Winter sowing

 Some weather reports say this winter will be MUCH colder than the average of the last 5 years so I have to have some methods for expediting germination even in a cold weather.

 Today I sowed spinach and pak-choi. They can be sown through a year but some measures have to be installed for them in a cold winter. A vinyl tunnel is one of my favorite and effective ways, which is easy to set up.

 Setting up a vinyl tunnel is so easy that you don't need any instruction for it! We need just a rolled vinyl sheet, a set of 2 semi-sphere plastic poles and clothes-pegs.
 The vinyl tunnel can warm up the air inside effectively and I measured the temperature and found about 5゜C warmer than outside. In one of my tunnels I set up, spinach have germinated even in chilly days.

-- iPhone

Autumn seeding

 As the temperature in Osaka goes down, many gardeners around me start sowing and planting autumn and winter vegetables. I was thinking when I should start autumn seeding this year while I was too busy even to write my blog. But I realized it is in the mid of October and I had to be hurry in seeding the vegetables. Today I and my daughter went to my gardening plot and sowed seeds of daikon radishes and planted 4 Chinese cabbages and 1 cabbage.

 My daughter, who is my reliable helper, seems to be well-experienced enough to create a seeding grid in order to sow the seeds in right places without my help.

My daughter's artwork

I usually sow 3 daikon seeds in a hole and will thin out to leave only the most prospective one.

I'm looking forward to harvesting them in this December. 

Along with the daikon radishes, I planted 4 Chinese cabbages and 1 cabbage on my last planting ridge. My garden is now full of kinds of autumn-winter vegetables such as Chinese cabbages, cabbages, daikon radishes, pak-chois and gingers.

Harvesting and cooking spinach, pak-chois and a cabbage

 It's a fine day with a clear sky and warm temperature in Osaka. How would I spend today doing nothing outside! Yes, I should go out, do gardening chores, seeding and harvesting in my garden and I did them today.

 As you can see the photos, my pak-chois and spinach have grown bigger enough to be harvested thanks to recent warm weather and proper amount of rain shower. But other keys to the successful growth are sowing less seeds in more spacious gardening ridge and proper thinning-out. I would like to refer to my old post about the keys.

Pak-chois

 I found many holes on my pak-chois! It's so shocking since I set up insect screens over the gardening ridge for my spinach and pak-chois!



 Judging from the shape of the damage on the leaves, I believed that some kinds of bugs had fed the leaves.



 After about 30min investigation, I found some slugs inside my pak-choi. My insect screen seems to be useless to protect my vegetables against bugs which can crawl through tiny space between the screen and soil.



 Fortunately, my spinach is intact and healthy with no holes by bugs although they've grown in the same gardening ridge with the bug-tainted pak-chois. Slugs might prefer pak-chois to spinach?

My spinach

 My cabbages are smaller than I expected but totally healthy with a good-shape heart. I wondered if I should glow them for another week but the outer leave have become hard, which shows it's the time to harvest so I decided to harvest them today.   

My cabbage

 Today's harvest:

1. 30 spinach
2. 25 pak-chois
3. 1 cabbage

Today's harvest

 I believe all vegetable gardeners, including me, feel it happy to cook their harvest just after we've harvest them and to eat them. My wife cooked stir-fried pak-choi with scrambled egg and grilled sausages. It's a simple recipe but the simpleness can make the best use of the pak-choi's flavor.






--from iPad

Spring has come after a storm.

 We in Japan call a spring storm "春一番/ Haru-Ichiban", which shows spring is brought to Japan by a seasonal storm generated by warm sea water in the Eastern China sea. But the storm of yesterday was so strong that many people were injured and serious damages to all traffic schedules have been reported. One of those damages I could see today in our gardening plots are here. Other gardener's insect screens were blown by strong wind.

 Fortunately, no damage was found in my plot and what I and my daughter found there is my potato's germination! I've been waiting for their germination for 2 months after planting them! The colder temperature could delay their growth, I believe.

 After I found their germination, my gardening ridges for the potatoes should be expanded for securing more space for the growing potatoes. I bought some packs of gardening soil and added to the ridges.

Before adding soil.

After

 The storm has brought not only damage to us but spring with warm temperature and vegetables know it. They are growing faster as the temperature is getting warm.

spinach

cabbages

pak-chois

 My daughter is also waiting for a warm spring and she gets so enthusiastic for going to my garden  and watching the growth of vegetables in a warm day. She is also excited with the potato's germination.

