ページ

Nov 17, 2014

My new gardening blog on Tsu.

https://www.tsu.co/Takaeko

I created a new blog on Tsu.
Please make your Tsu accout to visit there if you like.

Oct 12, 2013

Switching to a new Facebook page.

Dear my blogging friends,

I've crated my new Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/takaeko.vege) on my gardening activities, which is named "Small vege garden in a suburb", same with that of the current blog and Due to the opening my new page, the current blog will not be updated.
I hope many friends from the world visit my new Facebook page!

Best regards,
Takaeko

Sep 8, 2013

Bad result of test-digging a carrot

 I've realized through growing vegetables that my efforts and labors in my gardening activities don't always deserve a great harvest.

 A carrot, which I failed to grow in the past three years, seems to be still one of my most difficult vegetables for me.


 Today I pulled out one of my carrots for a test and I saw it unusual at a glance.


 Some root-knots are seen on the carrot and it shows it seems to have a root-knot disease, of which I'm afraid most. The disease makes a look and taste of the infected vegetables bad.

 I carried out some prevention measures like planting marigolds which are effective to ward off
Root-knot nematodes.
 I still have about 15 carrots in my garden but some of them could be infected with the disease. I just hope the damage would be minimized. :(

Jul 16, 2013

The special bed for carrots

 I've experienced many failures in growing carrots like poor germination and growth troubles.
What I've learned from those failures is I should create 2 things.

1 A soil bed with no pebbles and soil mass
2 An elevated soil bed for avoiding carrots from water soaking

 Now it's in the middle of a hot summer with record-high temperature but I decided to create an special soil bed spending 2 hours! The height of the pad is about 30 cm (15 inches) so it's high enough to avoid flood.

 A measure against bugs is also important to grow carrots. Young worms of a swallowtail butterfly is a big enemy for carrots so I covered the bed with a insect screen to ward off the butterfly.

 Watering is another issue for gardeners growing carrots in this season in Japan. Carrot's germination requires watering everyday to keep the bed wet. So I used rice bran as you can see it on the photos shown below. Of course, I have to water them everyday through the hot summer,,,,.








Jul 9, 2013

Jun 18, 2013

How really effective?

 I mentioned about the new organic methods for warding off aphids in my previous blog and it took about a month since the installation. Today I visited my garden to see how the methods were effective.

 I would like you to compare those 2 photos, the left one showing a tomato tree of other gardener, who has his garden next to mine, with no aluminium foil and silver mulching sheets and the right one my tomato tree with the organic anti-aphid methods.

 I was able to see clear difference between the trees in my garden and I hope you could see that through these photos,,,. The left tree is Tainted with more aphids while my tree have less aphid.

 I make sure that my organic anti-aphid methods are almost effective through the comparison. I'm very happy to ward off aphids but I have a new problem,,,,,,less rain in this rainy season!

Jun 14, 2013

This week's harvest

 I'm very happy to see the bumper harvest of summer vegetables but I and my wife are wondering how we can consume them? 
 Anyway, I sliced a cucumber harvested just now and enjoyed the sliced cucumbers with mayonnaise.