Over the past few months in my posts, I’ve mostly complained about the lack of rain we were experiencing. The winter was extremely dry and the following spring continued with the trend. But, of course, May brought a completely different story. May and June in Croatia are very moody months, we get all sorts of weather, from morning frosts to extreme heat and severe storms.  In just a couple of weeks, sometimes even days, we can go from heating the house to sweating like mad and hiding from hailstorms and thunderstorms. This May and the beginning of June brought us similar weather. The unstable conditions are giving us pretty cold mornings, followed by sun and rain in the afternoon. In the past 3 weeks, we had only a couple of dry days. Storms and showers are almost every noon and then they are followed by a sunny afternoon.

As I already wrote garden plants are starting to suffer from this kind of weather. Peppers don’t like the cold mornings we’re having and tomatoes don’t like the continuous showers. But, the biggest problem right now I’m having with my balcony plants.

The balcony is on the southwest and the sun is bathing is constant throughout the whole day. This means that the temperature on the balcony is always much higher than on the north side where my vegetable garden is positioned. Temperature is higher even than in the front yard.

The showers we’re having are constantly bathing my plants and then the sun burns them while they are still wet.

Because of this, all my plants that are more exposed to the rain started turning yellow and getting sick. 

Dwarf tomatoes started showing signs of blight, so I had to remove many leaves trying to stop it from spreading. Surfinias are turning yellow and the flowers are rotting and Parrot’s beak vine is starting to lose its needles on top of being completely yellow. 

So I had to sacrifice the esthetic part and try to save the plants before I lose all of them.

I’ve moved all the plant containers closer to the house and under the roof. The ones that have been under the roof from the beginning don’t show any signs of any disease so I’ve moved them to the outer side(but still under the roof) and the ones that are sick have taken their spot, under the roof where I have to water them and only a severe storm can water them.

Tomatoes have been moved to the lower shelf of my herb garden. I’m hoping the plants on top will stop the rain from flooding them and the fence boards will protect them from the intense sun. 

The balcony again looks crowded and messy but this is the only way I have of saving my plants from rain.

I’m hoping this shower period will soon end, although our weather reports don’t give me much hope as they are saying this kind of weather will continue for at least 14 more days. 

It would be much better if we had a couple of complete rain days followed by a few sunny days than this. 

Let’s just hope the plants will be strong enough to survive this period.