Passionate Backyard

Hey passion fruit, what time is it?

Finally the passion fruits flowers bloomed. Oh happy day!
But, they opened on a rainy day, so they are all soaking wet... A couple of flowers opened up at the balcony level, and a couple opened down in the backyard. They all smell super sweet. When the rain stopped I tried to hand pollinate them just for the fun of it. Not sure though if it took, everything still being wet and all.

They're so beautiful.

The rest of the backyard (except the potatoes) is also growing. Here is an update...

We got the tomatoes, passion, peas, jasmine and yuzu at the bottom

The Yuzu has grown maybe half a meter taller this year only. Basically the top thorny part is all new.

Will there be broccoli this year? Only time will tell

Most successful carrots so far

Chingensai under the net, not thinned out yet. And red spinach to its left

Tora's Chocolate Factory

No wonder why the potatoes in the backyard aren't popping up. With Tora having made that bed his favorite dump site, I don't think even the weeds will grow back.

Tora the ice cream machine caught in action

At least he is keeping to one place and is not pooping in the strawberries anymore. Usually he spends most of his time sitting up there in the highest place in the backyard nowadays whenever he is outside. That way he can see what the neighbor cats are up to, and at the same time stand watch and scare the racoon dogs that pass there on their way to the chicken run. I have cleaned his nice grass eating area too, near the entrance so he doesn't have to chew on strange weeds too much.

Tora's buffet, both on center and right

Other than that, not much going on. Just lots of rain. I spent a few minutes the other day setting up trellis and stakes for the green peas.

Lots of peas hopefully. Tora is wondering what's going on.

Also on the north bed. Just a start...

While at the North Face, I noticed that the tiny onion leafs are pooping out all over the place.

You have to look really close to see them

I also took the opportunity to thin out the small daikon radish. But not really sure how much to thin out so on each spot there is now 3-4 seedlings left.

Baby daikon. It actually smells daikon already.

Oh, and I finally harvested the huge eggplant and ate it. Very sweet taste.

Or are you just glad to see me?

Speaking of big things, the mikan too is getting bigger every day.

A couple months more?

Small adjustment

OK, so I have postponed the further digging and adjusting the paths cause I am still sick of all the digging. But the other day I spotted that the peanuts are not hitting soil where they should so I thought what the heck. I might as well do this tiny side.

Hmm, wonder if they would grown at all above the sheet...

Said and done. It took only a few minutes.

Before adjustment. The entrance to the garden.

Removed the strip of sheet, and shuffled the soil a bit to make it fluffy. Also dug out a couple of big roots (no bamboo though, hmm), and removed a lot of grass and their roots that had started to grow out despite their leafs having been buried under few cm of soil and sheet.
I noticed a peanut while I was digging around...

The first actual peanut shaped peanut so far

Picked it to see what it looks like

A couple of normal sized nuts. I will wait more to get bigger ones

Anyway, after a bit of digging and shoveling the mini tomato and peanuts bed's one side is now extended as planned. Now only its other side needs expanding.

After adjustment. The pebbles will also stay in place from now on.

So at least the peanuts have some soil to burrow into.

Just a normal day in the garden

Last weekend I was really dizzy for some reason (Will go to doctor cause I still have trouble with my balance after 2 days) so didn't spend an awful lot of time in the garden. But the seeds I put in are growing...

Daikon in the new bed.

I also spotted tiny tiny onion sprouts, and the green peas are now almost 5 cm over the ground so soon I will put up trellis for them.
Other things are growing. Right now I have the biggest eggplant so far, hanging and getting bigger. The peppers are still going strong too.

Peppers. Everything is green so it is hard to see maybe.

The mini tomatoes are coming out bigger and bigger too. Probably the regular almost daily rains are now having effect cause despite getting bigger in size, less and less are torn open by the growth.

Got to compare the taste with store-bought, wow such a difference!

In the asparagus bed, I spotted a couple of tiny asparagus

Only the first year

The passion fruit has finally decided to produce flowers. There are several buds lined up on the branches, which ants are extremely interested in...

The flower buds. Will they open?

