Garden report

The garden takes a lot of my time. I am usually always behind schedule, but this year the weather was behind schedule so I was actually caught up. June is mostly spent weeding in preparation for the rainy season. Now Im doin a lot of hand watering... carrying watering cans 150 meters... and of course harvesting and storing.

This year has been the best zucchini harvest ever. Usually by July the zucchini plants have been destroyed by little orange bugs. I have tried everything to get rid of them, bar using chemicals, but nothing has worked. This year the cool weather has meant no orange bugs, so I pick about a kilo of succhini every day.

Breakfast is always a skillet of potatoes, zuccini, egg, topped with salsa. This year its store bought salsa.

Cucumbers are also very prolific. I dont usually plant them, but the missus nagged, so I put 3 plants in that have produced about 30 cucumbers so far. Because of the cool year the lettuce kept going until July, but now I have "liquid salad" for lunch,... chilled gazpacho.... cucumber, tomato, green pepper, red pepper, onion.... all from the garden. The olive oil is store bought.

For supper last night.... zucchini au gratin, with sweetcorn picked an hour before dinner. Apparently sweetcorn can handle being under a meter and a half of water. This weekend will have to pick the rest of the corn and start harvesting the edamame.

Beets is another crop that has done really well with the unseasonably cool year. Pickled beetroot is impossible to get here so thats how I use it.

Was a terrible lima bean crop this year, though green beans did well. Tomatoes are in full swing and the peppers have picked up, though eggplant is still lagging.

Bounty by the barrowload

There is something deeply satisfying and fulfilling bringing back barrowloads of food from the garden. I am led to believe that shopping is a source of fulfillment to some, but I don't believe that any feelings coming from shopping can even come close.

This year was the best ever sweet potatoe harvest I've had. Not just lots of them, but big ones.

Both sweet potatoes and taro grow easily. Just put em in the ground and wait!! My kind of gardening.

Busy, busy, busy...

Millet hung up to dry.

Been very busy this past month. I don't grow any rice, so I haven't needed to harvest that like everyone else round here. Have been receiving bags of really fresh rice from friends and neighbors though.

I've been busy dealing with the surplus of tomatoes, peppers etc, so been doing a lot of canning.

And now the matsuri season begins. Harvesting mostly done all the village shrines will be having their annual matsuri this month. Tomorrow, saturday, we have eight matsuris going on within a ten minute drive of our place.

Busy, busy, busy......

Garden views.

I was struck by the late afternoon sun shining through the leaves of the satoimo plants.

Called taro in English, they still have a month or more before we dig up them up.

The unused land around my riverside garden was taken over this year by a neighbor who planted sesame as a cash crop.

Called goma in Japanese, he is hoping to make a good income from it.

Scarcity and surplus.

Every year the garden is different. Some veggies grow better some years than others. It depends somewhat on timing, but more importantly on that enormous set of environmental factors that we call the weather.

This year has seen some unusual weather in this area. July was the wettest July in over 50 years. It was also the July with the least amount of sunshine.

The word is that many types of vegetables are going to be pricier this year. I expect to see lots of cheap Chinese veggies relabelled as expensive domestic produce.

Compared to our neighbors we have done well for pumpkins/squash this year. We will end up with more than 50 of them, and they store well through the winter. These are a cross between the Japanese kabucha and a butternut squash. The butternut is tastier ( to my palate) and the kabucha is bigger, so they are a nice balance. They make great soup, and of course pumpkin pie.

The other crop that finally came on recently were the tomatoes. I plant a lot of plants and let them run wild. A lot of fruit gets damaged by the rain, and the crows take some, but still we have enough to need to process them every few days. These are jars of home-made ketchup. Incomparable to factory-made stuff. We also can a lot of pizza sauce.

The strange weather was good for one crop this year... zuccini! usuall the zuccini plants are eaten and killed by a little orange bug by the end of June, but this year the bugs didn't arrive until just recently, so I had my best ever zuccini harvest. Now if only the damn eggplants will fruit I will be able to can gallons of ratatoille.

Defending the garden

Before moving to the Japanese countryside, my experiences of gardening were all in the desert, so learning to grow food in Japan has been a long learning period. One of the main differences between gardening in Arizona and in Japan is that there are few animals and bugs in the desert. Here in Japan it is a constant battle defending the garden against critters. I don't mind sharing,.... I expect to lose a certain percentage of a crop to other critters, but there are some greedy critters.

