Saturday, June 4, 2011

State of the garden

Garden

garden1
This is my main garden, about 100 meters from the house. We pay 1,000yen a month for it including a parking space. It was constructed when all the rice paddies of the village were relaid and was made of fill brought from elsewhere. After 8 years of taking out stones and rocks and adding organic material the soil is starting to become better. Its been a cool, wet spring, good for winter and spring crops but not so good for summer crops.
garden2
Under the net is zuccini. A little red bug that attacks and damages pumpkins completely destroys zuccini, and I have found no solution other than net. usually we are eating zuccini by now, but not this year. The poles are supporting cucumbers. The steel cages are supporting tomatoes. In the foreground are edamame and some very small eggplant plants.
garden3
In the background are potatoes. Lots of potatoes. They are ridiculously expensive to buy in Japan and I like to eat them everyday. Then a couple of mounds of kabucha, Japanese pumpkins followed by sweetcorn. In my second garden down on the river bank I will plant blue corn and butternut squash. In the foreground are recently planted sweet potatoes.
garden4JPG
Carrots are doing great, as usual. The poles have green beans. I usually plant bush-type but I thought pole type will give a bigger yield so I tried then this year. On the left young eggplants and green peppers.
garden5
In the background edible-pod peas. Did great this year because of the extended cool period. Picked more than a kilo. In front of them some Lima beans, lettuce, also producing well because of the cool. Spring onions, and some more pumpkins.
garden6
More Lima beans. Producing well, though because of the cool they are not as big as usual. Also a damn mole has killed off about one third of the plants bu tunnelling through the shallow roots. The mole has also eaten a bunch of onions and killed off some potatoes. It will die. Behind the beans are regular onions, garlic, more spring onions, and more potatoes. Down in the river garden I have more tomatoes, green peas, more lettuce, more potatoes, and cabbages. Up around the house more tomatoes and more pumpkins.

Posted by Ojisanjake at 9:34 PM
Labels: ,

4 comments:

  1. jim gardenerJune 5, 2011 at 11:00 AM

    Appears to have good potential. The edible-pod peas are called snow or sugar peas here. If you find a sure-kill method for the moles please let me know. I have failed to control them during 22 years with this garden in Memphis .

    ReplyDelete
  2. bastishJune 5, 2011 at 11:23 AM

    Looks great, but I hate seeing other people's great gardens. We have yet to even really start working on ours, other than a little tilling and what not - though we got one rice field planted yesterday, and some green maure crops planted in the other fields we are letting rest. Still a long way to go for already middle of June. I really should not be spending time on reading my blog feeds... Gotta go.

    Luckily we don't pay anything for our fields (other than a bottle of sake). In fact, we could probably charge people to let us be caretakers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. wesJune 5, 2011 at 4:03 PM

    let's hope the riverside gardens don't get flooded this year, eh. If it's any indication, it could be a long and wet June

    ReplyDelete
  4. illaheeJune 5, 2011 at 5:36 PM

    my cats always took care of moles for us, but i'm not sure you can train them to guard your garden!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)