Feb 18, 20232 min read

Early Prep for Spring

Here in northern Albania it's always a bit of a mood during February. This year the mood is blue skies and sunny days but super chilly nights and frosty mornings. Last year was cold, gloomy, and rainy. So we've taken advantage of the warm days and started the prep for garden a few weeks ahead of schedule. We harvested the remaining broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower then removed last years plants, support sticks, irrigation lines and the black plastic.

We have spring garlic and onions thriving plus we have added a third row of 9 kg of onions. We are prepping the next row for potatoes.

Art has extended our annual bed to transplant our blueberry and aronia bushes from the vineyard to the garden. Strategically to protect them from our chickens and we have 50 new vines to plant. Replacing the blueberry row with forty vines and planting the other ten on the far end of the orchard that will introduce a new pink grape to our four varieties.

We have several plants thriving in the annual beds including lavender, mountain tea, a small bay leaf tree, rosemary, hithra (nettle), strawberries, mint, spearmint, and transplanted more chamomile. We are introducing black tea this year and maybe chickpeas again.

We've also been tracking to new blooms in the garden. The asian persimmons have tiny fruits, the bright yellow cornelius cherry (thana) blossoms and the bulbs of the green plum trees. Spring is Art's favorite season here and our mornings will soon be busy inspecting each new flower on all of our trees.

Art cleaned up thorny weeds in the orchard. We have inspected the trees and will do some trimming before they blossom.

We've taken advantage of the nicer weather with a bike ride to the lake and a hike up the hill. Both add variety to our day to day routines and the views are equally as stunning.