May starts out cold, wet and windy

Well its been some time since I posted here and so I need to catch up a little. The main news is the bad weather for the last several weeks. Snow cover (see my home blog), cold, cold wind and wet rain has brought a lot of things to a really slow growth speed. It has not stopped but many fruit shrubs were near blossom break when this weather started and they have just begun to pop at the end of this week. The EBH (Edible Blue Honeysuckle) are no exception. The last 2 days when the temperatures have been in the plus range and the sun shone have changed all that.
The big bloomers in the honeysuckle are Berry Blue and Cinderella followed by Blue Belle and then a number of Russian seedlings. The second one here is a Blue Velvet open pollinated seedling.

I am surprised to see it blooming even this much as they are normally a few days later. All in all the survival rate of seedlings has been excellent although I am suspecting some of the repotted plants may have been extra stressed by the cold and may have died. Time will tell.
Some of the new seedlings from January planting are doing very well. Here are some samples. These are from seed planted in January. They are already about 12 inches tall although they are not reaching up to stand tall at this point.

The seedlings are from seed of my Kitoy River selection, Morena, and Nimfa. The rest of the seedlings are doing fairly well but I am coming to the conclusion that when growing from seed you should take the first group that germinate well and discard the rest as there seems to be a very distinct difference in Hybrid vigor. It is nearly time for them to move on to bigger pots or into the ground if I can find a place to plant them.

Last fall I planted fall rye with a fertilizer spreader between the rows as much as I could and yesterday late afternoon I cut the fall rye with the lawn mower. This I hope is going to give me weed control and some ground cover as well as the green manure from the cutting.

What is a concern from all this poor weather is the lack of pollinator insects. I did meet a wild bumblebee last night on my walk through the orchard so that is a good sign. With about 300 plants in various stages of bloom though, it would be nice to see many more.