Tuesday, March 6, 2012

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...      

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