Rolling down my garden

  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: 1) Cucamelon: A small taste bomb 2)Garden diary: A slow hot week 3)Blossom end rot: what can we do about it? 4)A cold week in July 5) Dealing with cracks in soil 6) Zucchinis: eating the whole plant

 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 realit