that in mind as we yank weeds, mow the lawn, slap mosquitoes, watch the bees visit the early blooms and otherwise enjoy the rest of what's been a fairly lovely February overall. As soon as the wet garden soil is dry enough to walk on, I'll be yanking weeds like a possessed madwoman this week, and then putting mulch in place to keep them from resprouting. I'm not sure if I've ever seen this many weeks sprouting in February before, and that includes bermuda grass and Johnson grass, which are so early this year that it is ridiculous.