Rolling down my garden

 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...

  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...

   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.

Now that all the spring seedlings have been planted, I finally got the time to organize the rest of the seedlings. They were everywhere. Some were kept in the front yard, others in the side yard, and some even in the basement. Now was the time to gather all of them and see which are worth leaving and which were not.  Most of the seedlings that were left for later sowing are the after-frost flowers, some perennials for next year, and the tomatoes that were sown in March... 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.