Another Daffodil

Here's a close-up photo of another of the daffodils in our garden. This one has a more elaborate flower, with many more petals and both the yellow and darker orange coloration. It also blooms a bit later. Sorry, but I don't recall the variety.

Yellow Crocuses

Rodents of various types like to dig up most of the bulbs in our garden so we favor daffodils - which the critters won't eat. Even so, we toss in a few tulips or other bulbs in the ground each year knowing they won't last more than one year or two.

Last fall I picked up a couple of crocus bulbs and the results are shown below. Nice.

Garlic Mustard

One the problems we have in the midwest is the presence of a number of invasive non-native species. These plants compete with - and often crowd out - our natives plants.

Many of our cultivated garden flowers are non-native, but they generally stay put in the garden. It's only when they make the leap from the garden to the woodlands and open fields and they start crowding out native species that the trouble begins.

One of these species is Garlic Mustard, Alliaria petiolata. It's one of the first plants to start growing in the spring. This fact makes it easier to identify and remove at this time of year.



The photo above shows two garlic mustard plants growing amongst some viburnum bushes in the back of our garden. As you can see, they are easy to spot. This makes it easy to wander around the garden and pull them up. They have a medium size tap root anchoring them in the soil, but if you twist as you pull they come out nicely. They make a fine addition to the compost heap.

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Forsythia

Forsythia is one of those old fashioned spring blooming shrubs. It's not the most attractive shrub during the summer months - it's a bit unruly - but you just need to have one around in April.

It's also known as one of those garden alarm-clocks. That is, you'll often hear that "
you should prune rose bushes when the forsythia is in bloom", or "you should plant your peas when the forsythia is in bloom", or even "you should apply crabgrass preventor when the forsythia is in bloom".

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Daffodils

Another harbinger of spring in central ohio gardens is the daffodil. In these parts, the squirrels and chipmunks are very good at digging up tulip and other spring bulbs, but they don't like daffodil bulbs. This means the bulk of our spring bulbs are daffodils.

We have a smattering of tulips and crocuses, but since the daffodils persist year after year (in fact they multiply) they form the bulk of our early spring flowers.

Below is a photo of some of our standard daffodils. We have a few other narcissus that will be blooming later in the season and I'll put up photos of them too.

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Red Maple "Flowers"

One of the harbingers of spring is the "flowering" of the red maple trees. With their deep red color the trees almost put on a show.

We have three red maples trees in the front yard in a grouping of three trees. There is also small volunteer in the back which I expect is from a seed from one of the trees out front. This sapling has come up in a good spot and I intend it let it grow.

Getting Started

Welcome to "A Central Ohio Garden". This blog is about gardening in central ohio (just north of Columbus to be precise). It will cover my experiences with flowers, vegetables, woodland plants and other related items like garden critters.