Today's dinner

Left: steamed veges and pork with "Ponzu-sauce".

    Right: "Gomadare", a sesame sauce.

 Today's dinner is a steamed sliced pork meets and varieties of sliced vegetables including egg-plants which harvested in my garden.

 The dish is my family's favorite and my kids always eat it up.

 The recipe is so easy than everyone can try and enjoy the dish.

 1. Slice port meat and vegetables. 

 2. Put vegetables on a pan.

 3. Cover vegetables with thinly-sliced pork.

 4. Sprinkle salt and paper on the pork.

 5. Put a top on the pan and steam it for about 15min. You don't need water in it. It comes out of vegetables.

 6. Completion

 Our family eat it with dipping it with "Ponzu", which is a sauce containing soy sauce and vinegar or citrus juice.

Bug's attack goes on.

Bugs are always nuisance for all gardeners since we can not ward them off even if all conceivable preventions have been carried out.

I found some Chinese cabbage's leaves have some holes so I turned up leaves and found 5 horn-warms and one of them was 2inches.
I'm very lucky to find the bugs before they've eat out much amount of leaves.

-- from iPad

Radishes getting ripe

In Osaka we have 4 straight rainy days this week. I'm fed up with my clothes getting mud in working in my garden through the rainy days.

Although a half of radish seeds have not germinate the other half of them are getting ripe with their red roots on the surface on soil.

I'm not satisfied with this unsuccessful germination and I'm seeking a cause of that. Maybe I guess too much fertilizer on soil delay or interfere the germination. If you have some ideas and experiences of unsuccessful germination, please tell me on my blog.

Red roots of radishes can make my garden much colorful even if they are very small since all current vegetables in my garden are green.

-- from iPad

Cosmos flowers blooming

Some cosmos flowers are blooming in my garden. Although the temperature in Osaka is getting cold, these flowers give me some warmth and comfort.

-- from iPad

Growth in cold rain.

In a past few days weather in Japan has dramatically changed. The temperature has dropped suddenly from 22c high to 14c high.
Some typhoons and autumn rain systems brought that "winter-like autumn".

While germination of komatunas seems to delay my winter vegetables like Chinese cabbages (Hakusai) and cabbages might welcome the cold weather. They need cold temperature to roll their leaves inside for protecting themselves from coldness, which is an important process of growth.

Seeding Komatuna

It's still so warm in Osaka even in the middle of October that I can seed Komatsuna in a part of the ridge where egg-plant trees were.

I expanded insect screen to maximum length to cover the part of the komatuna since cabbage butterflies are still seen and I have to prevent them from laying eggs on the leaves.


-- from iPad

Cleaning up egg-plants.

My most productive vegetable, egg-plant, have been cleaned up at last due to aging and bug' attack.

I harvested the last egg-plants before pulling up the trees. In the past 3 months the trees gave a lot of egg plants and my wife cooked various kinds of dishes.

I'll miss egg-plants till next summer.

After claening up the trees I added ash and fertilizer for next vegetables.


--from iPad

Test from iPad

Now I'm writing this comment from iPad.



-- iPadから送信

New gadget's arrived!!

 Today's IT gadgets are so smart and cool that they can allure me to go to local electric stores even if I can not afford to buy them.

 One of the most attractive gadgets to me is "iPad" and I've wanted to use it for updating my blog, educating my kids with some applications.

 Today I listened to the temptation of "a sweet Apple". I bought an iPad at last!

 I feel very comfortable when I browse my favorite blogs since the iPad can be booted up in a few seconds, compared with my 5 year-old pc in about 3 mins.

Sweet corns end

 My sweet corns were cleaned up out of a farming ridge after we had harvested them successfully. The corns were my second challenge after bugs had made the first corns dead. My family are very satisfied with the harvest since the corns were very sweet.

 I'm thinking what I should plant after sweet corns and onions and leeks are among my list.

Cooking okras

Boiled sliced okras which dressed with black sesame paste.

It's one of my favorite dishes.

Today's harvest

3 egg-plants and 4 okras

3 sweet corns

My son biting on a boiled corn.

Enjoying boiled sweet corns!

Boiling sweet corns for 15mins in salt water. 

Small amount of salt can make the taste sweeter.

I'm astonished how shiny and beautiful boiled corns are...look like precious stones.

