Cracked but juicy fruits

 The rainy season, which gave tons of water to my vegetables and damaged my carrots, has finished and a hot summer with scorching sunshine started. As the sunshine was becoming strong, the growth of my summer vegetables was getting so fast that some of them has become too big while I was absent for a few days. When I visited my garden last time, most of my tomatoes were still young and partially red but today I found most of them became as big as my fist and were cracked. The cracks might be caused by too much water the tomatoes sack up. But it's OK. I will not sell them but enjoy them at home. My tomatoes are cracked but so juicy.

Still my tomato trees have many young fruits so my family have to consume them to secure space for them in my fridge.

Today's harvest:
15 tomatoes
2 egg-plants
5 cucumbers

Only 1 intact tomato among 15 I harvested.

Today's dinner:
Tempura of egg-plants and Manganji chili peppers.

Today's dinner
Fresh tomato salad.

Growth report in the mid rainy season

 Now it's in the middle of a rainy season (Tsuyu/梅雨） in Japan and it has been raining through the whole of the last week in Osaka. As I mentioned in the previous blog, the much rain damaged my carrots. But the rain in this time is also essential for summer vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and egg-plants.

  

 My summer vegetables are growing well and I can expect to harvest them in a few weeks.

Young "Momotaro" are still green but growing healthily.

Some of my Momotaros are starting ripen turning red.

My egg-plants are also having fruits while some of
them are fed by bugs.

Shishito peppers

A flower of black chili

My sweet corns are blooming and producing pollens

Planting summer vegetables.

 Every year in May, I plant summer vegetable sprouts like tomatoes, egg-plants, cucumbers and other and here is the list of my summer vegetables which were planted yesterday.

1.  6 tomatoes (Momotaro)
2.  4 cucumbers
3.  3 egg-plants
4.  2 green peppers (Manganji)
5.  1 black chili
6.  1 ginger

I sometimes had a problem in growing tomatoes. Some tomato fruits were cracked just before I harvested them. According to some books and my wife's aunt, my gardening teacher, tomato fruits should be protected against rain drops which might cause the crack. I know that some kits of vinyl tunnels specialized for tomato trees are sold at a local home center and that they are expensive so I don't feel it worth paying for them. Fortunately, I have many plastic poles like straight ones and curved ones so I decided to assemble them into "a canopy for tomato tree".



 After assembling a structure with plastic poles, I covered a vinyl sheet, which were used for a vinyl tunnel for winter vegetables, over the structure.

 After planting those sprouts, I placed some bunches of straws beside them. Straws are very useful for keeping soil moist even in a scorching summer day in Japan.

 I bought some chili's sprouts including black chili, and Manganji green peppers. You can see the difference between the colors of both sprouts. The black chili has a purple trunk.

 I planted a ginger for the first time but it's not so difficult even for beginners to grow it according to my wife's aunt. Ginger is very popular in Japan and especially during a hot summer, we use a grated ginger for a condiment for cold white and thin noodles (Somen) and buckwheat noodles (Soba).  I bought a large seed ginger this time.

 The large ginger is too big to be planted in a hole so I divided it into 3 pieces. It's ok to divide it but the cut sides should be dried for a few days for avoiding infection in the soil.

 The soil for ginger should be always moist and my straws serve as a blanket for keeping water in soil.

Harvesting with my daughter in a hot summer day.

 Now my kids are enjoying 1-month summer vacation. Should parents consider how their kids spend their vacation? Oh, yes they, including me and my wife, should for their education. We should not let them spend a whole vacation watching anime-tv marathons and playing video games.

 I bought a Nintendo video game for them last Christmas but they seem to be less interested in it than other friends of them, fortunately. What my daughter is interested in is helping me in gardening, especially in harvesting while my son is into playing baseball belonging to a baseball club of his primary school.

 Today my daughter asked me to take to my garden and to let her harvesting summer vegetables.

" I've got today's dinner! "

I found some deformed egg-plants while most of them

are healthy. I should water more for them.

My daughter is nipping a cucumber.

Are you trying to hog the cucumber?

 My green chili trees, planted in the end of June, are having many mature fruits. Grilled the chili with sliced beef is a favorite of my family.



 My purple okras are also growing healthily with many buds. Purple okra is originated in Okinawa where I've found the locals used the okras in various dishes. You can see their purple stems, which is different from normal green okras.



 Watering is my daughter's favorite job. I know she enjoy seeing rainbow in a shower,,,,,.

Today's harvest

4 egg-plants

1 tomato

10 green peppers

10 green chilies

10 black chilis

-- from iPod touch