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Dec 27, 2012

Winter harvest

 I and my wife are delighted with beautifully grown Chinese cabbages and gingers. We see the great harvest as our best Christmas present!

 As I mentioned in the previous blog, I tried to minimized usage of chemical things like pesticide and the beautiful cabbages show us my try is successful. All of my 5 Chinese cabbages have no damage by aphids and much fewer holes by young worms than in last year.
 It's my first try to growing gingers but it's easier than I thought. I just payed attention only to watering since gingers hate dryness.
 I planted only golf-ball sized seed ginger and it's amazing to see "multiplied gingers " from the small seed ginger. My wife will preserve sliced ginger in honey to add it to tea.
 I have to admit I failed to grow my daikon radishes due to severe attack by aphids. I installed insect screens but I did't realized big holes on them! When I found the holes, many aphids hibernate on leaves of my radishes. They sucked the radish extract and most of the leaves were dead and that could cause the poor harvest.

Christmas harvests:

・Chinese cabbage
・Ginger
・Daikon radishes


Dec 16, 2012

Winter sowing

 Some weather reports say this winter will be MUCH colder than the average of the last 5 years so I have to have some methods for expediting germination even in a cold weather.

 Today I sowed spinach and pak-choi. They can be sown through a year but some measures have to be installed for them in a cold winter. A vinyl tunnel is one of my favorite and effective ways, which is easy to set up.
 Setting up a vinyl tunnel is so easy that you don't need any instruction for it! We need just a rolled vinyl sheet, a set of 2 semi-sphere plastic poles and clothes-pegs.
 The vinyl tunnel can warm up the air inside effectively and I measured the temperature and found about 5゜C warmer than outside. In one of my tunnels I set up, spinach have germinated even in chilly days.

-- iPhone

My cabbages

 My 8 Chinese cabbages and 4 cabbages including a purple cabbage have grown with less damage by bugs thanks to insect screen, companion plants, and yellow buckets than in last year and they'll be harvested around Christmas.

 I found less damage in my Chinese cabbages ,which used to be an easy target for young worms and aphids. I believe the romaine lettuces, which were planted as companion plants, are effective to ward off young worm. The yellow buckets are also effective, too I believe. Aphids hibernate inside of Chinese cabbages which is comfortable for them to keep warm and they suck cabbage extract  there. That can cause poor growth. The yellow buckets can allure many aphids into the buckets and the insect screen physically shut them out.
 It's fortunate that there are less damage by bugs but I'm not satisfied with the growth of my cabbages. They have beautifully shaped hearts but the size are smaller than I expect. I don't think they can grow any more so I'll harvest them in a few days.


-- iPhoneから送信

Dec 10, 2012

The Fruits Hunters.

 It's very regrettable that I've been absent from blogging for the last one month and a half since I was so busy in my business. Now I can managed to have spare time to blog so I hope many blogging friends will visit my blog again.

 As the weather getting cold, around the end of November, my family visit my father in law living in Nara, the city famous as an ancient capital of Japan, for helping him with harvesting persimmon fruits and kiwi fruits. There are many persimmon trees in the backyard and kiwi trees in his garden. He can't harvest them since his right size is paralyzed due to a stroke. That's why we help him every year and we have another reason. My kids are excited with the Fruits Hunting.

 When we saw the persimmon trees, we were shocked with less fruits on the trees than in last year. You can see easily how less the fruits is. But my kids were so helpful that they cooperated with us and my sister in law. You know why? Because they worked for "the sweet fruits of labor".
 Persimmon fruits are located on high branches and twigs so a tool called "a long-handled lopper" (one of my blogging friends taught the English name.)  is so convenient that we can harvest persimmon fruits efficiently. Even my daughter can prune and catch the fruits on the ground as the photo shown below.
My kids cooperated in harvesting the fruits.
 The total amount of the persimmon fruits was less than 1/3 of last year's harvest. My father in law said there is some kind of cycle in the amount of fruits. We don't know what works on the cycle but temperature, weather, and precipitation might affect the cycle.
 We love sweet persimmon fruits and wild birds love them, too! They seem to be able to pick sweet ones instinctively!
 After harvesting them, we peeled and serve them with hot green tea. The tea's bitter taste go well with the sweet fruits.

--from iPad