This year has been very specific when it comes to sowing. Somehow, with cold March all of the vegetables ended up being sown at the same time. There has been no March sowing, the plants that needed to be sown in March were sown in April, and this moved the April sowing to May. I ended up sowing most of the plants in the last week of April and the first few days of May. Of course, the forest next to my garden doesn’t help much with this situation, and I have a feeling that soon the situation in my garden, with no March sowing, will become something completely normal.

Luckily, these past couple of weeks were quite warm, and the soil is now warm enough to start sowing. Also, there has been no frost, so I was able to sow the May plants a bit earlier. This is why I’ve rushed things in this past couple of days, and I’ve sown, well almost everything.

I’ve started with beans, and I’ve sown all of the varieties that I bought. I haven’t moved from the well-tested varieties this year, and once again I’ve sown Piedmont wonder beans and Berggold. Those two varieties are one of the earliest varieties I can buy in Croatia and have been well tested in my garden. They never fail to produce beans, even if the year is extremely hot or rainy. They are not prone to blight, and the plants will easily recuperate even from a long drought period. In good years both varieties give me a second harvest in late August or early September. This makes them my favorite two bush bean varieties. This year I also bought Budai piaci variety, which I tested last year and it grew well. We will see if I will get the same result this year.

I didn’t buy any pole beans this year. I was planning to get some pole beans, but the store was out of pole bean varieties that work in my garden and I just didn’t want to risk any other variety. Pole beans are very moody here. We need a perfect year or there are pretty big chances that there will be no bean harvest at all. Last year was too dry and hot for my pole beans. I managed to get only a handful of beans, a handful that I wouldn’t even get if it weren’t for the purple pole beans which I bought. This year the store had only Venice wonder pole beans, which don’t work in my garden, so I didn’t buy any seeds at all. There will be plenty of other veggies. Also, beans can be bought in our stores whole year-round, so I went with veggies that are more expensive or harder to find. 

While I was sowing beans I’ve also dag around the broad beans, which are growing like mad lately. The temperature is now high enough for them to have a quick growth, and I have a feeling they will make up for the lost time in a very short period. All of the seeds germinated, and all of the plants are healthy and are not showing any signs of distress. I can now say with 100% certainty that I will continue growing broad beans in the future. At least I don’t have to worry about the frost and the rotting of the seeds.

Once I finished with beans I went to sow and plant zucchinis. Although it’s still a bit early, the temperatures have been high enough to be able to transplant the first seedlings. Zucchinis are a well-known fast grower, and no matter how early or late I sow them, most of the time they end up forming the first buds in the pots. Some of the plants already formed their first buds, so I went to transplant them before they started flowering. I’ve also sown some more zucchinis directly to the garden on the same bed, just to fill it up with plants, and I’ve sown a mix of all my varieties to the edge of the tomato bed. Those zucchini is will be used for flower harvesting and cooking with flowers. If I manage to get any flowers at all. Zucchinis are also one of the moody vegetables in my garden and I never know if I will be able to grow any flowers and fruits or not. This is why, this year, I went and bought a bunch of different varieties,10 varieties to be precise, so that I could have a huge amount of different zucchinis in the garden. I can’t be so unlucky not to get any flowers from all 10 varieties. 

While I was sowing I noticed that on the bed, which last year contained onions, there are a bunch of onions growing like mad, so I had no choice but to turn this bed into an onion bed. This bed was planned as a cucumber bed, but since I feel bad about pulling out the perfectly good veggies, I went and planted some onion sets on this bed. Luckily I had a bunch of onions left from the previous sowing and I could easily fill up the new onion bed.

Besides the already mentioned veggies, I’ve also sown a bunch of flowers all over the garden. I’m trying to fill the garden with as many flowers as possible. I’ve already sown a bunch of seeds in the containers which will be transplanted during May, and I’ve also bought a bunch of new plants and bulbs, but I couldn’t help myself but sow some more flowers directly to the garden. I also bought 3 new peony plants, which have been planted in the main garden, and I’m waiting to see how many roses are rooted successfully to know how many new flowers I will buy. You can never have too many flowers.

I’ve also made a small covered nursery in the garden, just a part of the bed with a nylon cover, which will be used to grow late summer seedlings. These seedlings were supposed to be grown on one of the new terraces, but the second one is nowhere near finished, the upper one is already full of seedlings and I just don’t have any room for a bunch of new pots and containers. This is why I’ve used part of the garden to sow some leeks, onions, lettuce, and late cabbages. I will leave them to grow here until they will be big enough to transplant. If the bugs don’t gobble up the seeds first.

There are still some veggie bags that need to be sown in the garden, but they will be sown while I plant the seedlings. The garden is filling up nicely, and I’m guessing that by the end of this week all of the beds will be full.