Snow, ice, and low temperatures. This is the best description of January in Central Croatia. Although the past two winters have been milder than what we’re used to, we’re still getting temperatures below 0°C and snow. We had a snow day 10 days ago and even though the amount of snow was minor my garden is still completely covered. The garden usually stays this way until the end of February and this is the main reason why my season is short and there is no gardening done until March. 

So what do we do during January? Mostly planning and waiting for warmer days. I’ve already sown peppers and some flowers. My Dalia seedlings are already growing and I’m hoping the rest of the seedlings will start showing up soon.

I’ve also done some more planning and decided what tomato varieties I’ll sow this year. I’ll be sowing 20 tomato varieties. Some of them will be balcony varieties and some will stay in containers as yard tomatoes. With the tomatoes, I’ll be sowing some early cabbages and new flower varieties. 

This year, besides Srećko, I have new great help in planing my garden. Recently I found “The flower expert” book by D.G. Hessayon in a used book store. An excellent little book that contains almost every flower variety I can grow in my garden. I bought many books recently, dozen of them are gardening books with plant indexes and none have so many varieties. It contains the most information you need when planning where to plant a flower. I usually search for this information online, but many times I have to open many different sites before finding some common information like height, frost sensitivity, and sun preferences. Here I have everything in one place and I love it.

I still have lots of planning to do, from March till May, which I’ll do in the next couple of weeks. It’s the only gardening that I can do.