Garden free of snow finally, Observations:

Some late winter garden observations:

Gophers are amazingly destructive. It looks like the moon in places. I trapped 1 single gopher last week and it looks like he was the only culprit.
What a mess.

Hugels will need more soil than I thought. That's an under emphasized point to building hugels from what I've read, but I've got all sorts of holes/cracks/crevices and things poking through. Maybe a few inches all around and another round of mulch.

No till gardening is looking better and better now in year 3 when I see worm holes all over my garden in april and stepping into one of the beds on accident causes my foot to disappear into black soil.

Turnips are pretty amazing plants.
Good for greens or roots, fast to sprout, grow, and mature.
Cold hardy, summer hardy, apparently overwintering hardy in zone 4 in the worst winter since the early 80's.
I'll have greens in a week or 2. I suppose I'll get seed from them too now they've lived through a winter. They're bi-annuals right?

Other things survived and are popping up too.
Swiss Chard, parsnips, Chamomile.
Maybe the snow insulates more than I ever imagined. I haven't seen these survive in years past.

It seems like I've had no winter kills in the orchard either, including zone 4 pushing plants like Goumi, Sweet Cherry, Chestnut, American Persimmon, Peach, and Pawpaw.
Again, this was one of the worst winters in 3 decades here and all seem fine, even really good.

Pretty amazing especially considering we hit -30 easy this winter and had days where the HIGH was -20.

Nice! It sounds like you got through the winter really well, considering.

Snow is under-appreciated for its insulating value. People used to give my mom funny looks when she'd shovel all the snow she could reach into a waist-high berm against the exterior walls of our Alaskan cabin, but it cut down on drafts and substantially reduced the amount of firewood we'd burn at forty below.