After 20 days of unusually cold weather, we can say that spring has finally arrived. Temperatures are finally around the average for this period of the year. The mornings are still a bit cold, but this is no surprise knowing that the cold period didn’t allow the ground to heat up. At this time of the year, the soil temperature should be 14-16°C (57-60°F) and this year we can barely reach 10°C(50°F). Of course, this means that the sowing of the most vegetables will have to wait and that the already sown vegetables are progressing slowly, or showing no progress at all.

In the fall I’ve sown and planted 5 beds of vegetables that were intended to be ready for harvest in the middle of spring. I’ve planted garlic, onions, leek, and sown a bunch of lettuce and lamb’s lettuce.  My plan was to harvest lamb’s lettuce during March, baby lettuces during April, and onions in the middle of May. Once the onions and lettuces were harvested I’d plant tomato and pepper seedlings on the bed (after the last frost date in the middle of May). 

My plans, of course, didn’t come true. The cold March stopped all of the plants and there’s no way I will be able to harvest anything as planned. The lamb’s lettuce has just started growing, almost a month later than it usually should grow. By the end of April, we should be already done with harvest and the remaining plants usually started growing seeds, but this year small plants have started showing up a week ago.

The even worse situation is with onions. There’s no way I’ll be able to harvest them in May. “Majski srebrenac” (May silver onion) is, as its name clearly shows, meant to be harvested in May. But this year this will not happen as my onions are still the size of green onions. I’m not even sure they will be big enough by the end of May and early June. This means that I will not be able to plant tomatoes on this bed. I’ll have to rearrange my vegetable layout to accommodate the missing tomato bed. 

The COVID garlic(planted while I was sick) is actually progressing better than the onion, although it wasn’t meant to be harvested before onions. By the looks, I’ll be harvesting both the onion and garlic at the same time, somewhere in the middle of June. 

I bought just one small bag of peas since we haven’t been having very good results with the peas. Usually, the June heat kills them before they have time to flower, but maybe this year will be different. 

Although the weather is weird I did manage to have a small harvest. First harvest this year. 

Chicory which I’ve sown 3 years ago grew back again, so I continued harvesting it the same way as I did last 2 years. I leave the roots in the ground and only take the leaves. I’m really curious to see how long it will continue to grow. 

So with a bit of chicory, a couple of baby lamb’s lettuce plants, and a couple of young garlic I had enough for a first harvest. Small, but it makes me happy knowing this should have been harvested in March.

I’m hoping that the cold period is finally over and that we’ll continue having some warm days. They don’t need to be sunny, just warm. We need warmth for our vegetables and flowers. My tulips are finally opening and I can’t wait to see how they look.