Gardening has been really hard this summer. Continuous heat and watering could be the entire description of the past couple of months. Still, we’re making slow progress and have good veggie success.

Continuous drought

The past week has been as dry and warm as the last couple of months. We’re now past the critical drought level, and water restrictions are now in big parts of the country. Here, in northwestern Croatia, things are not as bad as in the rest of the country. We had a couple of rain episodes, but still, we’re far away from normal rain levels.

Drought is especially strong since both autumn and winter were also very droughty. Trees are already losing leaves trying to protect their trunk. The grass is completely dry, and the soil is badly cracked. During the past 20 days, we got 10mm of rain. Which with the temperatures we had is close to nothing, especially since the amount was spread to different days. 2 or 3mm of rain every couple of days is just enough to make the soil crack even more, especially with the strong north wind we had lately.

New net helped out

Still, with daily watering, I’ve managed to keep the garden alive. Most plants are much smaller than they would be in a normal year. But they are alive and producing. Which is the most important. I’m now completely sure that the anti-hail netting helped to protect the garden. Although we didn’t have any hail this summer, the netting managed to dim the sun a bit, and break the big raindrops, so that the soil could absorb the small amounts of water better. Without the netting, the water during a shower would just drain down the garden, and with netting, the soil actually had time to absorb it. The netting was the best garden investment this year.

Baby plants

The netting and the daily watering also worked great on my baby plants, which I’ve sown two weeks ago. Everything has germinated, and the plants are growing well. Although the temperatures this week have again been over 35°C/95°F, they didn’t affect my freshly sown vegetables. I’ve chosen the most shaded parts of the garden to sow them. With all the forest foliage little vegetables got maybe 2 hours of daily heat. This was more than enough for the plants to grow nicely without the danger of getting burned.

Still, I’m hoping the temperatures will finally start to drop. The vegetables which I’ve sown don’t like too high temperatures, and I don’t want them to dry before they have time to flower. This concerns especially the peas which hate high temperatures.

Harvests

But even with the very high temperatures harvests have been regular and relatively big. I would probably harvest more if we had better conditions. But, knowing that most of the gardens in the area are half empty, I’m really satisfied with the harvests I’ve been having. I’m still fighting zucchini blight and cucumber mildew, but high temperatures are helping me prolong the harvest time. I know that as soon as we enter the rainy period both zucchini and cucumbers will be lost in just a couple of days, but as long as they are holding on I will enjoy the harvests.

Also, this week was my first apple and grape harvest. Both came much earlier than usual. The high temperatures made grapes ripe at least 2 weeks early and apples. Although still green, apples are being ravaged by the wasps, hornets, and other insects so I decided to start harvesting them. There are hundreds of apples on the trees, so I will try and bring a bag every time I go to the garden. There’s no way I could bring everything home at once, so I will first harvest the damaged ones and then I’ll harvest the healthy ones. I’ll try to store the healthy ones in the basement, and I’ll dry the damaged ones. There are a lot of half-eaten ones and I can’t use all of them before they rot, so drying them will be the best option.

Next week

My next week’s plans depend mostly on the weather. We should finally get some decent rain in the next couple of days. If we get some rain I will dig both the main and the side garden again and sow some more veggies in the side garden. I will also deep dig the new orchard beds if we get enough rain. If we don’t get any rain I will concentrate on making a small winter balcony garden.

I was planning to use the empty pots and containers to sow and plant some winter veggies and keep them on the balcony. My balcony is a very warm spot, and we easily reach over 20°C/68°F even in December as long as we don’t get too many frost mornings I will be able to grow veggies on the balcony until New Year. But this depends mainly on the rain. Right now the balcony is boiling, I’m using it to dry herbs, and there’s no point to sow anything there right now.

I can now only hope we get some decent rain.