Germination in a new gardening space

 The spinach and pak-chois, which were seeded in a expanded gardening space 2 weeks ago, have germinated and been growing faster in a vinyl tunnel.

Spinach sprouts

 I've learned how important proper thinning-out is for growing bigger leaf vegetables from my experience so I secured more space for the growth of the spinach and pak-chois with about 10cm interval between each other.

Pak-choi sprouts

 The weather since mid of Feb has been so tricky that some day was warm without wearing an overcoat while other day was severely cold. I had thought that I wouldn't have need a vinyl tunnel any more but I decided to continue it due to cold days.

One of the expanded gardening spaces

My daughter harvesting the first-generation spinach.

The first spinach, which were seeded last year, have grown to 20cm height.

Simple recipes

 Today my wife cooked thinned out pak choi and daikon radishes.

 The pak chois were small but very tender and easy to cook so she simply stir-flied them seasoning with only salt.

The daikon redishes were also so small since I failed to thin them out properly. So my wife grated them to make "Oroshi-ponzu" , or mixture of citrus say sauce and grated daikon radish, which is one of popular sauce among Japanese and go well with deep fried foods. When we grate daikon radish, we always use a handy grater shown below. I don't know that kind of tool can be seen in your country but it's very useful to grate vegetables and fruits.

 The Oroshi-ponzu added to pork cutlets. I believe the combination is perfect! The refreshing taste of the sauce goes well with oily deep-fried cutlets.

Thinning out in a cold day

 Working in my garden in a cold winter day is sometimes boring. No weed to be removed and no seed to be seeded. All I have to do there in this season are cultivating, watering and adding fertilizers.

 Thinning-out is also important among those "winter-chores" to make my vegetables like spinach and pak-chois bigger. Today I thinned them out expecting future's bumper harvest.  Usually, I thinned out my spinach and pak-choy with making about 5cm space ( about 2inch ) between two sprouts

Aligned my spinach in a vinyl tunnel

Thinned-out spinach sprouts

My pak-choi in a vinyl tunnel

Thinned out pak-chois

 What will happen if we don't thin out properly? I'll show you an example of my failure.

I forget thinning out my daikon radishes when they were young sprouts so my gardening ridge for them are so crowded with grown daikon radishes like the photo shown below. Making daikon roots bigger and longer requires more space but my daikon radishes have been forced to grow in the "limited space".

 Eventually, most of my "grown daikons "are much shorter than ones I harvested last season.

 I would like to show a good example. One of other gardeners have grown big and long daikon radishes since he thinned them out properly with making enough space between two daikons. He has about 10cm space between them as the photo below shows.

Germination in a cold day

 As the X'mas is coming, the temperature is getting colder and colder down to about 5 degrees C (40 degrees F) in Osaka. I seeded pak-choys and spinach 2 weeks ago covering them with vinyl tunnels to keep the air inside warmer. Today I thinned out pak-choys sprouts and found the spinach germinated.

 Choosing sprouts to be thinned out is still a little bit heart-breaking to me because I always wish all of sprouts to be grown and harvested. But I have to do it for pursuing bigger vegetables in a limited space.

 The growth of spinach is usually slower than pak-choi and other leaf vegetables and I'm very happy to find some spinach has germinated. It has been very cold in my town and I wondered when they could germinate.

Today's harvest and flowers

 Flowers can attract us and make us feel happy! Yeah, I think so too. But What do flowers of leaf vegetables like pak-chois or komatunas mean? Flowers of them mean they've bolted and can not been eaten, right?
  When I saw flowers on my pak-chois, I seem to have seeded too many pak-chois and komatunas.I shared them with my mother, friends and neighbors but still 1/3 of all seeded vegetables are left in my soil beds. Most of them have not bolted yet but they will soon. We seem to have to keep on consume or share and give them to my neighbors and friends as a present and "the Green Aid".






Flowers of pak-chois look so cute and delicious! The part of flowers are still tender, but not bolted so I'll cook them tonight!











-- from iPad

Spring Harvest Festival vol.2

　Many bunches of komatunas, pak-chois, and spinaches were harvested at this Festival. My daughter and her friend enjoyed dealing with chores like washing and packing the vegetables. I'm happy they were involved in my gardening activity.

My spinaches

The kids were washing komatunas and spinaches.

  Takeru, my daughter's freind, didn't get used to dealing

  vegetables.

My first pak chois seemed to bolt soon so we had to harvest them

despite their smaller size. I should have thinned out more of them.

-- from iPad