Blooming in the mid winter

I found many camellia flowers are blooming in my neighbor.
I don't like cold winter since I feel the cold easily and everything might looks grey and dark even in daylight. But the flowers can make me feel warm.






-- from iPad

Setting up a plastic wall for creating new planting beds

 As you know I had mentioned changing layout of planting beds in my garden, which is the biggest plan in my garden this year, today I will show you my plan. Look at the picture shown below. That is not painted by my kids but I drew the new layout with "Blackboard" application on my iPad. Actually I feel it so embarrassing to show my "work" since it looks so childish!! Anyway, yellow areas show planting beds and blue line shows plastic waved panel which works as a wall to bear and bolster soil. Could you see the plastic panel create extra planting beds? Today's mission is to set up the panel.
 Today I bought a roll of a 20meter-plastic waved panel and 15pegs with some hooks at a local home center. The panel costs $10 and pegs $8.00



 The peg is so functional for the price that you can see the hook can hold the panel and it can avoid waving and winding on the panel.



 I cut grooves 20cm deep and 10m long with my scoop to insert the panel. That was a tough job in a cold winter...



 After inserting the panel into the groove I pegged down the panel to bolster the panel with the pegs and that can secure the new planting bed.

Complition of setting up the panel

the panel from above

 I tried to create new beds along with the panel adding fertilizer, cow manure, rice bran.

But the amount of soil for new beds is less than I thought so I will have to add much soil.

 The new bed is narrow due to the shortage of soil.
But I'll remove soil from other beds for the new one and I believe I can deal with that.
Creating new soil bed with digging and removing soil in a cold temperature is so hard that I have backache!



-- from iPad

Harvesting all komatunas and cooking them

While my radishes ended up with poor result I and my daughter enjoyed harvesting all of my komatunas and cabbages.




Since I found some snails on komatunas and I am planning to change layout of planting beds, I decided all komatunas should be harvested soon.
We harvested plenty of komatunas today and we have to consume them before our fridge will be filled with vegetables. How could we can cook the amount of komatunas? My wife answered the question by today's dinner.




You see most space of the pot occupied by vegetables!
My wife knows steaming in a pot is a good way to decrease volume of vegetables.




Look at the layers of vegetables! Our stomachs have been filled with komatunas and cabbages!

-- from iPad

Poor result of my 2G radishes

Sometimes I have to admit poor result and less productivity of my vegetables.

My 2nd generation radishes have ended up with their thin and poor roots.





I seeded my 2nd ones just after I harvested my 1st radishes so this poor result could be caused by injury by continues cropping.
I should have add lime powder for avoiding the injury.

-- from iPad

Today's dinner

The Menus of today's dinner are

1. Cabbage, daikon, carrot and sausages boiled with consommé soup
Soup coming out of the vegetables are so delicious than you don't need
to add any salt.
2. Salad of shredded cabbage
That is the best way to enjoy fresh and crispy cabbages, I believe.











-- from iPad

Leaves for compost

How do you deal with outer leaves of your vegetables? In my case all of them are buried in soil for composting.
Daikon's and chinese cabbage's outer leaves which I cut off can be good compost in a soil in a few month and the process can make the soil fertile.
Daikon's leaves can be pickled with salt and delicious but the soil in my garden is still less nutritious so there is worth "investing" the leaves.











You can see difference in colors of Daikon's leaves which had been buried a few month ago and new leaves. The old ones have turned yellow in a soil.

-- from iPad

Today's harvest

I'm planning change the layout of planting beds for spring-summer vegetables so I have to end up my daikons, cabbages, Chinese cabbages and komatunas in this month.
Luckily most of them can be harvested in a week but they are too much for us to eat up and if daikons are left in soil for long time, they will bolt.
I and my wife decided to share our vegetables with our neighbors.
In Japan price of vegetables in stores is higher than usual due to odd weather last year and I know "our products" will be welcome.




-- from iPad