This has been a very weird beginning of the year. After a very cold and dry February and the beginning of March, the rest of the month has been unusually dry with full sun. There hasn’t been a single rain day in 30 days, and the garden is starting to look like it does in August. 

I honestly can’t remember a single year in 20 years when the soil looked like clay sand before. I’m used to very wet soil in spring, or even having very dense soil due to large amounts of snow, but I’ve never seen the soil so sandy before.

This is why I haven’t sown any of the March vegetables yet. Still, the forecast said that the last day of March would finally bring a weather change, so on March 30th, I decided to make the paths and sow carrots and parsley. 

Although it was a very hot and sunny day, with temperatures around 23°C(73°F) in shade, I actually managed to make all the paths and dig both beds in just an hour. Like I said before, the soil is like sand, and it’s very easy to dig. The only problem I had was that the soil was slipping back to the rows, but I managed to sow quickly. 

This year I didn’t buy any new carrot and parsley seeds. Last year I bought big packages because I wanted to sow twice, but since the summer was extremely dry, I gave up on that idea and was left with lots of extra seeds. I’ve sown Ljubljana’s yellow, Nantes, Napoli, and Tabor yellow carrots and Halblange parsley. I’ve also sown a couple of rows of parsnip, just to be on the safe side if the parsley doesn’t grow. Lately, years have been bad for parsley, and many times I don’t have any parsley in my garden. This isn’t happening just in my garden, parsley shortage was present in most gardens in Croatia. Even in stores, carrots are sold everywhere, but parsley is sold rarely, and it’s very expensive. 

Hopefully, the rain amount will be enough to water well the garden. It will be very troubling if I’ll have to water the garden so early in the year.

The late spring temperatures haven’t only dried the soil, but also woke up most of the trees and shrubs. This is actually a very bad thing. The last frost date in Croatia is May 15th, and that’s still 45 days away.  It’s almost impossible we won’t have any frost mornings in these 45 days. If we get frost mornings, of course, this means all of the flowers will freeze and there won’t be any fruits this year. Luckily apples, quinces, raspberries, and blackberries are still far away from flowering, but plums, cherries, currants, and sour cherries are already blossoming. 

I guess the first test will come soon with the next weather change. We’ll see if the morning temperatures will stay high enough for the flowers to survive.