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...