Rolling down my garden

 In Croatia, June is usually a Lavender harvest month. In the coastal parts lavender flowers sooner, and in northwestern Croatia we harvest it around the end of June. The lavender isn't very popular here due to the popular opinion that the lavender can't survive in the cold, but actually, some varieties grow excellent even in cold and can be grown in harsh winter conditions. Warmth, sun, and no watering is a perfect combination Lavender likes hot and sunny areas, but they can survive in colder areas, provided that the soil is not too wet. The humidity will kill the roots much faster than the frost will. The lavender prefers well-drained soil and doesn't mind being without water for a longer period. It is perfect for slope and rock gardens. Once you choose the right spot you can forget about it until the harvest time. Lavender doesn't need any fertilizers or fresh compost. It grows the best in a poor rocky environment. Give your lavender lots of sun and enou...

 After years of worrying if we'll get a destructive storm or not, this year we finally said that it was enough and ordered anti-hail netting. It took a while to get it. Probably due to a lot of storms around us, and the increase in orders, but last Friday it finally arrived and we decided to install it right away. The best way to install an anti-hail net is to secure it on a strong metal frame. This way the netting can last up to 10 years without much maintenance, but that's not possible in our garden. Having a forest garden means that every possible flat surface needs a way to be cleaned. Once the autumn starts the garden is full of leaves that cover everything. We need an easy way to clean the netting, and having a fixed netting isn't an option... Read more here   As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page

 June is red currant time. Like all berries, currants don't ripe all at the same time, so they can be hard to store for winter. The usual way of storing them is to freeze them in bags or processed them in juice, syrup, or jam. I used to store my red currants this way before. But, since I still have plenty of juice and jam left from previous years, I decided to try some other ways of storing these delicious berries. The red currant bush in my garden has been here for over 20 years. It's not a big bush, but it still produces nice amounts of berries, depending on the weather conditions of course. Last year was a bad one and all my currants froze in the early stages of fruit forming. This year there was no frost danger and all of the berries grew fine. I've been harvesting them every couple of days. Just the amount that I can store. Red currants can stay on the bush for a long time and not rot or spoil. As I said earlier, I wanted to try new ways of storing berrie...

 Lately, I've converted my Tuesday morning into a harvest morning. I don't know why but Tuesday is a day when I usually harvest my veggies. Mondays are just too busy, I usually dig both the main and side garden, clean thoroughly the house, cook, and do a couple of loads of washing, and harvest is just something I don't have time for. Tuesday is a slower day, and I get the chance to walk around the garden and harvest. This Tuesday wasn't an exception. Standard harvests The berries have now become a regular Tuesday harvest. Red currants are almost done... read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

 Most of us grow brassicas the old fashion way. We grow seedlings and transplant them into the garden. We keep them watered and wait for them to grow heads. But what when they refuse to grow one? Is the problem in the variety which we grow, the conditions or climate? Can we grow them some other way? No heads issue Growing brassicas in my garden has been a real problem no matter what I did. The cold spring and autumn shortened our season so much that there was no way to grow any brassica heads. The cabbages and kale would miss that initial spring boost, suffer through the summer heat, and rot under the constant cold and rain in autumn. A few years back, I decided that the situation was going nowhere, and started growing leafy kale. The leafy kale turned out to be a good solution, and I grew never more kale that season. Kale 2020 The situation with seeds in Croatia is fairly bad. We are a part of the EU, and should be able to grow and buy any EU seed here, but the re...

 The weeks in June are all the same. Extreme warmth followed by a couple of storms and then more extreme heat. After a very rainy past week, this week we didn't get any rain at all. The storms have passed close to us, but all we got was a lot of wind. Honestly, I don't know which is worse, a rainstorm or raging wind. The storms at least drop the temperature, and the wind just forces us to shut all the windows and doors and slowly boil in the house. The garden still doesn't mind the heat. The plants are all pretty happy with the amount of rain we had so far. The last week's rain soaked the deeper layers of soil, and the roots of the plants have plenty of water. Only seedlings need watering, but they can be watered easily. To my surprise, I'm starting to have regular weekly harvests. Every 4-5 days I have plenty of veggies ready for harvest... Read more here As of June, 2022 Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:   https://rollingdownmygar...

  A few weeks back I wrote about my Maranta plant and the jungle I made on my living room window, well I guess the right sequel would be to write about my kitchen window jungle. The kitchen window is also crowded with plants, so many that there's actually no more room for a single pot here, I know this because I've already tried.  Over the years I've noticed that the plants that like a lot of warmth prefer my kitchen window. The window is on the southwest side, and the wall is heated during the whole day. The window itself is very small, there's no way to make it any bigger because of the counter under the window, the glass gets sunbathed only 2 hours a day, so the plants don't get burned by the sun, which is constantly happening on the window in my mum's bedroom, which is directly under my kitchen.  I used to open the window while cooking all the time, and I couldn't have many plants here. But now that hubby made ventilation for the kitchen, and with the en...