Today's harvest

Today's harvest list


1.....2 sweet corns

2.....2 egg plants

3.....4 okras

My first successful harvest of sweet corns.

  I harvested my sweet corns at last today and I'm very excited when I saw beautifully ripe corns!!!
 As you can see the miserable result of my first sweet corns on "Bug's attack against my sweet-corn" in my blog , I decided to start my second try and I made the use of what I'd learned from the first try.


 The most important thing which led to the success is controlling pests. I checked ears and leaves of corns every day, found and picked up bugs and killed all of them. Yes, I just carried out "F.P.K method" more throughly.Actually much less number of bugs had been found.Plus I used small amount of pesticide.I didn't know how many bugs in ears of corns and I had to use it to make sure the health of corns.


 The second point is thinning out extra corn ears to secure nutrition for most prospective corns. Usually a sweet corn tree has 2 or 3 ears but I cut smaller ones and left a biggest one. That's why much bigger and riper corns have been grown.

Growing Chinese cabbages (Hakusai / 白菜)

 It took 2 weeks since we planted Chinese cabbages and set up insect screens for them.

 I'm very happy to see their healthy growth today and no bug's attack on the leaves till now.

 In autumn young worms of cabbage butterfly eat a lot of leaves for surviving winter in pupa. But the insect screens can ward off butterflies and prevent them from laying eggs on leaves.

 The effective screens can give us a hope for a great harvest in the near future.

Seeding radishes.

 After the end of summer vegetables I have small spare space in my garden so I seeded radishes in a corner of a ridge.

 I drew 5 lines on the ridge and seeded them on the lines in order to make thinning them out ease.

 In Japan a radish is called "二十日大根 (Hatsuka-Daikon) which means that a radish (Daikon in Japanese) can harvested in only 20 days (20 days is "Hatsuka" in Japanese)  after seeding them.

Adding rice bran into soil.

 I can find various kinds of fertilizer such as chemical fertilizer, animal manure, compost,,,and you name it.

 Rice bran is one of my favorite and organic fertilizer which my wife's aunt, who is a rice and vegetable farmer and our teacher in farming, recommend us to use.

 I wanted rice bran but couldn't find where I could get it.
 But at last I've found a local rice mill near my house and the mill shared bran for cheap price.

 I added 2 packs of rice bran into soil bed and mixed it well with soil.

 Rice bran will ferment in soil and generate heat so we should not seed soon after adding bran.

White radishes germinated

 I found white radishes germinated.

 They were seeded on the transplanted soil ( refer to "Buying soil" on my blog) and 2 Chinese cabbages were also plated there.

 I've not found any remarkable result yet from "transported soil experiment" but I'm very happy to see sprouts came out much sooner than I thought.

Buying soil.

 I've mentioned soil in my garden is less nutritious and have been trying soil improvement in some ways like adding fertilizer.

 A few days ago I was hinted by a blogger saying "Why don't you buy soil?. Well, I'm convinced that that idea could be in my option since I'm not familiar with soil nutritions. The idea would be "a short-cut".

 Changing a whole of soil into new one is quite difficult for me and I'm not sure the idea would really work out. So I decided to test the idea with purchasing some packs of soil and transplanting it into small part of a ridge. 

 I went to a home-depo near my house, found some packs of "soil", which are produced by a famous seed & plant supplier and bought 4 packs of it for about 5 dollars per pack.

 I dug a 10inch and 10foot trench and transplanted the soil into the trench.

 The test which I'll do is planting young plants of the same kind of Chinese cabbage which had planted on another ridge.

 If difference in how they glow is found, I could make sure that idea works out and can be quick method for beginners.

Today's harvest

Today's harvest

1.....2 egg plants

2.....3 okras

3.....1 deformed cucumber

My cucumber is getting less productive due to cool temperature, which means it could end in a few days.

Persisting bugs in sweet corns.

 Even after I did "F.P.K method" and used pesticide, I found 3 larvas (young worms of European corn-borer) in my sweet corn ears.

 Well I know bugs are persisting to survive but I can not tolerate them.What I keep doing for a while is monitoring leaves, fruits, and even roots of my vegetables where bugs can habit, hide and survive and carrying out "F.P.K".

 I realized I should be so persisting that I can ward them off to protect my vegetables.