June 4 harvest

First raspberries and lebanese zucchini. End of the snap peas. Peak of the strawberries. And zucchini are ramping it up.

Catching Up

Here are some random photos from last week (5/20 and 5/22).

This is the west plot. A few of the potatoes in the lower left, green beans, lots of tomatoes, some eggplant, peppers, and sweet potatoes back where my husband is standing.

The artichokes have doubled in size since I took this photo 5 days ago. So have the weeds ):
Peas, peas, peas! I love snap peas! My favorite vegetable. I think we will get maybe another week if we are lucky.
The onions are coming along. We have to figure out where we can hang them to dry.
The three sisters. Two sisters at the moment. The pumpkins are growing, but the corn is not. This could be a problem.
The zucchini is thriving! I am going to pick our first pollinated zucchini for our spaghetti tonight. I will post photos later.
Finally planted the next round of okra on the weekend. Same place as last year, but I think it will be okay. My husband added lots of compost and manure.
The strawberries are doing pretty well despite being in a muddy, shady, weedy, nutrient poor, and generally ignored corner. Some taste better than others. I think we will have to dig them up this winter and do them properly next year.
I was very happy about these pink flowers (Oenothera) I often buy seed packets hoping that they are the same as the flowers I saw by the side of the road or in someone else's garden and 90% of the time I am completely wrong. This time I got it right! I think (I hope)they go wild and re-seed on their own.

Pansies are still plugging along beneath the pink flower leaves.
Our neighbors let their mizuna go to flower. I didn't realize that mizuna made such pretty flowers! We will have to let ours flower next year.
My campanula are really flowering now. I planted a mix of white, pink, and purple, but only seem to have raised purple. Oh well, at least it is my favorite color!

strawberries

Despite being completely neglected, in a shady corner in rather hardpacked sand with virtually no nutrients our strawberries managed to produce a fair number of strawberries this year. There were even a few left over for us after the birds and bugs took their share.

May 11

May 11 was cold and rainy. But our newest garden enemy didn't mind the bad weather. When my husband made the new fields, he mixed earth from by the river. Gorgeous black soil. Which we now know was full of seeds of these weeds that are like little needles. So sharp, I actually pricked my finger on one. I think the black plastic my prove to be useless this year.

Here is our main pumpkin patch in it's full expanse. Jack 'o Lantern in the front. An empty space for future pumpkins. Kabocha and Howden in the next group with the corn. And at the very rear, out of view, Cinderella. Cucumbers along the fence.
And the Jack Be Little mini pumpkins are planted in front of the classroom. I plan to grow them up to the roof of the classroom.
Two artichokes, planted near the tomatoes.
The strawberry patch, which is a bit of a disaster, really, we will have to redo it in the winter. It is not raised, so they get all muddy and eaten by insects from below. It is nice to have the neighbor's azaleas growing through our fence. Watermelon in the foreground. The okra is going to go here this year.
One of my three shades of purple iris.
These pretty little purple flowers by the driveway are about to bloom.
I tried sweet peas for the first time. The blossoms are pretty, but the bottom half of the plants are totally brown. I think I need to do them in bigger planters, they get dried out too quickly.
My husband took this photo of a bee. We are lucky to have quite a few bees. If only we didn't have so many evil bugs!

Springing!

