a yes and an answer to MY post would have been nice Claire,,I do however get the hint....
And I managed NOT to plant..I did the resonable thing.. clean up and Dh is manning the burn pile..a forest worth of twigs/sm limbs were on my yard.
I turned the compost pile over on the leave bins,topped off the kitchen scrap composter with finished compost...so it;s full and the stuff that collected all winter will cook, the other compost bin by the kitchen got some of the finished compost to start it off.

I raked and dumped the leaves off of the east side of the house..the beds where I planted 200 plus hyacinth,crocus,tulips,daffs, last fall and so far I got a lot of crocus popping out. A few early tulips and some daffs showing. The Iris/alum bed is peeking a few things out and the Day lilies i inherited when i brought the home are popping out too....

teammode: I'm sorry if you were offended - I started to answer your post, but I realized that we've had several similar posts lately, and I thought it better to make a separate post rather than call you crazy.

This issue comes up every spring, and you're certainly not the first one to want to get going very early.

Again, I apologize for offending you - that was not my intent.

Claire

Hey I AM crazy so that is ok...

And forgive me..I did mean to add an LOL...

I will say that in my neck of the woods 02764 we tend to be a bit warmer I am in the Taunton River water Shed area. The frogs are even thawed out.
I am thinking April 1st ish the bare root roses and stuff will go in.

Bareroots and dormant stock in general gets planted early. If the bareroot rose in the garage was actually mine, I'd be out there planting it today.

In general, dormant hardy plants can be planted as soon as the ground is workable in spring. The idea is to move them during the winter, and they come up at the right time in their new spot.

Actively growing hardy plants are planted after risk of damaging frost. This is usually several weeks to a month later than the first group.

Tender plants are planted after risk of any frost.

If you wait to plant dormant hardy plant after risk of any frost, they usually get fried by hot weather. Obviously tender plants will get fried if they are planted too early.

We've managed to contain ourselves. DH's work has included raking some leaves from the driveway and hacking down the final 2 snowbanks on the north side of the house. They are slowly melting when we toss some onto the asphalt. Once he removed them we saw the perfect little holes the chipmunks have dug.... or is it the skunks???? My contribution has been to play musical chairs with the pot of pansies I bought last weekend. Is it too windy on the deck? Well, then they should be on the porch. Then it gets warm, so it's back to the deck....

It has better warm up soon, or we'll both be in the looney bin.

Oh, almost forgot. Our idiot neighbors love spring, too. Yesterday the fools tried to burn a pile of leaves, without a burn permit, and (Donna, take a deep breath here) without a HOSE! The fire department came quickly, before our garage went up in flames....

LOL.. Donna you don't live next door to me do you?

Naw DH has a burn permit and he's good about NOT doing leaves. Of course a few that are stuck to/impaled on the twigs get burned...hose shovel and cell phone at the ready

I am So stoked to see other crazy people telling me it's okay to plant lol.... I was off of work today..and the clean up had to be done so I can plant... but....heheh next day off... planting Hearty Dahlias 2 cl cecilie bruners,1 16 candles, 1 olympaid rose tree,and 2 Chrysler's imperials and 2 who;s names escape me..
Some autumn bloom iris.

I work at Costco..don;t shoot... so I buy the stuff as soon as it comes in. I have had some of this for a month. I keep it alive at home better than they can in the warehouse... but I tend to come home with something to pant every day! It's a good thing I have a BIG yard! (just shy of an acre...)

What I wouldn't give to have an acre of land - my small, in-town lot is so crammed full of plants that I need to start culling seriously or I won't be able to plant anything. Or I won't be able to get from the street to the door - not sure which would be worse...

Back to the original post; if I had bare-root plants, I'd get them immediately into pots, so that when it warms up (if it ever does - our springs are slow and the cold weather sometimes lasts until June) they'd be ready to go into the garden (after a few weeks of dragging the pots in and out of doors).

We try to chip all the shrub and tree trimmings, and we do compost all the leaves. It's much more fun to have an occasional "big burn" though, so at least once a year we do that. We use a firepit that holds a lot of wood, so we don't need a permit, but we pick a calm day and have the hose near by.

Burning last year's Christmas tree is a sort of early spring tradition - before the kids grew up, I think that was their favorite yearly event. My DH and I still do it just for the fun of it, but I know most of our friends would be appalled.

I think it is okay for most temperate plants as long as the soil has thawed and is starting to warm up. In a sheltered, southern exposure that will happen much sooner than a shady cold spot.

I just planted my Hamamelis x intermedia (Witch Hazel) 'Arnold Promise' over the weekend. It has sat in a pot all winter, is now in full bloom, why wouldn't it be quite amendable to getting in the ground?

I also transplanted a Viburnum x burkwoodii over the weekend, which is a good 8 feet tall. It had to be moved because the squirrels were using it as a ladder to get to the bird feeders, and it was too close to the house anyway. It is also a hardy shrub and blooms in April, but I had to hack the roots a little so I'm crossing my fingers it is happy with being moved.

The ground has been pretty easy to work, just a little ice here and there under a clump of leaves! Next I'm getting ready to start planting some of the other stuff that overwintered in pots (about 60 pots). Just have to determine where the soil is workable and started to warm up. I still have some frozen spots here and there.

SO I planted Ahhhhh..
IT turned in to therapy..our neighbor committed suicide some time between Sun and this AM.
is is so sad....

So I needed the good vibes planting brings.
The echinecia's and glads,went in the rose buses are soaking Dh will do them tomorrow while i am in work. And the clematis went in too..
I put em a lttle deep and covered it all with leaf mulch. So unless we get a really HARD and long freeze in the next 2-4 weeks they should be fine.
The ground was not frozen at the 3 foot depth that Dh dug for the rose tree..it's soaking too.. I may put that in the planter an keep it in the garage a while longer..just to be safe.
The best/sad part of all my plants..If I am a dofus and kill them all the place I brought them from would take them back.
I have no plan on killing them or taking back dead sticks to get my money back tho.