Today's harvest

-- from iPod touch

Summer bugs in my garden

Black cicada : Cryptotympana facialis

Common skimmer : Orthetrum albistylum speciosum

-- from iPad

Weeding in a hot summer day

 What does being absent from working in my garden in summer mean? I've got the answer to the question today. While my family members were travelling to Hiruzen Highlands and Kaike Hot springs, tons of weeds have occupied my garden. I'm astonished and overwhelmed with this fact and it didn't take long to realize that I had to start weeding immediately.

 Especially, my okras were threatened by tall and persistent weeds as if the weeds were sucking up all nutrition in soil.



 The second severest place was walking paths between gardening ridges. The paths is lower than other ridges so rain water could stay longer with less vaporization even in hot summer days. That can make weeds live longer, I think.


 I weeded for about 1 and a half hours and collected a pile of weeds shown below.


 It's important for gardeners to imagine what would happen after sweaty and hard chores when we face situations where those kinds of chores like weeding in a hot day have to be done. Clean garden after weeding can alleviate my fatigue.


-- from iPad

After a powerful typhoon passing

A powerful typhoon has passed over our place through last night and gone to the Pacific Ocean. Many gardeners seemed to get prepared for protection of their vegetables but the force of nature always goes beyond our imagination.

Some of my vegetables like black chilies, green peppers were affected by strong wind of the typhoon. You can see some trees of them were bent despite plastic poles supporting them! But fortunately they were not broken and were still alive and healthy so I could make them upright again.








Those are tomato trees of other gardeners in our gardening plots. You can see easily how strong wind was when you see the trees have "fallen down" to the ground.



-- from iPod touch

The green, red and purple

It's very enjoyable for us to grow summer vegetables because we can see colorful fruits as I found green peppers, red ripen tomatoes, purple fleshy eggplants.

My green pepper are so healthy that I've already harvested many of them.





I have payed more attention to my tomatoes this year to make them more delicious. I watered them too much last summer so their taste was weak and watery. I don't water them too much this summer but give them more fertilizer since the fruits started getting ripen. The method seems to work out and my tomatoes this summer are strong-tasting than last ones.





My cucumbers and egg plants are so productive that I have to harvest every day! I don't wanna make them too bigger since too big fruits are not tasty and crispy.









-- from iPod touch

The red and the black

As I mentioned in my previous blog, my black chili can turned green when grilled. Heat might work for changing the color though I don't know well the mechanism. Today I found one of my black chilies has turned red! The heat waves in a hot summer changed the color? I don't think so.

A black chili can turn red when matured. That's a well-known mechanism according to my wife's aunt, my gardening teacher.

I will set aside some of the fruits for seeding in the next season so it's good for me to see ripen "red black chilies" at this stage.

I wonder if the ripen red one is as hot and spicy as normal normal red chilies. Well, I'll try to taste them in the near future,,,.







-- from iPod touch

Harvesting my black chilis

 Since this year's rainy season ended, my vegetables have been growing and getting mature faster and my black chili is no exception. I wondered if they would have been grown well in my garden since they are so rare kinds of chili produced in the limited areas in Nara prefecture that they would be adopted to the soil and environment of my garden.

 Now I'm very happy that you can see many fruits of my black chili in the photos shown below!
Today I harvested a bunch of my black chili successfully and they still have many flowers and buds so I can expect that they can be productive in a few mouths.

Today's harvest

I call it "Black chili".
But it's not truly black but deep purple.

Today's harvest.
20 black chilies
2 egg plants
1 cucumber

 After harvesting them, I cooked the black chilies with sliced sausages and green beans.



 It's very interesting that my black chilies have turned "green" as they were grilled! I don't know what the mechanism. The taste of black chili is not hot but is like that of okras. Anyway, yummy!


-- from iPad

My tomatoes are getting ripe and red.

My mini-tomatoes and middle-sized tomatoes (Momotaro) are getting ripe and some of them has turn red.


I wish I could use more fermented cow manure or composts for my tomatoes because I know they can make them more delicious. But I can't do ti since my gardening plot is located in the mid of residential areas and some of people had complained about the smell of them.


I and my family will harvest some tomatoes in a few days. Especially my daughter is looking forward to eating them. How about the taste?

-- from iPad

Recipe collection vol.4 ( Fried chickens with minced green perilla )

 Some of green perilla (green shiso/紫蘇） have grown so I tried to use some leaves of them for a dish for today's dinner. Perilla's leaves may remind you of some recipes like sushi rolled in the leaves or condiment for salad dressings because of its good aroma.

 I also wanted to make the use of the aroma so I tried to mix minced perilla's leaves with seasoning for fried chicken.




Fried chickens with minced perilla's leaves (for 4 people)
Ingredients:
・ Chopped chicken (300grams/11oz)・ 6 green perilla's leaves・ A spoon of salt, say-sauce, sake or white-wine・ Grated garlic and ginger

Method
1 Mince all perilla's leaves.

2 Pour say-sauce, salt, sake, grated garlic and ginger and minced perilla's leaves into chopped chickens and mix them up.


3 Coat the chopped chickens with fry butter and fry them deeply.



4 Serve them on a plate and let's dig in!



-- from iPod touch