Sign of spring

 When I went to the daycare to pick up my daughter I found Japanese plum were blooming with fuming its sweet fragrance. Although it is cold in Osaka, the flower reminds me of spring coming to us slowly but steadily.

Today's harvest

 Today I've harvested all of Chinese cabbages and I feel so satisfied with successfully growing Chinese cabbages starting at last September.

 Raising Chinese cabbage required a lot of workload and chores such as setting up insect screen

and picking up bugs. But thanks to those chores I could deserve a good harvest and my family could enjoy delicious dishes.

 My family are looking forward to raising Chinese cabbages.

-- from iPad

Early bird getting worms

 Wild birds are sensitive to search for their foods in the mid winter.
 Whenever I cultivate soil wild birds fly to my garden since they know small worms are dug up to the surface with cultivating. A bird shown below were so cautious but when I pretended to ignore it the bird landed on the cultivated soil and starting picking worms up.










-- from iPad

How warm or cold?

 We are facing colder winter than average but how cold is it for vegetables? I bought a temperature indicator and set it inside one of my vinyl tunnels where spinaches are planted. I saw the indicator showing the temperature inside the tunnel 10C while 7C outside. That shows the tunnels are effective to warm the air inside but at the same time shows this winter is severely cold. Even if the temperature inside is warmer, the vegetables seed inside the tunnels will  not germinate for a while till the temperature would be at least 13C. I think seeding in the mid winter might be challenging but might be a good opportunity to create and test new method such as the vinyl tunnels.

-- from iPad

Recipe collection vol.2 ( Kiwi fruit jam )

 How would you deal with extra ripen fruits after you've enjoyed them?As I introduced ripen kiwi fruits harvested last year, we have preserved extra kiwi fruits even after our family ate a lot of them. They can't be preserved any more and my wife made kiwi fruits jam using all of them.
-Ingredients-
1. Ripen kiwi fruits 240grams2. Sugar 120grams
-Recipes-
1. Peel the skin off.2. Mash the kiwi fruits in a bowl3. Add sugar to the mashed fruits. You can change the amount of sugar to your taste. My favorite proportion of sugar and kiwi fruits is 2 (kiwi) :1(sugar)4. Microwave it for around 4 minutes.5. Preserve it in a fridge after bottling it up. 
-- from iPad

Seedng komatunas, spinaches and Qing gen cai (pak choi)

 Today I seeded spinaches, Qing gen cai ( 青梗菜 or pak choi ) and komatunas on our new planting beds. They are the first memorial vegetables for the new beds and I hope they would grow well and give us good harvests around the head of March. 

Left: Pak choi   /   Right: Spinach (Kurouma [black horse] 2

 Protection against cold temperature must be required for growing vegetables in the mid winter so4 more vinyl tunnels have been set up for the vegetables you can see water vaporized inside the tunnels and that shows the temperature inside is getting warmer. I know how effective the tunnel is to put ahead the vegetable growth. Even in colder winter than average like this season I believe the tunnels can keep the air inside warmer and help the vegetables to grow.

Far side: Spinaches in 2 tunnels / Center: Pak choi
Near side: Komatuna

 I don't have a good sense of art and I always pay less attention to appearance. But I have to admit that the tunnel for komatuna ended up with such miserable, and less artistic look. That happened due to shortage of vinyl sheet for tunnel and unfortunately a local home center was closed today. I had to seek something to seal up "a hole " in another side of the tunnel.Can you guess what? That is a vinyl bag for rice husk whose size is barely suitable for the hole. I will not leave the situation and tomorrow find new sheet and repair it.
-- from iPad

New planting beds have been completed!!

 Thanks to the big help by my family, the new planting bed have been completed.I am thinking what kinds of vegetables can be planted there the option must be limited due to the cold winter. Anyway I feel excited and thrilled when I imagine more green, yellow, red,,,colorful vegetables will grow on the new bed and my garden will be filled with more vegetables.

My daughter digs up and gather soil for moving the location of soil beds.

My daughter is flattening the surface of new beds.
My wife is putting daikon's leaves on the bed for fertilizing.

Our new planting bed

Length: 6meters + 2meters = 8 meters

Width  : 30cm

Planting space : 2.4sqm

-- from iPad