Caterpillars of the white butterfly (called Cabbage White in England) will consume all the brassica family, cabbages, cauliflower, brussel sprouts etc. Most Japanese gardeners will use pesticide, but for me growing brassicas under net works perfectly.

The only other bug that is a real problem is a little orange bugger that feeds on the leaves of squash plants. Pumpkins will usually recover, but every year my Zuccini plants have been completely eaten and killed by the orange bugs. Every version of organic pesticide I've tried has been completely useless, so I now grow zuccini under net also.

My village garden now has a metal fence around it. The village put it up recently around the rice paddies, and my garden is in the same piece of land as the paddies. The purpose of the fence is to keep wild boars out. Not sure how much damage boars do to rice paddies, but if they get into a garden they will dig up and eat all the sweet potatoes and as many pumpkins they can find.

Down in the riverside garden the ripening corn needs a net to protect it from the crows. They will sometimes eat tomatoes, peas, and other veggies, but they really love newly ripened corn.
The blue fence is to protect against a creature I never knew existed in Japan, the Coypu, or Nutria, sometimes known as Beaver Rat. It is originally from South America, but has spread around the world as people raised them for their fur. It likes to eat cornstalk.

In the bamboo grove next to the garden is a foxes den, and people say the foxes damage the gaedens when they dig around for food, but they have never given me any trouble.

Both gardens have moles, but again they have not caused enough trouble to worry about.

Both my gardens are too far from the edge of the forest for the monkeys to raid, but my neighbors are constantly losing food to them. They particularly like daikons and onions.

Umeboshi,... an acquired taste

Umeboshi, pickled plums, can most often be found in bentos, where a single plum is placed in the center of the rice to look like the Japanese flag.

After picking when ripe in June, the plums are mixed with salt and shiso leaves (to give the color) and packed with a weight on top.

Later the pickled plums are sun dried, like these of my neighbors in the photo above.

Actually Ume are not true plums, being closer to apricots.

Not fond of umeboshi myself, though umeboshi-flavored candy is OK.

Here we go round the mulberry bush..

Mulberry trees used to be a lot more common in the old days, and most farmhouses had some planted around them. There are a few of them near my riverside garden, and now the fruits are turning black and ripe and so with stained fingers we gather as much as we can. Mostly we make jam with them, or sauce that we add to yoghurt.

Called kuwa in Japan, they were of course not raised for the fruit but because their leaves are the only food eaten by silkworms, kaiko. Almost no-one raises silkworms anymore, but in the living room of our farmhouse there are still attachments around the edge of the ceiling that supported the racks that held the leaves and silkworms (which are actually caterpillars)

A few years ago the lady who sold us our house gave us some kaiko and leaves for us to watch. She no longer raised them as a crop, just as a hobby.

The wasteland next to our house and roadsides have also been giving us a good crop of noichigo, which the Japanese refer to as wild strawberries, but seem to be more like rasberries. They are also real good in Yoghurt, and freeze well.

The rainy season is officially started, but to be honest it is often hard to tell the difference between the rainy season and any other time of the year. As usual I am late with all the jobs that need doing in the garden, but have managed to get a good layer of mulch down so I should have less weeding to do later. As well as all the planting and planting out I've started to pick the onions and potatoes and finished picking all the Lima Beans

The gardens in May

A couple of video, with commentary, on what's going on in my veggie gardens right now.



The first is from the riverside garden, and the second from the village garden

April harvest. Takenoko, bamboo shoots

It's takenoko season!! The shoots of new Giant Bamboo are now poking up from the ground and free food is to be had for the taking.

The best time to harvest is early morning following a rain. Look for shoots no more than a few centimetres in height. Any bigger and they are too tough.

Dig out the soil around the shoots down about 10 cms and cut. Most Japanese use a Japanese pick which has a sharp blade on one side, but I used a small hatchet with no trouble. The above photo is about 20 minutes worth of work.

Strip away the outer layers and trim the base and tips.

Preparation should be done as soon after harvesting as possible as the shoots quickly become tough and bitter. Before cooking the shoots need some preparation. Most people boil the shoots in water with nuka (rice bran) and a few red peppers, though if you can't easily get rice bran then boiling the shoots and changing the water twice works as well to remove the acridity.

Once drained and washed the shoot can now be cooked. Takenoko can be made into pickles, takenoko gohan, rice cooked with bamboo shoots, is also popular, but a good way is to boil the shoots in a mixture of water, soy sauce, sake, and fish stock.

