January is usually the slowest garden month of the year. There is no real garden work that can be done during January, we can only start some of the seedlings, but other than that, there’s not much that can be done.

This January has been all over the place, with big temperature differences. The New year brought us temperatures over 15°C(59°F), which is very unusual for this part of the country. Such high temperatures can be found in coastal Croatia, but not here. Still, the high temperatures didn’t last long, and soon we got average January temperatures with freezing mornings. There was very little rain, only 15mm through the month, which is well below the average. With this, we’re continuing the very dry period we’ve been having for the past 8 months, but since there were a lot of frost mornings, the feeling of the drought is not present. The soil is wet at the surface almost every day. There have been only two days of constant below zero temperature, and the rest of the month had below zero mornings and warmer afternoons. Still, the overall feeling of January was cold. 

As I said before, there haven’t been many things that could be done in the garden during January. I managed to clean the small front flower bed, which I didn’t have the chance to clean earlier, but the main vegetable garden has been left untouched. The frost in the veggie garden stays longer since it’s on the northern side, and there’s not much that can be done when everything is frozen.

I still haven’t started trimming and pruning due to the low morning temperatures, but I’m thinking of starting in the next 10 days. February can be very cold, with temperatures below -15°C(5°F), so it’s better to wait and see how this winter will progress. 

When it comes to seedlings I’ve already sown peppers, tomatoes, brassicas, and some flowers. I’m still waiting for the rest of the vegetables. It’s a bit too soon to start sowing the fast-growing varieties. Peppers and tomatoes can always be transplanted to bigger pots once they overgrow the existing containers, so there’s no damage with early sowing, and brassicas can go to the garden earlier since they are not as frost-sensitive as the rest of the seedlings. 

I’m hoping February won’t be as cold as January, and I’ll be able to do some actual garden work this month. The waiting period is starting to get fairly annoying.