Scorched earth

Almost every day has been sunny for a long time, and I had to water the garden by hand from the tanks a couple of times a week. I've continuously tried to add organic matter to the clay soil and it has slowly improved the beds, however, I have also been very diligent in removing all weeds and feeding them to the chickens. As result, the soil in the beds are less and less clay but since there is nothing to protect them they dry out real quick and gradually turn into sand, even with all the compost I added. So I decided to stop pulling out weeds, and instead cut them down. The big culprits with rhizomes are almost removed anyway, so by keeping cutting the top part of the weeds hopefully their roots die eventually. What I cut I shall just leave there instead of giving it to chickens, so the beds will not have to be bare and get baked day after day. I also brought a couple of bags of bamboo powder from my forest plot (there is plenty of that around my chipper these days) and used to mulch the beds that were worst off. Mostly in the backyard in the south where the sun and its reflection from the big windows is most intense.

Children of the corn

I will stop digging in the beds as much as possible, and just plant where I need to and let the rest, well, rest under the mulch.
Thanks to the nice and sunny weather, we have been eating the most delicious strawberries every day.

One day's harvest

The bed in the main garden contributes most but is also most difficult to maintain, because I made it too wide, and I cannot reach the middle parts, even if I balance on the stepping tiles I've strategically put there. So after the strawberry season is over I am going to part the wide bed into three long beds with proper paths between them.
Chika is so glad for the strawberries that she asked me to expand the beds and use more of the backyard for strawberries. Which I will also do.

Another day's harvest

The berries are growing crowded so they are not very big. Instead there is a lot of small very sweet berries. And I even had too much one day so I gave to the next door neighbors.
But it's not just us who eat the berries...

Oreo eats pretty much everything

And thanks to the strawberries I also found the bad guy who attacked my chickens the other night. I have noticed recently 1-2 half eaten strawberry outside of the garden beds, Chika had heard crows during the evening and we assumed it must be them who had nibbled on the berries. But the other night I was sitting and minding my own business when I glanced from the corner of my eye a cat in the backyard. Very strange since I have fenced in everything and made it cat-proof so Tora can be outside on his own. Looked closer from the window and saw that it was not a cat but a civet that was checking out the strawberry bed and looking for goodies in the backyard. I waved my arms around till it noticed me and dashed away and fled. In doing so I was relieved to see that there was no hole or damage in the fence where it had come in. But it had just climbed over the metal net. It climbed back up and proceeded to walk, quite skilled and balanced, on top of the fence towards the chicken run, where the chickens were safe and sound asleep in their locked coop. The morning after I looked and there it was, a tiny hole above the net in the chicken run where the civet could have climbed down and eaten the eggs and bit the chicken.
Anyway... in the forest things are not changing much since I am just sorting and waiting for a good time to burn the bamboo. I did fix the motor belt of the chipper that had broken.

Me, next to the heap of branches waiting to be burned

THE PLAN is still valid, but I realized that seasons is maybe not the best way to measure progressing time, so I converted the plan to months... Here goes:

• May: 3 types of bamboo all sorted and separated (branch, chip-able and burnable)
• June: All chip-able bamboo should be shredded. All bamboo in the north should be cut down.
• July: The leaning tree in the north to be cut. Measure, cut and clear the land in south so the plot looks like on the map. (The south vegetation seems to have gradually grown and invaded the path, and the path has gradually invaded my plot, so now it is time to reclaim the land)
• August: Catch up with anything left of above steps. Prepare for burning and burn some/all the branches.
• September: Burn all the rest of bamboos.
• November: Cut down the sugi trees
• December: Clear the trees. Dig up bamboo roots and fix proper road to south.
• January: Fix soil. Fence in the plot. Fix trenches.
• February-April: Catch up. Put in saplings, bushes and flowers. Install beehives.