My favorite way to use them is in Thai curry,.... a little to spicy for most japanese. Tonights supper.... made with eggplants, tomatoes and peppers out of the freezer from last years garden. There is no doubt that the tastiest food is free food!!!

The gardens

There is not a lot to harvest this month, a little spinach, the last of the cabbage, spring onions, and a sack of carrots. Mostly this month is planting and weeding!

The top photo is our village garden. It was constructed with landfill, and was very poor quality. For six years we have been taking out rocks, and now stones, and adding chickenshit, ash from the woodstove, compost, and ricehusks, and therefore the quality of the soil has improved. In the photo you can see potatoes, green onions, carrots, regular onions, a few peas, garlic, lima beans, and some new cabbage and cauliflower.

About half a kilometer away is our riverside garden. It's actually our neighbors land but she is too old to use it so lets us have it rather than see it go to waste. The soil is soft and rich. a couple of years ago the river flooded and took out everything except some sweet potatoes, but in return left a layer of fresh, fertile silt. At the moment it is planted with potatoes, lima beans, onions, garlic, and very young carrots.

March Harvest

Red cabbage, or in Japanese, Murasikikabestu, which means purple cabbage, never seems to grow as big as regular green cabbage, but I always grow a couple just so I can make pickled red cabbage.

Mizuna, commonly known as Japanese Mustard in English, has been grown in Japan since ancient times, but probably came from China originally. Good in salads or as greens.

Brussel Sprouts, Mekabetsu in Japanese, are not common. Like most people it seems, I hated brussel sprouts as a kid, but now have come to love them. I just steam a bunch, lightly salt them, then munch on them all day as a snack!

Regular cabbage, daikon, green onions, and carrots are still in abundance.

As usual I am behind schedule in the gardens. I haven't even finished planted potatoes yet and need to do some weeding and mulching before planting....

February harvest

This should really be "daily harvest", as we get eggs every day. We currently have 15 chickens, from a high of about 25 a few months ago. A few of the older ones passed away from old age, and a few made their way into my favorite recipe Noisy Chicken Soup. All you need for that is a noisy chicken and a cleaver.

We no longer have any cocks. The noise was simply too much, and chickens can be gotten for free anytime, so we dont need to produce our own chicks. I kept this one cock around for a while though simply because he was so ugly.

The eggs are free as we feed the chickens kitchen & table scraps, weeds they really like, we get sacks of last years rice at harvest time, and a good part of their diet is nuka (rice bran and germ). Sacks of nuka are free as the Japanese dont eat it, preferring the tasteless, barely nutritional white rice. We do feed the chickens a little store-bought mash, and this we buy from the money we get from selling our surplus eggs. We have a lot of people who will take all the eggs we can sell as they are said to be really tasty (must be the bran)

Of course the other product is chicken shit for the garden. Store-bought chicken shit is really cheap, but it comes from factory farms and is loaded with antibiotics and other drugs that end up in the soil.

Picking cabbages, lettuces, spinach, spring onions and carrots right now, and gearing up for planting as spring seems to be here....

January harvest.

Kabetsu, known as cabbage in English, grow most of the year. It took me a few years to realize that without using chemical pesticides they all got eaten by butterfly caterpillars. Now I grow them under net :). Grated cabbage is included with many Japanese meals and in this form its called cabbage salad. Considering how common a vegetable it is in gardens and on plates I was really surprised to learn that it was not introduced into Japan until quite recently, during the Meiji Period.

Negi, known variously as green onion, spring onion, scallion, etc in English. They grow all year round. They are used extensively in Japanese cooking, either by cutting off the green tops, or by pulling the whole onion. They originally came from Siberia and were introduced about 1,500 years ago.

Still harvesting lots of lettuce, spinach, and carrots.

Finally got round to shelling the black beans. They've been hanging to dry for a couple of months. They are edamame allowed to mature completely. The plants grew plenty big enough, but most of the pods were empty. Need to do more research (i.e. talk to the neighbors) as I need to grow a bigger crop of legumes.

C.W. Nicol has a nice article in the Japan Times this week on country living in Japan. Japan has been plagued with food scandals recently, mostly caused by Japanese business ethics (or lack thereof), and with other factors contributing, the price of food is getting higher. I'm quite jealous of his parsnips and swedes! I have grown them here, but not very successfully. Maybe the climate and weather up in Nagano is more condusive to them.