The yellow crocuses are croaking their little hearts out. No signs of any other colors yet...
My first daffodil on Feb 22
And on Feb 24!
Apparently pansy season is over, because pansies were going for clearance discounts at the home center. I got some to fill in for ones that didn't like this year's cold winter. Only one of my pansies which I started from seed has bloomed so far. Haven't got a decent photo yet, though. I also got some anenomes because about 80% of mine didn't make it through the winter.
I pulled out most of these little yellow flower plants last summer because they were getting out of control, but they are back in strength. Quite cute, but I think I need to move them to the embankment because they are more of a hardy wild-flower (weed?) than well-behaved flower-bed-flower.
Speaking of hardy wild-flower weeds on the embankment, dandelions are blooming. The girls love to pick them. And they are cheerful and bright at a time of year when the embankment is pretty bleak.
And I have always loved these tiny blue flowering weeds. So cute! Though I do pull them out of my flower beds.
Our one strawberry meets a bitter end. So we are holding out for the blueberries...
which seem to have adjusted to their new spot on the north side of the embankment. We hope they are happier here than they were in their previous location.
None of the snap pea seeds my husband planted came up, so he bought seedlings at the garden store and planted them in the new field in the empty lot next door.
Helping keep those weeds down, every little bit counts.
Nothing like a well deserved rest in the sun after a hard morning weeding the garden. It's nice to know that the vegetable-picking basket is good for more than holding just spinach.

Happy New Year!!

I'm back to blogging again after a long break! Sorry about that. I have a lot of catching up to do and will try to get around to posting fall photos at some point. But here we are at winter already. Gifu has had two snowfalls already this year. One in December (the girls and I were in the US and missed it) and another at New Year. The New Year snow is almost gone but we are expecting more tomorrow. During the past 11 years I have lived in Gifu, it has rarely snowed more than once a winter, so this is unusual. Though it snows, the temperature rarely drops below freezing, so the winter veggies manage to hang in under the snow until it melts. Here is an update on how they survived the most recent snowfall.Spinach. Oh spinach. We love to eat spinach. Good thing too. Boy do we ever have spinach. My husband and I disagree on what is a reasonable amount to plant in a given space. As of next year, he will be removed from seed sowing duties. Right now, he prepares the beds and sows the seeds. I thin, pick, and cook. This is a major problem, because he believes he must use all the seeds in the packet, no matter how many packets he buys or how much space is available, or how much spinach one family of four can reasonably be expected to consume. This is just one small bed of many. The spinach is hardy and got a bit flattened by the snow, but still tastes yummy.
Daikon. I told him not to plant daikon, as I am in charge of cooking and a few daikon go a long way. His father grows daikon and gives it to us. Does he listen to me? See above about finishing seed packets. Drowning in daikon are we. Anyone have any good daikon and/or spinach recipes to share?
Hakusai. The bugs got them at first, but they are doing better now that it is colder.
Lettuce from random left over seeds from last year (when I was in charge of seed sowing) doing well.
The broccoli is gorgeous and delicious. And in perfect moderation. Hooray!
Baby strawberries. These are new plants we bought in the fall that are in planters.
The strawberry plants that got accidently transplanted with the raspberries to the embankment are also starting to flower. This poor confused raspberry plant was actually raspberrying under the snow.
My husband built a reinforcement for the bottom of the north embankment and transplanted lots of his baby trees.
Including the red maple which was in middle of the back yard.
Today's harvest. I am off to cook it now.

fall?

I thought cosmos were supposed to bloom in late summer/fall, but apparently this one is confused. I love cosmos, so would be happy if they bloom from now till fall.
Finally some of the flowers in the flower bed closest to the house (NE bed) have started to bloom. This is where the bulbs are, and time between irises and lilies is a bit barren.
More nasturtium.
The SE flower bed is doing pretty well, but I have a bit of a gaping hole in the center that I have to think about. I'm hoping it will look better when the balloon flowers and gladioli start blooming. One Turkish balloon flower (? Turuko kikyo) seems to have survived the winter, hurrah! I love them.
I am still hoping for id on this blue flower which I love.
Reisentraube cherry tomato has zillions of blossoms in each cluster. If these all turn into mini tomatoes we will be in tomato heaven.
Strawberries are plugging along. Down to only 10 or so a day from a peak of 20. Not bad considering they are just in an out of the way corner, half under mud when it rains. They are to the right of the neighbor's garden tool shed in the photo below. Next year we should look into putting down some rice stalks or something for them to lie on.
An view from the girls' bedroom. The lawn has greened up, but the most trodden patches don't really get a chance to grow in .