This has been a really difficult year for the seedlings and potted vegetables. The beginning of the spring was very cold, which didn't allow our seedlings to grow as they should. After the cold, came unusually warm months, and we've now been in the summer mood for almost 2 months. The seedlings did enjoy the warmth, but now it's becoming a problem since the normal growing places are just too warm, and we need to find our plants a new spot. I already wrote about the moving of the seedlings to the cooler parts of the yard, and now it's time to talk about chili peppers. Chili peppers, like brassica greens and seedlings, are grown in pots... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

  For most of the past week, I was away from the garden. The weather changed abruptly, and after a few warm weeks, we again had an episode of cold, rainy, and windy days. Of course, as soon as we get rain that lasts a couple of days, it takes at least 48h for the garden to dry enough to be able to enter it. Still, I wasn't too upset since I've done everything that had to be done, and honestly I needed a break. I really thought that after the break I will just dig the garden again and that would be it, but I didn't count on the tomato's ability to grow. This year I'm growing my tomatoes differently... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

  Every weekend I bake some kind of dessert. I try to make something different every week, I try to mix traditional cakes with more modern desserts. This weekend I wanted to make something traditional, and what's more traditional than our dough cake rolls.  "Orehnjača i makovnjača", the walnut and poppy seed rolls, are traditionally baked in inland Croatia during the winter months. There's not a single Christmas table without these rolls and usually, everybody loves them. Some make them... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

  After almost a year and a half, we finally finished the extensive construction work in the side garden. During the past year and a half, we've demolished 4 sheds that were in the side garden, cleaned the area, built a small veggie garden, made new steps, and this week we managed to finish most of the second terrace.  The second terrace didn't exist before, this was actually an entrance to the old workshed... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

  We all strive to grow big and beautiful pieces of vegetables. We want perfect lettuce heads, big cabbages, long carrots, and lots of beans and peas per plant. But, what if we notice that no matter what we do we can't achieve this? What if every year the results are getting worse, and each year we struggle more to grow vegetables? Do we continue to grow the same vegetables blaming it on us, or do we try to see what has changed over time.? My garden has been in the same spot for over 35 years, and in these 35 years, a lot has changed. We had rainy years, years with lots of snow, and hot and drought years. In each of the years, there were always some excellent vegetables and others that didn't grow well. During the rainy period years, we grew huge amounts of beans on netting, as soon as the summers became unbearably hot, we switched from beans to tomatoes. Once the springs became very cold, we switched to varieties with shorter growth periods. We just try to see what has changed...

  When we decided to make new beds in the yard, we had no idea the problems we'd have with the new onion/lettuce bed. The bed itself is great, on a great spot and the veggies grow nicely, but the storms are a big problem. The bed is directly under the balcony and when the rain is pouring all the water ends up in the new bed.  This is why my hubby built a temporary awning out of scrap nylon... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

There's something very heartwarming about an unexpected harvest. We all like to see and gather the fruits of our work, but when these fruits come earlier than expected they cause real joy in us. I wasn't planning to do any harvest, but coming to the garden after the rain made me realize that my strawberries and lettuce need to be harvested. So I rushed back to the house to gather the needed bags and containers and went on my first strawberry hunt. The old strawberries are still producing high-quality strawberries. The amount is smaller than in previous years, but the taste is still the same. The Alpine strawberries are also producing well,  although they are a real pain to harvest. Harvesting them takes ages.  On the new bed, most of the strawberries are still too young to produce anything. The only difference is the Korona strawberry, which is already producing fruits just a month after I've transplanted the plants to the garden.  The fruit of Korona strawberry isn't h...

   Growing seedlings can be a real challenge when you don't have a designated seedling area. Seedlings require lots of space, but the space should be sunny during the spring, and partly sunny during the summer. When you don't own a greenhouse, growing seedlings require lots of pot moving and position changing. In my garden, since it is a forest garden, choosing the right seedling spot is a real problem. During the spring there are only two spots in the whole yard where seedlings want to grow. Only the balcony and the spot in the front yard are warm enough to provide daily temperatures around 20°C (68°F), the rest of the garden, due to all the shade, warms up much slower.  During the summer things change and the front yard and balcony become the least hospitable environment for the seedlings... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

 This was supposed to be a post on how good the garden is looking at the beginning of June. On Thursday I was in the garden cleaning the beds and when I finished I looked up the hill and thought that the garden never looked this good in June and that it would be a shame if the storm hit us. It's just like I've invited the storm to come, and on Thursday evening we got another violent one. I should mention in the beginning that we actually avoided the worse two times... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

  My little side veggie garden is finally starting to look like a real garden. The rain which we had last weekend helped a lot, and I finally got the chance to clean the whole garden. It was a good decision to wait with the carrot cleaning since now that the rain fell it was much easier to remove the weeds from the bed. It turned out that, like in the main garden, carrots here weren't a success. Out of the whole bed, only a small part is actually covered in carrots and I was left with a bunch of empty space. This is why I decided against the previous idea for this bed and I decided to grow everything here. This year I will try to grow every single vegetable that I grow in the main garden too... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

  Last week before the rain, I decided to do some additional fertilization and sow some more vegetables. This year, instead of cow pelleted manure I bought a grocery sold manure. The pelleted manure which is sold in our normal stores is packed in smaller bags and can be bought at all times. Cow pelleted manure is sold in 25kg bags, and it is a problem to handle. I can't bring it to the basement on my own, and I need buckets to move it from the basement to the garden. The grocery sold fertilizers are actually not much worse than the big bagged ones. Still, I'll use these ones more often, so the result should be similar. I've already fertilized the garden in March and added some eggshells... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Full new posts can be read on the new page.

  May has been a very moody month. From very high-temperature jumps to storms with very huge temperature falls, May has proven once more to be one of the most unstable months of the year. Although this May has been much warmer than usual, with summer temperatures, the storms brought us almost above-average rainfall. With 97 liters of rain, this was one of the rainier months of this year, and not a single liter was extra. We needed this rain. The last week's weekend rain was actually the first normal rain in months. It started falling slowly and kept falling for 3 days. For the first time, the soil was actually soaked instead of being just surface wet.  When it comes to temperature, we were well above average almost every day of the month. Temperatures have been summer, with a maximum of 32.5°C (90.5°F). Morning temperatures have been around normal... Read more here As of June 2022, Rolling down my garden will be moving to its own side:  https://rollingdownmygarden.com Ful...