I was planning to dig around the plants to give them some air, but they are still so small I’m not allowed to touch them. I tried removing the bigger weeds and grass patches, but this led to the accidental pulling of the delicate seedlings around the weeds, so I gave up on this idea. I’ll leave them another week or two for the plants to get stronger and then I’ll do some cleaning.

At the same time with the lettuce, I’ve sown broad beans. Finally, they’re out and growing. Honestly, I was really worried that the beans froze since they were in the soil for almost 2 months, but it seems all of them survived the winter and are starting to grow their first leaves. I’ve cleaned their beds, and now they can grow freely. If the success of the beans continues this way, I’ll definitely sow only broad beans in the next years.

The new strawberry bed has also been cleaned. Most of the new plants have rooted and continued growing. Out of 30 plants, I’ve counted 27 that are still present. I have a feeling 3 were eaten by bugs since there was no plant present on the bed. I would find a dried or frozen plant if there was any other reason for disappearing. Still, 27 new plants are more than enough, especially if they continue to spread, which these strawberries should do next year.

Of course, I couldn’t concentrate all my Monday work only on the big garden, since the smaller garden was finally ready for planting. The Anti-Srećko fence is up and working, we’ve made the beds and paths using leftover tiles, and the herb area has been filled with soil.

The new garden turned out to be much larger than I thought at first. I’m really bad at calculating the size in my head. I knew the dimensions of the new bed, but somehow in my head, this was much smaller than it actually is. Naively I thought I’d sow here a bag of carrot, chard, some radishes, and a seedling or two and the garden would be full. I thought of this garden as a small garden that I’d use as a support in times when I can’t go to the big garden and a place to have some winter veggies close to the house. 

Boy, was I wrong. The new “small” garden is actually 1/4 of the big garden. And with the additional big lettuce/onion container, and the two big containers/beds on the upper terrace, the veggie area in the side yard is now half size of the old vegetable garden, which is quite big. 

I’ve used all the seeds I bought for the small garden, all of the seeds that were meant for the big garden, a box of bush beans, and still have two empty beds inside the small garden. I’ll plant some peppers and tomatoes here to test the conditions here.

This actually changes my long-term plan for the big and the small garden. Now the small garden will turn into everything garden and the big garden will, as of next year, be exclusively seedling and bean garden. I’ve already sown carrots, parsley, lettuce, beets, and chard in the big garden, so I can’t change my plans for this year, but next year all of these plants will end up in the small garden. There’s plenty of room. The only thing I will continue growing in the big garden is parsley so that there are no bad neighbors in the smaller garden.

Right under the new veggie bed is my new herb area, which actually wasn’t planned at all. It was just something that came to my mind as a way to use some of the construction waste. Still, I think it will look quite nice once the plants start growing. The herb garden was meant on the upper terrace in the new movable containers. I’ve even sown one of the containers, but then we decided to make a herb garden under the bed, and now, this year I have herbs on two spots in the garden. Next year I will change this and the herbs will only be under the garden. I’ve sown oregano, parsley, dill, basil, chives, and celery to the chimney flues. The soil between the flues has been filled with different flower seeds that should create a small flower meadow. Depending on the success of the seeds I’ll add some more flower seedlings here. 

There are also some big concrete bricks in the herb garden, which I’ve used to plant garlic and onion bulbs. I’ll grow some green onions and garlic for drying. The onion/lettuce bed will be a bed for fresh consumption and this small herb patch will be used s herbs for cooking.

Now that most of the seeds were used and the beds have been cleaned, I can concentrate on preparing the big garden for the seedling planting. There are just 3 weeks left until the last frost date, and although it might seem like a lot of time, I’m actually not sure I’ll be able to have everything ready on time. We’re entering a rainy period, and the big garden can’t be accessed 24-48h after the rain. I’m actually counting on just one day in this whole week when I’ll be able to go to the big garden. There are still 8 big beds that need to be weeded, and I need to dig them at least once, the support for the tomatoes and cucumbers has to go up, and besides that, there’s still a bunch of work in the side garden that is waiting to be done. Steps should be done in the next couple of weeks and then the gravel comes to finish the look. I guess it will be one busy period.