Rolling down my garden

 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

  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.

  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...

A few weeks ago, I said that once I finish sowing the summer seedlings in the garden, I'll finish my sowing season. Well, as it turns out I was wrong. I decided to buy more bags of seeds and start sowing more vegetables.  The truth is I didn't think I would need so many plants in my new garden. Once I've finished sowing and planting in the main garden, I saw that I still have empty space in the main garden and that in July I'll also have room in the side garden. This is why I sent my hubby to buy me more seeds. Buying seeds after May 15th in Croatia is actually a real pain to do. Most of the stores order seeds in March and sell what they have during the whole gardening season. In May there's actually a very small selection available, and you have to buy what's left. Usually, the varieties that are left are the most popular ones, which are ordered in huge amounts. This is great for a normal garden, but for my forest garden sometimes this just doesn't work. St...

 This could be a good orchard year. Despite the cold March and the beginning of April, the rest was unusually warm. There wasn't a single day with frost temperatures, and the orchard has used this fact in the best possible way. All of the trees and bushes have formed small fruits, and for the first time in a long period, we could have a nice harvest.  Last year most of the flowers froze, and the only things that survived the frosty April were blackberries and quinces, which started flowering much later than the rest of the orchard. The blackberries gave a nice amount of fruits, and quinces had lots of fruits, but none of them managed to ripe. They all started rotting before the harvest time. This year could be different. We didn't have any frost or damaging weather during the flowering period. Now that the fruits are growing it is hot, but we're still getting enough rain to be in the average amount. There aren't any diseases present right now, and if we don't get a ...

 Sun, sun, and more sun is the review of this week. Temperatures have been through the roof, with morning temperatures around 15°C(59°F), and daily have been around 30°C(86°F). Of course, because of the temperatures, the soil is pretty much all dry, and I've been watering the garden every day. We were supposed to get some rain earlier in the week, but all we got was more wind. Luckily, on Saturday we got a big weather change, and finally some rain. Although the weather reports said we should get lots of rain and even storms, the amount we got was little. I will probably need to water the garden again in a couple of days. The only great thing about this change is that the temperatures dropped to only 12°C(54°F) on Saturday afternoon, and we finally got a much-needed break from the heat. The break will be very short since the forecast is announcing a temperature rise, and another heatwave with maximums over 33°C(91°F) on Friday. I guess this year summer came almost 2 months earlier. ...

May is usually the beginning of the strawberry harvest, so it's also a perfect time to clean up the weeds. I've cleaned up all of the beds a few weeks ago, but with the rain and high-temperature mix, the weeds are growing like mad, and it was now time to clean them again. Right now I have two strawberry beds on the opposite sides of the garden. The old bed is at the bottom of the garden, and the freshly planted one is at the top. Both were in desperate need of cleaning... 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.

 Finally, after a long period and lots of work hours, we've managed to bring the side garden big jobs near the finish. After demolishing the worksheds, removing the demolition material, building a new veggie garden, and filling it with soil, the steps are almost done.  The side garden area has been abandoned for a long time, a few years back we made some brick/concrete steps to soften the slope. The steps worked great for a decade, but due to the constant usage, ice during the winter, and normal subsidence of the soil, the steps started falling apart. Every year the situation was worse until last year we decided that it was time to deal with the side garden. Removing the buildings around the slope opened up a great space for relaxation and gardening, all we needed was to fix it up and add some kind of step solution... 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 ne...

Finally, I got some free time to clean up the backyard. The backyard is actually very small. It has only the basement entrance, which I wrote about recently , my new onion/lettuce bed, and a retaining wall area which, no matter how much I try can't get an actual theme or a purpose other than being a retaining wall. Last year I cleaned this whole area , added a tile border, and planted new plants wanting to make a rock garden. I thought this would work well since this side drains really fast, the soil is mixed with rocks and bricks, and the sun burns it fairly easily. Well, I can now say that this plan fell to bits. In the place of the tile border is now my new onion bed and most of the plants which I bought last year did not survive the winter. Although all of them were frost-resistant I'm guessing the drought killed them and since this year April was very warm all of my old plants reappeared and the garden turned back to wild/meadow looking. I tried to make a meadow-style gard...

 Although 90% of seedlings have been planted and are already grown enough to be considered adult plants, there are still a bunch of baby plants all around my garden and the yard. At this time of the season, I rarely have so many small plants in my garden. Usually, I'd start sowing around March and most of the plants would get big. This year, as I mentioned a million times, is different. This year I didn't plan enough plants for my garden, so I had to sow more than initially planned, and now I have lots of baby plants around. Also, I've sown some perennial flowers that are just germinating so there are more baby plants to take care of.  This time of the season is very moody, with lots of showers and temperature jumps and drops and it's hard to grow baby plants in the garden, but as I said, this year is completely different and baby plants are just booming. Temperatures above 30°C(86°F) are speeding the germination process. Since the soil has not heated up fully yet, ther...

 Lots of showers, heat, and wind is the easiest way to describe the week behind us. The temperatures have been way above average, and except for Wednesday and Thursday, daily temperatures have been over 30°C(86°F). This is of course stressful temperature for the plants, but since the soil hasn't had time to heat too much, the plants are still doing very well. The tomatoes, after being completely yellow are now starting to grow and get their normal, green color.  Peppers and cucumbers benefit from the shade I've built them with agro-textile are also growing well, and should start flowering soon if Srećko doesn't kill them before... 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 year, besides the main garden, we're making a side garden. It has been a lot of work and we still haven't finished, but we're making some progress. The small veggie garden is finished and mostly planted. I've planted 4 out of 5 beds, the last bed hasn't been planted so that my hubby can work on the support wall for the second terrace. He will make a wall once he finishes the new steps. He made half of the steps and if things go well they should be finished by the end of next week. The veggies in the new garden are growing well, some are growing faster and others are slowlier. The right side of the garden gets more sun, and the veggies on this side grow much quicker than the veggies on the least two beds... 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.