Although this year looks like a very average one on paper, the reality is very different. Cold, rain, and wind kept us from doing our usual garden work and now, in April, we’re very much behind on all of the work that was supposed to be done by now. It’s very questionable if we’ll be able to catch up by May.

January

The new year started with average temperatures and lots of fog and clouds. Although this has been another year with almost no real snow, we did end up with almost a full month of snow on the ground. Mostly due to the cold days in which temperatures never passed 3°C. The altitude in which we live helped a lot, the snowfall stayed on the ground above 200m so even when we did get some snow in lower areas there was only rain.

This winter was one of those winters when we had huge temperature differences in just a couple of days. So we had periods of 10 days of very cold weather, followed by periods of unusual warmth and then another blast of cold. The entire January was very cloudy, and we only had 2 sunny days in the entire month. Of course, this means we did nothing in the garden or the years, except for the clean up of the fallen trees that strong winds knocked into our yard.

February

February continued with the same weather pattern. Temperatures were under 5°C the entire time, and fog and clouds almost nonstop. In February, we had 7 sunny days, mostly in the last few February days. Again we didn’t manage to do much in the garden, and also there was no point in doing much. The soil was too cold for any germination, and even the seeds planted inside the plastic greenhouse never germinated.

The house-heated greenhouse was a completely different story. By the middle of February, I’ve already started most of my herbs, lettuce, peppers, and peas. Since the previous couple of years spring here was very warm I was counting on an early start, and the opportunity to start harvesting the herbs, lettuce, and onions in late March. But, this year I was wrong.

March wind and rain

March continued with very cold, cloudy, and windy weather. Although we had a couple of warmer days, which ended up bringing us back to average monthly temperatures, the reality is that the cold really set us behind. In the middle of March, I had issues with our seedlings which weren’t getting enough light inside the house but were getting too much heat. Usually, by March we would stop heating the house, or just heat it during the mornings, but due to the cold, we kept on heating every single day until evening. This meant that the house was getting too warm. This made me decide to throw all the seedlings outside on the balcony.

This wasn’t a very good idea since the daily temperatures were barely above 10°C, but it was the only thing I could do to stop the seedlings from getting leggy. This way, even with the cold they were at least getting enough sun. Of course, I kept them in the house during the night since most of March we had mornings with freezing temperatures. They did turn a bit yellow, and some of the tomato varieties got purple leaves, but they managed to stay at normal height.

The problem with the seedlings got worse when we started having strong north winds. Last year I kept all the non-sensitive seedlings on the north side covered with nylon protection. But, this year the north side of the yard was completely unusable due to the strong winds. This means I had to find another way to keep my seedlings outside. So I ended up buying two new plastic greenhouses. We installed one on the south side, and this is where I’ve kept the herbs and less sensitive seedlings.

When we didn’t have frost days there was rain, so we basically again didn’t get the chance to do much in the garden. I managed to dig up half of the garden in the last days of March, but that was pretty much everything we managed to do.

April so far

April finally brought a couple of nicer days so we managed to do some actual garden work, but still first 10 days were very windy, and extremely cold for this time of the year. Morning frost has been killing off all blossoming trees in the area. Luckily here we won’t have a lot of damage since most of the trees are still dormant. But, the low temperatures most likely killed our plums, red currant, and apricot fruits for this year.

I managed to do some actual garden work the past couple of days, peas are in the soil, and I managed to sow 2 mixed beds of lettuce, chard, carrots, and onions. The biggest issue right now is drought. Although March was above average in rainfall with 150mm of rain, the wind which often ranged from strong gale to storm strength dried out the soil. Everything that I managed to dig during March has turned into hard lumps, there’s no way of softening them except to wait for new rain.

Because of this, we concentrated on working on things that don’t include too much fine digging. I’ve started working on a new flowerbed, fixing the small side garden, and cleaning up the fallen trees. There’s always something to do, and this year there’s not enough time to do everything.

So what do we do now?

So now that the weather forecast is finally saying we should get some normal April weather we’ll need to try and catch up on lost time. There will be a lot of digging, seedling repotting, late sowing, and yard cleanup. We need to install the second, much larger greenhouse in the garden, and plant potatoes. Balcony flowers are waiting to be transplanted, herbs should have been repotted weeks ago, and the containers that we’ll use are still full of early spring flowers. Hyacinths are still blooming and daffodils and tulips are just starting. Everything is very behind this year and it will take us weeks to catch up.

Hopefully, the next couple of weeks will finally look like real spring and we’ll finally be able to do everything if we don’t want to end up with March work in May.