First Sign of Daffodils

We've done a few chores in the garden, and had another batch of croissant-making. The latter went well, quicker than last time, and we've frozen the formed croissant pre-proving. We're hoping that these can then be taken out of the freezer one evening, defrost and rise overnight, and then be baked fresh for breakfast. That would be very useful, as they'll then be fresh—the alternative, baking them, freezing them, and reheating them, certainly works, but they're nicer fresh.

Outside, we sowed a few seed: a dozen cauliflowers (with a plan to sow at least one more crop), a tray of alpine strawberries (the plants we've had for a few years are cropping much less well, and probably need replacing), and a few dozen sweet peas. We've had a look through our seed collection, and planned roughly what will go where. A lot are a year past their best-before, but we'll sow them and see what comes up in order to run our stock down, before buying fresh for next year. We need, next, to decide on quantity and variety of potatoes. I'm thinking a couple of kilos of first-earlies, the same of second-earlies, and about 4 kg of main crop seeds. Although we definitely want some Belle de Fontenay, the other positions are up for grabs. Maybe some more Blue Danube? They cropped well, and are storing well; the same's true of the Axona.

While pottering, we also spotted the tips of the new daffodils, and—as best we can tell—some of the Puschkinia or Scilla. There's no sign, as yet, of the daffodils we planted in 2009, or those that were already in the garden (in small groups at the edges of the beds, and under the trees): only the new ones. A little perplexing, but hopefully the older ones will show soon. Nonetheless, it's exciting to see the signs of what I'm hoping will be a really colourful display from late March until mid-May.

Of course, a huge number of weeds have also germinated in the high beds where the Puschkinia/Scilla/daffs went, because we cleared so much undergrowth when planting them. I'm wondering about the best approach: I think mulching with bark, or similar, might be a necessity.