But not everything is growing and showing progress. The cucumber seemed to have done what it can and was more or less dead, so I cleaned it out so it doesn't attract bugs unnecessarily. (The brown bugs from the melons had migrated to the cucumber, plus snails had gathered to feast on the dead leafs as well. All the snails were eaten by the chickens. Good calcium boost I guess.)

Just the trellis left.

Oh, for a few weeks now they have been cutting weed on the other side of the tracks. This weekend I noticed that they are filling in the gaps on the wall with concrete. I wish they did the same on our side. Maybe next year?

It would be so nice if they cleaned their mess on our side too

What is this tree?

Several small trees of the same kind are growing in various corners of the garden. I have no idea what it is so I will probably just remove them if they get in the way. I guess it may be some fruit/berry that the birds eat a lot of and poop the seeds all over the place? Or maybe the seeds are blown in by the wind. I haven't seen a big version in the neighboring "forest" so I guess the lady who takes care of it cuts those down.

looks like this

Anyway, if you have any idea, please comment the answer....

One more spot

Monster hunter

Rainy days. Went out too feed the chickens but ended up spending an hour just checking out different things. First off I encountered this beast stretching itself on the accidental tomato plant in the backyard.

Oh hai big caterpillar

It wasn't even trying to hide. Now I don't think it was eating the mini tomatoes, at least not anymore. But it was definitely eating something so I took it (It had a real strong grip on the branch, I had to yank it several times before it let go) and gave it to the hens. But they just took a look and didn't show any interest in eating it... maybe it is poisonous or tastes bad, I dunno. My chickens usually eat anything alive, including lizards. Hmm, anyway I squashed it and left it there for them to decide what to do.
Went back to and checked the tomato plants and found 3 more caterpillars which looked more guilty of making the holes in my mini tomatoes. Basically they were the right size. They got squashed too.

One of them

I noticed also that the green peas already had germinated in the backyard and at the entrance. Although it looks like I planted the seeds a bit too shallow so I covered them with a bit more dirt now.

not wasting any time

All the recent rain is making the mikan fruits big and juicy. There's only 3 but not bad for the first year.

mikan sapling is right in the middle there

In the backyard, I took a few minutes to thin out the carrots in the same way as I explained in my previous post.

The original carrot bed

Then a few rain drops later and the carrots I had moved looked like they were dying

Oh geez..

But they actually recovered after a few hours and stood up by themselves

One more spot where pulled carrots are transplanted to

The broccoli have sprouted and still not eaten up thanks to the tent I put on top.

I thinned those out too, but didn't move the pulled ones anywhere new. Just threw them away. I guess I could have mixed them into a salad but it was too little to care.

After thinning out

The chingensai too has sprouted, so I will need to thin them out in a week or so. Right now they are all over the place.

It's all those tiny dots

Other than that, not much going on in the backyard. The potatoes on top row are yet to show themselves.

Here are the red spinach. Still small. The bugs don't seem to like the taste

Oh and every day I find new marons that have fallen near the front door so I put them in the fridge. I have collected a lot in just 1 week.

One of these days I'm gonna eat y'all

The mini tomatoes in the picture are bought. Silly Chika asked me to buy even though we got plenty in the garden, just because they are not ripe yet. But then she never even opened the box cause she picked tomatoes from the garden to eat anyway. Guess they ripened after all.
I wanted to take a picture of the peanuts nearest the kitchen before they get too bushy like the other peanuts bed.

Can clearly see the plants dug into the soil and making peanuts

Then I happened to uncover a tarp next to the bed to find a big ant nest... these are the tony ones who ate my strawberries before.

I don't like ants but what can I do? They keep coming and making nests.

I guess I have to try and make the fruits not so easily reachable for them, or spread some D.E. powder around again.

It's been a while

A week has passed and I have finally finished digging the north face. So tired of digging. I dug in the rain, in the sun and everything in between. After I finished I took a long rest just recovering from all the digging.

Sometimes Minion looks like our lord Satan when he is resting

I dug maybe half a meter deep and got rid of all roots and rhizomes. Then I dug a bit deeper in a couple of spots and found that the soil was nothing more than just thick and hard clay underneath. Still in those spots I hit rhizomes... I don't doubt that there are still rhizomes left in 50-100 cm depth (and maybe even deeper) and that they will eventually grow out and up again. But I figure maybe I have got a year of bamboo free bed... If I keep the damn leafs at bay the roots are supposed to run out of energy and die.

