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.

Today's harvests and my wife's birthday.

 It's been sunny in the last few days during a rainy season, which was the important opportunity to work in my garden. We have to watch the growth speed of summer vegetables like cucumbers since they can grow much faster in this season due to tons of rain and strong sunlight. One of my cucumbers became too big while a few days. Big cucumbers has a thick skin but less water inside so we can't use them for salads. Well, I'll have to pickled it in rice bran.

  The fruits of my black chili have also grown well and I harvested some of them with green peppers. They were moderately size to enjoy their taste so I'll stir-fly them with sliced beef in oyster sauce, which is my favorite recipe.

  My egg-plants' growth is slower than usual with fewer and smaller fruits. I think the slow growth might be caused by consecutive cropping.

 The tomato harvesting season has arrived! I found many tomato fruits have been mature turning red, whose size were as big as my fist. I'm very excited with this good results since I failed to grow bigger and delicious tomatoes many times. The success is due to Less fertilizer. Too much fertilizer could be consumed for their leave's growth not for their fruits. My tomatoes are "Momotaro/桃太郎" which is popular variety in Japan.

 My sweet corncobs were about 15cm/7inches. I've not found any damage by bugs yet.

 Today is my wife's birthday so I rushed to a flower shop after working in my garden and a floral designer made a flower bouquet for my wife.

Flowers, fruits and love for my wife

" My teacher " is busy in packing Molokheiyas

 Today my family visited my wife's aunt, who is not only my teacher of gardening but also a farmer who grow various kinds of vegetables and rice.

 When we arrived her working space, she and her friends were so busy in cutting and packing Molokheiyas or nalta jutes (Corchorus olitorius L.) for distributing to local supermarkets. Her products is so famous for their tastes and nutrition.





 Molokheiyas are getting popular among many Japanese including some health-food freaks since their nutrition like vitamins, iron and calcium and they are used in many kinds of supplements.

 My wife's aunt and friends were cutting swiftly their roots, trunks and old leaves, scaling their weight and packing them into vinyl bags. And they check their appearance carefully because Japanese consumers pay attention to beautiful appearance and shape of goods.

Today's harvest
1 Shishito peppers
2 Purple peppers

 I believe you can see easily how big leaves in the photo shown below are! Compared with my daughter, they were taller than my kids! They are a kind of taro or eddoe (Colocasia esculenta、) and they are called "Satoimo" in Japanese. We cook their cut trunks boiling with say sauce or broth.



Today's dinner is stir-fried Shishito peppers and pumpkin croquettes

                                                    

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

Today's harvest

-- from iPod touch

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

Red and green pepers

My green papers have been turning red.

It's a time to harvest them but the HOT MELTING temperature(100F in Osaka!) in this summer could make vege trees week and tired and delay our preparation of autumn-winter vegetables such as cabbages and white radishes.

Today's harvest

1.. 10 tomatoes
2.. 2 cucumbers
3.. 5 green papers
4.. 15 red hot chilies
5.. nalta jute(mulukhiya)

Today's harvest

 Since the end of a rainy season lots of sunshine gives us the delight of faster growth of summer vegetables and sweaty jobs.

 1 4 green peppers
 2 3 tomatoes
 3 2 egg-plants
 4 35 green chili