January and February are very slow months in our garden. There’s not much going on since temperatures are just too low to grow anything outside. Luckily this winter wasn’t as bad as we’re used to. We had a couple of very cold weeks, especially in the first half of December, but each cold wave was followed by a week of mild weather. This was great for our heating costs and groceries delivery. There have been only 3 days this winter when we were isolated from the main town due to the snow. Luckily, the rain that followed right after the snow melted 50% of it, so the roads were clean very quickly.

Mild and windy

Last week (30.01-05.02) was one of the milder weeks. Morning temperatures have been below zero, but the daily temperatures have been around 10°C(50°F). Still, this didn’t mean that we did anything outside. We’re still waiting for a week or two more to start doing anything in the garden. The only thing we do is take nice long walks in the mild weather.

During the weekend we had one of the windy Saturdays this year. Wind gusts reached 105kmh(65mph) which caused us to spend a couple of hours without electricity. Luckily, this part of Croatia is connected to power circles, so we soon got electricity from another area. This is actually great since our flat is heated with an inverted air conditioner.

Sowing new varieties

While the power was down I used the time to sow my tomatoes for this year. I decided to sow 40 varieties this year. Most of them are indeterminate varieties that won’t reach over 2m, some are determinate and I added a couple of cherry tomatoes just to have something to nibble on.

This year I decided against sowing the exact number of seedlings since this requires a lot of separate containers and went with sowing a bunch of seeds in big containers instead. Once all of them germinate and grow the first couple of leaves, I will transplant them and know how many tomatoes I’ll have this year. The good thing is that with the new side garden and new orchard beds, I have plenty of space in my garden for any number of tomatoes. Especially since I’ve decided to try a different approach in my garden and I’ll make a controlled mess of everything.

With the tomatoes sown, my shoe wardrobe is full now and there’s no more room for new containers. Everything is growing well, except for some eggplant varieties, which refuse to germinate. Luckily I’ve sown a bunch of eggplants in a mixed container, so I will have enough. I’ll give those eggplant seeds 2 more weeks and then they will be thrown out of the heated area. I’m hoping that in a couple of weeks, the temperatures will start rising and I will be able to sunbathe my brassicas and onions. As soon as I get some more free space on the shelves I will sow some more veggies.

While I wait for nicer weather I bought some new gardening and culinary books to see if I can get any new ideas for my garden. Also, I’ve noticed that lately there’s lots of wrong information online and I wanted to have a couple of books at hand for the information that I sometimes just can’t remember. My memory hasn’t been too good since COVID, so it’s good to have a couple of basic information books, just when my mind goes numb.

Plans for this week

For this week I don’t have much planned, since the temperatures have dropped again and everything is frozen. I am hoping that this weekend the frost will be less intense and will give us a chance to start the first garden tasks. We need to make our fence higher since roe deer are jumping over it without any problems. Also, I want to make beds and lift anti-hail netting before we start sowing anything. But for this to happen we need milder temperatures. Lucikly winter here should be over soon and this should be one of the last real winter weeks.