Finally finished! Phew! Sweaty work.

 The north side is connected to the neighboring jungle, so I created an edge where the roots etc from the jungle just suddenly hit air where the ground level drops, hoping that they will influence my bed less... Who knows what will happen.

Made a little path with blue sheet

The small path I made goes around the bed and leads to the back. I also made a tiny path in the middle of the bed so I can reach everything on it. Problem is that every time I use those paths, if I'm not careful I bump my head into the plum and prune branches that I left hanging above the bed. If the cherry and peach saplings take and grow I will have more branches to bump into in a few years, hehe.

Flattened the bed and made the middle path more clear

When the bed was ready I planted some onions, beets, and daikon radishes underneath the hanging branch. And to the right where there is nothing hanging I planted broad beans and green peas. This time as a lesson learned I left a bit of space between them to avoid cramped leafs and aphid infestation. Plus I hope the onions keep some bugs away?
By the way I had a visit and review of my peanuts bed. I wrote to the owners of the plots neighboring my forest plot, and asked them to meet and agree upon our lands' boundaries because I want to cut trees in my plot etc. I gave them my email address but didn't care writing my phone number or address cause I don't feel confident getting sudden important Japanese calls from people I don't know yet.

Intermission picture. Everyday new ones fall from the neighbor forest into my garden. Yum.

Anyway, a couple of days later the door bell rang and there was this old guy who turned out to be one of the owners I sent letter to. Apparently he doesn't use e-mail (wow) and since he has some connections in the city office, he managed to grab my home address from them (again, wow) and rode his car to my place to talk. I was super happy of course. After apologizing for no address, I told him about my plans to cut the bamboos, dig up all the rhizomes and set a root border around the plot. He asked me what I wanted to do with my plot and since I haven't decided yet I told him I want to plant fruit trees. He told me that it will be difficult because bamboo keeps falling over from north side plot which is share-owned by many, and is higher than its surroundings, so any saplings would probably break from all the fallen bamboos. He also confirmed when I asked him, that my plot originally was his, and he apologized that it is so bamboo-ridden. I asked him what he uses his land for and he said he grows peanuts. Cause falling trees don't hurt so much then.

Intermission picture. Lots of half eaten tomatoes recently. Because of all the rain?

He told me his family are registered as farmers and that is why they can own farmland, and he asked me what I do for a living. I told him quickly that I am an engineer but that I am trying to learn what I can about farming. I invited him in and showed him the garden. Of course he was happy to see the peanuts and asked me what sort they are. I answered Uhhhh... and he asked how big the seeds were and I told him. He said the peanuts are this and that sort and that they will be pretty big. He told me to wait until the leafs have turned yellow before thinking about harvesting. He said they look good.

Wide load. The peanuts grow wider every day

I told him I would love to do some serious planting but that there is not enough land so that is why I need to fix the forest plot. He said great, but it's gonna be difficult to keep the rhizomes at bay. He left me his phone number and I am supposed to call him and set a meeting time after I have managed to get in touch with the other owner. He said it would be best if we all 3 could meet at the spot and agree. He was very friendly.
So... now I am more confident about my peanuts at least.
My next digging project, much smaller than the ones before, shall be to extend the bed closest to the kitchen, and to cut down the hanamizu tree. Right now it can't be done because tomatoes and peanuts are still growing there (well it can actually cause extending the bed won't mean touching either of them, but I'm tired of digging right now)
As a sneak start... I am cleaning out the weeds that have grown out of the planters I placed there before. 

The wilderness in planters

I moved the planters into the chicken run and hope the chickens enjoy killing the weeds for me.

Wilderness moved into the run

Oh, yeah. I have now raised one tunnel in the backyard over the broccoli. I also planted chigensai (!), cauliflower, brussels sprouts and some other crap seeds I had laying around, and this time covered them with netting.

I will eventually raise the rest of the tunnel too

The carrots are still not eaten up so there is hope. I have developed a technique to avoid waste of tiny seedlings. When I pull seedlings to make space for the carrots, rather than throwing them away I put them in the ground in a bed nearby, with proper spacing between them. That way the pulled seedlings will also have a chance of becoming carrots.