March Showers Bring April Flowers

I know it's supposed to be "April Showers Bring May Flowers," but it's been so warm here that the flowers are all blooming! The weather is predictably unpredictable and while it was in the 20s overnight last week, today was about 80.

In the past week all of the flowers I planted last fall have started blooming! The tulips were the first to poke through the ground (a full 2 weeks before the daffodils), but the daffodils bloomed earlier (as they should). Now we have daffodils, tulips, vinca, forsythia, and azalea all blooming at once. This is the azalea in front of the house:

And, I am very pleased that it looks like all of the daffodils and tulips I planted last fall have come up and are blooming or ready to bloom. I'll get out my garden journal and check exactly how many of the ones I planted came up, but it really appears to be all of them. This is great! I now can highly endorse the Naturalizing Daffodil Mix from Park Seed and the Perrenial Tulip Mix Super Sak from Breck's.

So, to review the Naturalizing Daffodil Mix from Park Seed I would give it an A. The bulbs were large with probably 25% of them having 3 sprouts. I think in the 2 bags of 50 I purchased there were maybe 2 bad bulbs (and there may have actually been more than 50 in the bag). There is definitely a mix of colors, shapes and sizes. Some are large all yellow singles, some are white and yellow singles, some all yellow frilly ones, some light yellow and white frilly ones, and some small yellow with orange centers. I'll complete my review next spring when I see how many come back and to what extent they multiply in one year.


For the Perrenial Tulip Mix Super Sak I would also give a grade A. I planted 59 bulbs last fall and I thought I counted 61 tulips sprouting in the flower beds (but I must have miscounted). These bulbs were also very large and if I planted 59 that means there was only one bad bulb in the bag. I was happily surprised that the deer didn't eat any of the tulips because they seem to have eaten just about everything else (see this post). The tulips that have bloomed so far are yellow/orange, red, and orange/yellow. There are about 40 that haven't bloomed yet so there may be other colors as well.