End of winter, early spring

It is starting to warm up, and spring is definitely arriving. All the fruit trees are budding up or in flower, and many of the spring bulbs are flowering including daffodils, miniature daffodils, jonquils, spring star flowers, and grape hyancinths. The dutch irises are all well up, but no sign of buds as yet. The winter iris have been flowering heavily which is great as some of them were transplanted only last year.

The first of the bearded irises are starting to flower, the dark purple have been flowering for some time, but the first white iris flower bud appeared today.

In terms of chores, I pruned the red stemmed dogwood practically down to the ground, and sprayed the hellebores for aphids. The hellebores are flowering very well, but are being affected badly by the aphids.

I also planted out most of the potatoes in the vegie bed. This year I am growing kipfler, saphire, viking and purple congos. I am also thinking about putting some in wire cages as an experiment to see how they go. I also bought some pea straw to spread over the top, will do that tomorrow.

I finished sowing the Australian native seeds in the little greenhouse. Not sure how they will go as they are notoriously difficult to germinate, but figured it was worth a go as it much cheaper than buying the plants already established.