It will probably be another week or two, at least for my Crocus. Once the foliage gets that tall flowering isnt far off. Glad your bulbs werent eaten!

Jen

Ive got a few blooming already. Mostly my Blue Pearls now.

Zone 5, north of Detroit, I have a few Iris reticulata in bloom right now and 5 full buds, but not open yet, of Crocus chrysanthus 'Ard Schenk'. Except for the chrysanthus, the rest of my crocus show no sign of foliage yet.

I meant to say the foliage I have showing is not the crocus: it is daffodils in a different bed. I always thought crocus were the first to come up (after snowdrops, which don't appeal to me). In the one bed where I planted the crocus and the anemone blanda I see nothing at all coming up.

I planted iris reticulata too in another bed, for the first time. I have some shoots but they could be anything; I have a lot of different things there. I'm not sure what the reticulata shoots will look like.

First year crocus take longer to bloom than established ones. I've got a few yellow and bronze ones blooming, also some lavendar ones, think they are Firefly. Blue Pearl shouldn't be far behind. The yellow and bronze ones started last week when it was so warm, only in the front garden that faces east. Last year the ones along the driveway bloomed about a week before the others, same time this year.

Some of the areas in the backyard are barely showing foliage so far.

I took the bricks off last week after the snow melted.

I imagine they will be quite late since they were covered like that so long. They would have been putting up foliage some time ago, and been blooming soon, had they not been covered.

Hopefully having them totally covered that long, like that will not have caused them damage.

Sue

Thanks. I was thinking I may have set them back. But it was either cover them or have them eaten immediately. We have truly voracious squirrels. In another bed I tried covering the newly planted area with a solid gridded inflexible metal mesh that was weighted down. But the next day I found the grid panel moved aside and neat holes exactly where the tulips and crocus had been. I had even planted cheap little alliums on top of the good bulbs in each hole thinking the smell would be a deterrent, and sprayed each bulb with hot pepper to no avail. I hope they at least tasted bad: I only wish they were made sick by eating the alliums.

I was visualizing a team of determined weight-lifting squirrels working togther, because otherwise I could not see how they could have gotten it off.

Since I knew that they knew there were bulbs planted under the bricks, I figured that as soon as I took them off the rats would be right there. I figured maybe they would forget after a few months.

solid gridded inflexible metal mesh that was weighted down.
Sounds like what you used might have been Galvanized Hardware Cloth. The wire 'cloth' can be bent, and cut and I have read of others planting within a box made out of it.

It is available at hardware stores in different sizes, (1/4, 1/2, etc sized squares), widths, and gauges. It is usually sold by the running foot. I keep it on hand for a number of things...screening compost, protecting things from my furbabies, and will maybe use it this season to protect my young beets from rabbits.

Sue

Here is a link that might be useful: hardware cloth looks like this