Celebrating useful plants that thrive in northern climates
Up close with spring buds
Updated Monday, April 29
One of my favorite garden tasks in April is monitoring the buds of trees and shrubs, and the new growth of perennials like rhubarb and sorrel.
Below is my garden’s current status in pictures. (I’ve updated this post to include a few more photos taken this weekend and removed the gallery feature, which made it difficult to read captions.)
NOTE: Over the last couple days I’ve been experimenting with the macro setting of a Canon Powershot G5 X purchased a few months ago. It’s a bit tricky to lock in focus but so far beats my efforts with a basic iPhone 7, which lacks portrait mode. I love having full control of the aperture!
Rhubarb plants in spring look like baby aliens. My rhubarb patch seems to start growing quite a bit later than other rhubarb patches in warmer parts of Anchorage.Garden sorrel is usually the first herbaceous perennial in my garden to send up new shoots. The tart greens contain oxalic acid, as does rhubarb, and are delicious in soup, salad, pesto, or cooked down into sauces.The redleaf rose (rosa glauca) is a natural beauty with single-petal pink blossoms, bluish-green leaves, and reddish stems.Haskaps, also known as honeyberries, are the first shrubs to leaf out in my garden. Their elongated berries look like blueberries but taste more like raspberries. Black currants have an intoxicating smell and flavor. I love having them in my garden but I think they need a better, wetter spot to flourish and produce more berries. I planted Mount Royal and Toka plum tree saplings in 2018. Due to our poor soil, I planted them in raised beds. I hope they will bloom at the same time and cross-pollinate!Fuzzy fruit spurs, flower buds, and leaf buds on a young Norland apple tree.The late Verna Pratt recommended planting serviceberries as a native edible in Alaska. The flowers are beautiful. The berries are large and juicy but a bit bland. This petite Romeo cherry bush is only a few years old yet produced several cherries in 2018. Romeo is part of the dwarf sour cherry “Romance” series developed by the University of Saskatchewan and planted by many local fruit growers in recent years.
How cool that you’ve documented your garden trees and shrubs in the budding stage! We were just taking notice of ours today, as well! There is so much hope and excitement in seeing the swelling buds and emerging tips of bulb and perennial flowers and the tightly wrapped leaves of the rhubarb!
Transcendental Gardening 
How cool that you’ve documented your garden trees and shrubs in the budding stage! We were just taking notice of ours today, as well! There is so much hope and excitement in seeing the swelling buds and emerging tips of bulb and perennial flowers and the tightly wrapped leaves of the rhubarb!
Agreed!