My artworks of summer vegetables

An unwelcome artwork by Mr. Bug.

The growth of my summer vegetables

 Now in Japan it's in the mid of "Tsuyu/梅雨", a early-summer rainy season and I and other gardeners were expecting a lot of rain but according to the latest weather report, this rainy season might bring less rain due to rain systems which are pushed down to the south away from Japan. Actually, we have seen no rainy day since the Japan meteorological agency had announced officially the start of the rainy season.

 Due to the less rain than average, I have to visit my garden everyday to water my summer vegetables before going to my office. That kind of routine sounds boring but the fruits of labor like flowers and growing fruits animate me.

 1. Eggplant

2 Cucumbers

3 Green eggplant's flower           4 Tomatoes

5 Basil

Planting summer vegetables

 I was looking forward to planting summer vegetables because I installed some organic methods to ward off aphids as I mentioned in my previous blog. And I and my kids planted the sprouts on the gardening ridges covered with silver mulching sheets.

 List of my summer vegetables:

2 eggplants
1 green eggplant
3 tomatoes (Momotaro)
2 cucumbers

A green eggplant, my first try.

3 tomatoes (Momotaro)

 I invented a new organic method to repel aphids! It's "a silver pole". It's very simple to make it! Just taping plastic poles with aluminium adhesive tape.
 I hope those methods will be "silver bullets" for protecting my vegetables against bugs.

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

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

The tragedy brought by heavy rain

 Tons of water brought by rainy season starting from the mid of June is essential not only for human being but for vegetables but sometimes too much water might give serious damages like flood.

 

 The heavy rain for 3 straight days through the last weekend caused flood in my garden and all planting ridges had been perfectly submerged for the 3 days, where my carrots had been growing.

 After the heavy rain, I found it unusual that all of my carrot's leaves tuned yellow and pull out one of them. The carrot root was "melted" from the mid of them as you can see in the photo shown below.

 Eventually, I found all of my carrots was decomposed and It was so painful for me to have to give all of them up!! Grrrrrr!!!

 The decomposition was caused by the flood when the carrots had been soaked for too long. 

I saw water still oozing out of the soil when I dug a hole just 5inches deep. I should have make the planting ridge much higher for avoiding the flood.

 I was shocked when I realized that the decomposition was just One of the damages brought by the heavy rain. One of my tomato was infected with "bacterial wilt disease". You can see the tomato's leaves wilted in the photo. The criminal bacteria might be drifted by the flood and prefers wet soil. I felt down when I had to abandon the poor tomato tree with many fruits in order to avoid further infection.

Growth Report

 My carrots are growing well thanks to the insect screen protection. It wards off swallowtail butterflies which they can lay eggs on carrot's leaves and the young worms feed them.

 I thinned out some carrots and I was very happy when I saw the carrot's roots have grown! I believe it was worth spending times screening out pebbles before sowing. I believe they can be harvested in the mid of July.

A baby cucumber

Tomato's flowers

Kitchen things for aphid control

 Pursuing an perfectly organic gardening is the dream and goal for all gardeners although I believe we recognize that the road to the goal is harder and more difficult for us than we think  especially when we need some quick solutions for urgent problems like pests and bugs.

 Organic solutions are sometimes less effective but expensive and time-consuming while they are environment-friendly. How can we balance between effectiveness and eco-friendliness?

 I believe one of solutions is using LESS harmful chemical things in gardening chores. I'm also afraid of using chemical pesticides in my garden for the health of my family so I adopt much safer chemicals and goods as solutions for bug control. They are kitchen things like a kitchen detergent, cooking oil.

 I found that many aphids on my broad bean's tree and tomato's trees in my garden and I always mixture of water, cooking oil and kitchen detergent. 

 Mixture ratio:

 1. 100(water) : 5(oil) : 1(detergent)

 I think you want to know how the solution kill aphids. Most of insects are holopneustic, which means they have stomas on their belly for breath. The solution contains millions of oil molecules and when the solution vaporizes the molecules block the aphid's stomas and they will be suffocated.

You can see hundreds of aphids on my broad bean trees,,,,,.just spooky.

 We have to spray the solution thoroughly on the aphids. 

 One of the aphids on a leaf were struggling for the air in the solution for a while.

 When the solution had vaporized, many dead aphids were found on the leaves and trees.
Oh,,,sorry for poor bugs!!

Finally, I rinsed the solution with showering. The dead aphids also have gone with water.

 Protection from bugs is also important. We can create more effective protection with learning habits of bugs. Aphids hate the reflected light. So I used aluminum foil to ward off aphids.

 I rolled a sheet of aluminum foil around plastic polls for tomatoes, eggplants and cucumbers. I hope the reflected light can protect my vegetables from aphids and I'll monitor how effective the way is.