Winter is finally showing signs of slow fading. Nights are getting shorter, birds start singing at 5 am, and although the mornings are still cold, the smell of spring is in the air.

With the beginning of spring, my gardening season also starts, so it’s time to slowly make our way to the garden.

Jumping up and down

The past couple of weeks have been much warmer than the rest of the winter. We’ve even stopped heating the house for a couple of days. But this year is similar to the previous year, and we have continuous temperature spikes and drops. Every couple of days after an unusually warm period, we get below-average temperatures. This is not so bad; it actually forces me to remember the date and stop with the garden work. The warm weather is making me work on things that shouldn’t be done this early, and I have to control myself not to start sowing everything like mad.

So far, I’ve pruned raspberries and blackberries, trimmed all the bushes, and started sowing the seedlings. Since my garden is surrounded by forest, and it takes longer for the soil to warm up, I grow every vegetable as a seedling first.

Seedlings

I’ve started the broad beans, tomatoes, and peppers in early February, and by now they are pretty big. Since the weather has been moody, but there were no frost temperatures, I’ve decided to move my tomato and pepper seedlings to the front yard greenhouse. This greenhouse is in the sun the entire day, and the house wall keeps it warm during the night. So far, they are growing well, slower than they would indoors, but since I don’t heat the house right now, they are better off in the greenhouse. If we get a cold period, I can move them back to the house in just a couple of moments.

Broad beans grew so quickly that I’ve already transplanted some of them to the side garden. I had to place a wire to secure them since the wind will break them easily, especially here, where the northern wind is the strongest.

We’ve also already placed the bigger greenhouse, so I’ve moved the cool-tolerant plants inside. Peas are in the soil, radishes have germinated, cabbages and kale are starting to grow, and a bunch of flowers have been sown and are waiting for warmer days.

This year, I’ve used a combination of yogurt cups, soil cubes, and seedling snails made from leftover wrapping foam, which hubby brought home from work. I’ve used a lot of materials to do seedling snails, but so far, the best solution is this foam. I’ll see how things progress during the year, but I’m fairly sure I’ll abandon most other ways and concentrate only on cups, soil blocks and seedling snails. These are things that take the least space on a shelf.

I still have a bunch of sowing to do, but I’m waiting for the end of March. There’s no room in the greenhouses right now, and I need to transplant the early vegetables out before sowing anything new.

Front yard and a new tenant

The front yard is still asleep, the flowers are just starting to grow, and apart from hyacinths, nothing else is blooming. Next to the hyachints there has been a weird plant showing up in my flower beds and containers lately, and it keeps moving around.

He came during winter with an injured paw and stayed. We know that he’s an abandoned cat, left after the old couple from the next village passed away. So, I started feeding him, hubby made him a small house to hide inside during winter, and I guess we own a cat now. We did take Mau the cat indoors during a very cold period, but he had to be in the bathroom as Srećko wasn’t happy at all; he despises cats. Mau the cat was also unhappy, so they came to an agreement and decided to tolerate each other as long as they were in the separate areas of the yard. So now Mau the cat uses the front yard and the entrance, and Srećko uses the balcony and the side garden. So now I have to walk up and down multiple times a day to take care of both of them, but at least there’s no daily barking and hissing.

Plans for this week

When it comes to plans for this week, I’m still controlling myself not to go crazy with sowing and planting. We should have a couple of cold and rainy days this week, so I will concentrate on housework instead of the garden. I will sow another batch of onions, tomatoes, and lettuce, but the rest will wait for next week. Forest garden doesn’t come to life until April, so we still have time to relax and take things slowly.