Installing new methods

 It's difficult for novice gardeners like me to pursuing 100% organic gardening but I believe pursuing 80%～90% organic gardening can be feasible with installing new methods to decrease usage of chemical things like pesticide.

 I install 2 new methods, companion planting and yellow buckets.

 I planted romaine lettuces beside Chinese cabbages for warding off young worms which like to eat Chinese cabbages. Romaine lettuces can fume odor which young worms hate so they can't get close to planting ridges where the lettuces are planted.

 My 2nd method is placing yellow buckets beside my vegetables.

 It took 1 week since I had installed them and I found them very effective to repel aphids!

As I mentioned on my previous blog, aphids can be allured by yellow color. And I found hundreds of aphids were drown in water in the yellow buckets and no aphids on my vegetables!

Both of the methods are reasonable and cheep to install so I would like you to try them.

Launching the Cabbage Project in 2012

The temperature in Osaka is slowly but steadily going down after September began while it is still hot recording up to 32degrees C (90degrees F). In a morning and evening, the temperature become so cool that even young sprouts can bear with the hot daytime. It's the best time to launch my Cabbage Project of this autumn and winter season.

Today I went to a local sprout shop, bought sprouts of 5 cabbages, 5 Chinese cabbages(Hakusai-cabbages), and turnip seeds and planted all of them in my gardening plots.

My daughter rushed into a vinyl green house where sprouts are growing to pick up healthy ones as soon as we arrived the shop. My rule for picking up healthy sprouts is "No hole and No discoloration on leaves". Holes on the leaves means some small bugs might live in a planting pod and the discoloration shows the sprouts might be not healthy. My daughter knows the rules and the first-come-first-sold basis in the shop. So as the photo shows, she was checking healthy ones following the rules.

Of course, I had to verify her picks and there was no hole and no discoloration on the leaves. Great job, my daughter!

I planted all of the sprouts on my planting ridges, covered the ridges with rice husks, and set up insect screens.

I suffered from many aphids on cabbages last year so I tried a new measure for warding off aphids. A yellow plastic bucket is useful for capturing aphids which have a habit of preferring yellow color according to some gardening magazines.
They say that aphids can be allured by the yellow color, dive into the water of the bucket and drawn.

In a few minutes after installing the bucket, 3 aphids were found dead in the water! I can rely on the measure for repelling aphids!