Right now, there’s basically nothing in the garden. The herb bed, amazingly, is still chugging along, but everything else is done for the year. So, when I do my rounds, I don’t check the garden beds like I do throughout the growing season.
Which is why I had such a surprise today.
When the septic guy showed up to empty our tank, I stayed around on kitten duty, to keep them away from the open tank. A couple of cats wanted to hang out.
I had to pick up and carry Sir Robin most of the time, because he was so curious. When I put him down to look at things, he stayed close and even posed quite nicely for me.
Fancypants, here, is more feral, but still very curious, so I was keeping a close eye on him.
His going into the area fenced off from the deer, to protect the tulips and apple tree, is why I was there to spot my surprise.
First, it was seeing fresh green leaves poking up where the saffron was planted, two autumns ago. I’d seen some sprouting in the spring, but then they disappeared and I thought they died off. Their first growing season was much the same. It’s really hard to keep this area clear of the creeping bellflower that threatens to choke out the tulips. The crocuses are much more delicate. Plus, these are zone 4 corms, and we’re in zone 3, so I really wasn’t expecting much. Just hoping.
Today, I found fresh new saffron crocus leaves coming up! In November!!! These are supposed to bloom in August, never mind start coming up.
When I first started taking pictures, I actually missed it.
Yes. That is a spent saffron crocus flower laying on the leave litter!
The plant just to the right of it in the picture has what looks like a flower bud ready to open soon.
!!!
I opened up the makeshift gate in the fence wire to get better pictures, which you can see in the rest of the photos of the slide show above.
Yes, I picked the flower.
We have our very first saffron threads from our first blooming saffron crocus!
We’ll keep an eye on the flower bud over the next few days, to see if it opens or not. If it does, we’ll pick that, too, for a grand total of 6 saffron threads. 😁
The clusters of crocus leaves are looking strong and healthy, now that their competition is died off for the winter. They also look like they are spreading, even though they’ve barely survived their first two seasons.
I’m just blown away. I honestly thought they’d died off. I knew, when I bought these, that their chances of survival would be low, so this is just really awesome.
We’ve got a few more warmer days, but before the ground freezes, I want to put a nice, thick mulch of leaves over it. I don’t want to put it on too early, as that would smother them. If the long range forecasts are at all accurate, we could possibly wait as long as another week and a half, but I don’t want to wait too long, either! I think I might need to look at the overnight lows more than the day time highs when deciding when to cover them.
I can still hardly believe they survived!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 