The Hot Stuff

 Ahhhh,,,,just hot, very hot and scorchingly hot! I had to cultivate my planting ridges and to add organic fertilizer and to set up "a Hot Stuff" for autumn and winter vegetables like cabbages. I'll tell you the hot stuff later but anyway, I had to harvest my eggplants and pull the trees out for securing space for next vegetables.

 I was a little hesitated to pull them out since more and beautiful eggplants had seen recently and I assumed that it would be worth of growing them but I had to be dare to throw them away for my most favorite vegetable, a Chinese cabbage.

 Cultivating the ridges and mixing the soil, fertilizer, oil cakes and leaf mold in that hot day was torturous. Many people were killed with heat stroke in this summer in Japan while they were working outside like gardens, and construction sites. I drank water so often for avoiding heat stroke and could managed to end the cultivation.

 And here is "my Hot Stuff ", transparent multi-sheets. It's my first try but I learned the method from some gardening magazine. I know many gardeners suffer bugs like caterpillars, young worms of moths which can eat up our vegetables. The method is reportedly so effective to kill them. The temperature of the soil covered with the sheets can be too hot for those bugs to survive. It's more effective to cover the soil for about 1 month in the hot summer, not only for killing bugs but weed seeds, the magazine says. I've suffer many bugs on my cabbages and Hakusai cabbages every year so I hope the method can decrease damage caused by the bugs and usage of pesticides.

Pulling out cucumbers with my daughter

 Helping me in my garden in the mid of hot August shows my daughter's attitude toward gardening, I believe.

 Today's weather was so hot and humid that I sweated so much even when I just walked to my garden but my daughter, who is in her summer holiday, loves to work with me in my garden and pulled out my cucumbers and the plastic poles. Her good help could save my working time. My cucumber's leaves began turning brown since the mid of July and the fruits also grew halfway. That's is the sign saying the cucumber was close to death. So I decided to pull them out.

 I harvested about 50 cucumbers from the 3 trees. I believe they could give a bumper harvest and my vegetable space in my fridge was full of them. After pulling them out, I added fertilizer, cow manure and ash powder to the place for the cucumbers and mix them up for the next autumn vegetables like Chinese cabbages(Hakusai cabbages), which my daughter loves.

 As my summer vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes have gone, my eggplants have grown well and my daughter feels it joyful to harvesting some of the fruits. I planted different breed of eggplants which can have long fruits. You can see the difference of length between a long one and usual one.

Digging sweet potatoes for a test

Most of workers in Japan are having the Buddhism holidays this week and they usually go back to their home town to spend the holidays with their parents relaxing themselves. My family are also staying at my parents' home watching the Olympic games, eating and drinking. But my vegetables don't have the holidays. They need water and care everyday while my summer vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes are getting weak due to scorching sunlight. I have to pull them out and prepare soil for next autumn vegetables like cabbages, pakchoi and Chinese cabbages.

My sweet potatoes are growing healthy and the extension of their vines shows that. For seeing how big the potoroos are, I digged some of them out. I got 2 sweet potatoes and they are as big as my hand having small roots around them. They are still young and I have to wait for at least a month. I've not cared the sweetpotatoes so much with watering them twice a week since they are so strong that they can grow in harsh environment with less care than other vegetables.

Therefore I don't need go to my gardening plot everyday during the Buddhism holidays thanks to the sweet potatoes.

--from iPad

Boiling sweet corns

"Sweet corns should be boiled as soon as you've harvested them"

That's what my wife's aunt, my gardening teacher, said me. Harvested corns can loose water faster than we expect. That's why my teacher advised me. Today I harvested 2 fresh sweet corns and followed her advice.

 I pour water and the sweet corns in a deep pan, added some spoonfuls of salt and boiled them for 3 minutes. I used a dish as a weight for pressing the sweet corns to boil the whole part of them.  Water in corns determines the freshness. So I wrapped them with plastic wrapping sheet and store them in my fridge. They will be served in today's dinner.