December harvest

Coming from northern Europe, I still am delighted by the fact that gardens in Japan keep producing all year long and the ground doesn't become frozen solid like concrete! Started picking Komatsuna, which is often called Japanese Mustard Spinach in English, but is actually not related to either mustard or spinach. It is believed that the name derives from a Kamatsu, once a village near Edo.

Cauliflower, karifurawa in Japanese, is not wildly popular in Japan. It was introduced from Europe in the Meiji Period. You don't often see it in supermarkets, so I was surprised one day while walking a backroad to come across a farm building filled with cauliflowers being boxed. I asked the farmer "how much" and he just gave me one. The kindness of strangers is something I've experienced often in all the countries I've lived in, but in Japan it tends to be in the countryside. On the same walk a car stopped, the driver handed me a big ripe persimmon, then drove off.

Yoko tried planting some ginger this year, but only half of it came up. Shoga in Japanese, it was introduced from China about 1,800 years ago. It is used a lot in Japanese cooking, but my favorite way of eating it is the thin slices that accompany sushi.

November Harvest 3

Chinese cabbage, or Pak Choi, is known as hakusai in Japanese, and is common in most gardens. It has been grown in it's native China for thousands of years but did not come to Japan until the early part of the 20th Century when it was brought by soldiers returning from the Russo-Japanese war.

Had a really good crop of kiwi fruits this year. About 20 years ago kiwis became very popular in Japan, and everyone started planting them. This past year I cut back the vines twice, once in winter and a second time in the summer after flowering, and I think that is why we got so much fruit.

Started picking the fall crop of beets. I like the greens, but mostly I grow them to make pickled beetroot, a food that is impossible to buy in Japan.

November is a busy time in the garden,... lots to harvest, and time to bed the garden down for winter. December , January, and February is time to hunker down next to the woodstove and hibernate!
Picked the Fall potatoes.... first time I tried a second crop, and to be able to eat new potatoes is a delight indeed. Picked the last of the tomatoes and peppers.... great to be able to have fresh salad at the end of November!

November harvest 2

Had a great taro harvest this year. I had never eaten taro until I came to Japan, and they have become one of my favorite vegetables, not least because they grow easily with little upkeep, and produce a lot of food. We probably picked 50 kilos this year. Taro is harvested in November, which is just about when the store of spring potatoes is running low, and taro can be substituted for potatoes in just about any recipe. Originally from India, Taro, known as satoimo in Japanese was cultivated by the Jomon people before the Japanese arrived.

Despite the raid earlier raid by the mountain whales, we still managed to get a crop of sweet potatoes. Called satsumaimo in Japanese, they were introduced from China and were very popular as they are very hardy and will produce even if floods or drought or poor soil produced famine. In my walks around the countryside I often see stone memorials to whichever individual introduced them into the local area.

November Harvest Persimmons

November Harvest Persimmons

Been picking what's left of the persimmons. The monkeys took most of them. I don't begrudge them their food,... so much of the Japanese forests have been replaced with sterile tree farms that have no food for any species.

The rounder shaped species of persimmon is called amagaki in Japanese, and these can be eaten straight from the tree. I'll peel them and slice them then dehydrate them for later use.

The more oval-shaped persimmons are called shibugaki, and they are too astringent to eat without first hanging and drying. Then they become similar to dried figs. Strings of them hanging are a common sight in the countryside now.

Giant Radish

The Daikon are now big enough to start being harvested. Daikon literally means "big root", but it is commonly called Giant Radish in English. Originally introduced from Asia, I remember seeing it in Asian shops in England when I was a kid where it was known as Mooli.

When I first came to Japan I really didn't like daikon, but once we moved to the country, and received daikon from neighbors on an almost daily basis, I came to love it. It grows easily, and quickly, and is used in an astonishing number of dishes in Japan.

Dakon hanging in the sun to dry is a common site now anywhere in the countryside. After a couple of weeks they are then turned into takuan, the yellow daikon pickle in just about every bento.

The young leaves are used as greens, and the older leaves turned into another kind of pickle.

Raw, grated daikon is the bed on which sashimi is served, and is also added to the dipping sauce for tempura. There are also a variety of salads using daikon.

Big chunks of daikon are found in Nabe and Oden, the 2 types of winter stew.

Our surplus we peel, slice, and then dry until rock-hard. Stored in airtight containers it stays usable for years. My neighbor dries them, then reconstitutes and cooks them in a mix of sake and soy sauce, and then dries them again.