Snow,weed and compost tea

 Snow covered Hasama

 

Truck load of composted crap

  

Do not take my picture

 

Danshaku potatoes

   

finishing potato beds

weeding garlic

 

Compost Tea Cow manure+ worm poop

 

Adding water

 Dekiagari

well deserved lunch

Weather here seems ridiculous, it was 18 degrees Celsius as I was coming back from work on Sunday,and I woke up next day in snow covered Hasama,nice and romantic unless you plan to work in your garden,So during the morning hours we went shopping for composted cow manure and calcium additive.We buy our manure from the local farm which cut our cost drastically truck load is mere 1000 yen and  that is  about 300-320 kg of it.Around 11am all the snow was already melted so we went to our garlic and onion field that we planted last Autumn about 700 plants each ,where we still have about four rows of already prepared unplanted soil ,so since we still waiting for the rice straw to arrive to add it to the field that we worked on last week ,on which we planned to plant potatoes isn't ready yet,it seemed like good idea to use this unused space first ,also since last year I'm trying to plant everything according to phases of the moon and moon signs ,and yesterday was Scorpio in third phase,optimal for the root plants so i didn't won't to miss the opportunity.Sure some will laugh at this,my wife did ,but it turned out that my peppers last year were superior to hers, same type of seed same soil,planted next to each other,couple days apart,it might be just pure coincident,but we'll only know if we keep doing it .We pulled all the weed from the beds I added some 30 wheel-cart loads of compost to the soil and use the tiller to mix it,not really ecological approach,but it does saves my back,after watering and making nice looking beds,we focus on weeds that grow together with the onion and garlic,and it's surely tedious choir.Last year we used  perforated vinyl  mulch sheet that we got for free from the lady that stop gardening due to the illness.It turns to be,not really user friendly unless somebody tell you what to do first,we learn it hard way.First thing is the wind,half of the field was parallel to the wind flow other half of the beds were against the it,and even though we secure the sheets with the pins which aren't cheap,Wind did lift the them ruining about 1/4 of the transplanted onions.Second problem is that the size of the pre-cut planting holes are too large and allow different weed seed to start growing in same space as your crop.This year i found that one friend of mine is tatami maker and could provide us with used rice straw ,we could shred and make it into mulch.My only consideration is  house mites that usually live in tatami,i need to research to see if i should worry.Yesterday after planting the potatoes ,I made some compost tea out of worm and cow manure and it's still steeping,I have some time tomorrow morning so I'll use it to add some nutrients to garlic and onions.Later...

Mud play

                                                 Our little helper Anja

 

 My Better Half Mayumi

 

Stuck in Mud

 

Shitake Mushrooms

It was raining for the last tree days and my plans to start doing some field work on my days off yesterday and today, end up with nothing much due to the ground condition, this morning weather finally got better so we tried to do some preparation on one of the fields that we didn't used so much in the past since it's bit far from the house, my brother in law did harvest some potatoes last year so we thought to continue that.Whole field with exception of one part that was used previously was  knee deep mud puddle,It seemed that field was used for cultivation of Taro (Satoimo) in the past and that rice paddy soil structure was optimal for it.Since the field is very large for the Japanese standards we been thinking of dividing it in to the two parts leaving half as it is for taro and other water loving plants.(my wife was thinking of ginger and Renkon but I'm not sure if that is possible,well see )and other half to try to add some large amount of composted soil, fertilized cow manure, old rice straw and peat moss to improve soil condition and on top of it to make high raised cultivation beds (hugelculture) for better water circulation like Masahiro (my brother in law) did with the part he used with potatoes ,today we hauled two truckloads  of compost and manure to the field but it soil was to wet to mix it, mini rototiller wouldn't budge so we hope to continue that next week if weather permits as we add shredded straw and peat moss. After that we went to check our shitake mushroom logs we inoculate last year just to try to see if we're able to raise them and it turns that they been quiet productive this year,only problem is you have to check them daily since they grow very fast and we had a bunch of overgrown ones that we couldn't use,but one we harvested were delicious with pork shabu-shabu salad we had for dinner tonight.Later...      

This year plan

It's already march and my state of hibernating is slowly wearing off,just to find myself in position i don't want to be, not really knowing where to start.Over the winter I did a lot of research of what could be done in area where we live in and with the space we have right now,  about 0.3 acres or 400 tsubos (Japanese measure of land)of space that is next to the household or close to it,about same acreage that is within 2km, plus couple of rice paddies that are scattered within the village(right now these we rent to the neighbor but from the next year they'll be back to us) also we have some of wooded area (mostly bamboo) which is not to far from the house. possibilities seemed  to be endless,but after weeding thru cons and pros that "endless" come to be couple of  possible solutions due to the position,practicality,cost and other reasons.So after family meeting we made couple of decisions for this season, first is to partially convert a large garden in to an orchard and this seem to be quiet large project since the garden used to be rice paddy until 10 years ago when some of the ground was excavated and new soil with less water retention was added but still more than 70% of the garden is heavy clay and we need to re-dig the water channel so doesn't obstruct the flow to the neighbors rice field ,we still figuring what kind of trees and shrubs we would like to have .Next is building a green house that we would use for year round herb production with the surplus that could be sold thru small green grocery store that village own or to couple of  restaurants and cafe that are owned by my friends(lets hope that we do come to this level of production). I'm planing to add aquaponic system to it as the finances allow.Third project is already ongoing four fruit and vegetable gardens that we started some 5 years ago when we first moved here.two smaller ones are next to the house and are used for the more care needed annual plants and two larger are quiet distance from zero zone,these are laid with the crop that needs less attention and could be harvested in one session,like potatoes,garlic,soybeans etc.. Wish projects would be small apiary if I'm lucky enough to find somebody in my area to learn from ,Chicken pen for eggs and maybe small rabbitry  for some meat and fertilizer but it all depends, still need to calculate feed cost and way to protect the animals since there is no fence on the property. Well list could go on and on but we'll start one thing at the time

Here we go

Our adventures of living in small village of Hasama.