I love crocus and grape hyacinth in the spring.

It is snowing right now, but it was record warm the previous three days. Crazy swings in temps. I am installing drip irrigation in my greenhouse (cold/hot frame, whatever). I will grow lots of stuff in there and I am super excited. I am trying Hale's best and Minnesota Midget cantaloupe. I will also plant Swenson Red seedless grape.

My roses had another tough winter, but all have some sort of growth from near the ground. I think all my trees survived including a Norway maple that I planted last spring. It makes me happy when new trees survive lol. You never know. We had brutal cold in September and October and just set daily record lows in April. Any tree that can survive a year like that is probably hardy long term

Marcia, congratulations on the greenhouse! Do you have any plans for tomatoes as well? I’ve been operating out of a sunroom attached to the garage. Our edging needs work too before the grass takes over in some spots. The quackgrass is frustrating, it appears to have been seeded into the old lawn. I've just cut the edges of the beds in the past with and edging tool, it looks great but it takes maintenance. I’m finding it doesn’t quite work right with the mulching we added last year.

L Clark, that’s unfortunate about the tough cold in September & October. I’m finding the previous fall really determines how well things do the next year. Seems like plants need time to enter dormancy. Glad to hear you’re trying cantaloupe too. How have they done for you in the past? I didn’t realize how much fertilizer they need last year. I’m looking forward to trying again.

Almost any plans i had have been dashed, like right to the ground. It was only -1 last night (that i know) and almost everything in the greenhouse froze. Let me tell you, there were some tears shed! We hadn't put any heat in there yet and i went in to cover the plants this afternoon because it's supposed to be -2 tonight, and that's when i found all the dead ones. So disappointing and discouraging. I'll have to buy tomato plants and will sow some more flowers - the tomatoes were the worse loss. I have a cold frame so i put anything that survived into it and covered it with a quilt. In there, plants have survived -5.

But.... onward! :-/

Dang Marcia, too bad everything froze. We are supposed to get ANOTHER bad cold snap here down to 26f for two nights. After that I’ll take my chances and plant my stuff out in the greenhouse. Maybe throw a space heater out there or something if it gets cold agan

prarie - I have never tried cantaloupe. Good to know they area hungry.!

how are you roses? any casualties?

All My Loving did well for me lol. Somehow. The past two years it had died to its crown, but this year I put one of those styrofoam cones on it and it’s got about 12 inches of live canes with tons of buds. I’m stoked

Marcia, that is terrible to hear about the frozen plants! That is very positive of you to look onward. I’ve definitely had some losses too from leaving tender plants outside too early. Even early June can surprise me with minus temperatures at night.

L Clark, glad to hear All My Loving is doing well for you. All my roses planted in-ground are well. I think I lost one minature rose which was in a buried pot, but the plant was weak last year due to blackspot.

I’m thinking back to the roses I’ve lost over the years. Out of the 40 or more varieties I’ve tried, the ones I remember losing off the top of my head are LD Braithwaite, Rugelda, Frontenac, Topaz Jewel and a few miniatures. Main factors have been lazy soil prep and poor location. For the miniatures it’s usually blackspot, which weakens the plant too much.

I definitely have some dead canes to trim, but not as much as previous years. Looks like the fall was gradual enough for the branches to go dormant, and there was enough reliable snow cover. It’s shaping up to be a decent spring!

L Clark, I found a pic of some of the cantaloupe Petit Gris I grew from last year. They were originally recommended by Ubro on the forum here. The vine took a while to get going for me, but once it was ready in August, fruit would quickly grow from quarter to softball size in about two weeks. The vine took up about a square metre of space, and tried to make over a dozen fruit.

I wish I left them on the vine longer to ripen; an early frost had me worried and I picked too soon. They didn’t ripen any further after picking. The had some sweetness considering how young they were. This year I plan to leave them on the vine much longer.

An update on the cantaloupe project for this year, four seeds were planted around mid April & the plants are ready to be hardened off for outdoors. I’m hoping to get them in the ground next week. They will be planted against the house to protect from the extreme wind storms. I prop some wire fence down again for them to hold onto to. It’s been a very windy spring.

Looking good.!

I had hoped to plant my garden last Sat, but I came down with covid and it's wiped me out. :( Today is the first day I feel like doing anything.

I hope to sow the seeds in the evenings this week with my kids!

It got down to 29 last night, so maybe there is a silver lining to this all.

L Clark, sorry to hear about you catching Covid & I’m glad to hear you are feeling better now. We’ve been getting some much needed rain & I’ve been late to really get much into the garden. Hopefully seeing things that need transplanting will get me motivated.

I did do an easy task of planting a wide row of 'Knight' peas. I tried a few varieties last year and really liked 'Knight' peas for its early harvest and sweetness. I’m hoping to plant every two weeks to get peas all season. Trying the wide row method to hopefully reduce on trellising.

Here is my greenhouse. it is planted with carrots, beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumber, cantaloupe, bell pepper and not pictured is a swenson red grape and three roses and rosemaey i added yesterday. and two apples and canna that are there.

it’s all a big experiment. we’ll see what does well and what doesn’t