Clusterbeets

All the vegetable seeds I planted in the garden have now germinated and tiny leafs are everywhere... In case of daikons, well, I just put a bunch of seeds in the ground every 10-20 cm, and now the leafs popped up in clusters.
I am now pulling out the weakest ones every day until there is only one or two left from each bunch.
I guess I should have planted the seeds 1 by 1 in a row instead.

Bit of waste of good seeds

In the forest front, I keep burning bamboo a couple of time each week... however, I noticed that I have started coughing recently, because my usual mask is apparently not enough to protect me from the smokes. So I will go hunt for a good anti smoke mask, and reduce the burning to once a week tops, and during the burning try to stay away from the barrel.

It's opening up

I am almost done with clearing the plot and stacking bamboos. After that (maybe this weekend) I will go to the owner of the plot to my north and get permission to clear out his plot from bamboos. I could not plant any saplings in my plot as long as those tall things are leaning over it threatening to fall.

I want to tidy up the north plot with stacks of bamboo just like mine 

I hope to be done with that before X-mas, and start to cut down sugis on my own plot. When that is done, I should be able to start digging out bamboo roots in my plot and prepare the soil for planting trees. So there is still a lot left to do.

Exterminate!

The real flattening

In the forest, right now I am picking weeds and moving all the bamboo from the floor over to the north where I stack them neatly and wait for them to dry so I can burn them. The bamboo that cannot be piled up cause they are too small or too old, I just throw in a pile near the center. That pile is where I get the bamboo to burn right now.
Anyway, it took me 3-4 more hours to burn the rest of that pile from last time.

All done. No pile left.

Of course, a new pile had built up almost immediately after I had done more clearing out...

Episode IV: A New Pile

So that's how the burning goes. Every day the clear area around the burn barrel gets wider and wider. And now I arrived at the big heap of branches that I had gathered and put in the middle of the plot. It's almost like a wall, and has to go somewhere else if I am to continue clearing the plot.

The branches

It looks simple enough, but actually it's much bigger than it seems. The weight is pressing the branches down together so they look much smaller and fewer. I started to haul them over to the north, behind the stacks of bamboo. At least for now it is a good place for them to be. Later I will burn them little by little...

3 hours later...

Moving them took much more time than I expected. Maybe cause I was extra careful cause lots of tiny leaf frogs had chosen that heap to hide in cause every time I lifted a bunch a few frogs jumped out and away to hide among the leafs nearby.

This is where I moved them

The north side is covered now with all kind of things, and it is almost impossible to see where my plot begins. First, I chopped all the bamboo in the public land and laid them there, then I put some thick bamboos on my side as posts so they wouldn't roll down. Then I laid a few more bamboos behind the posts on my side as extra support, all that formed a thick strip along the north, made of bamboo, half of which is on my plot. During my weed clearing I just tossed all the weed on top of the strip which dried quickly and has started to decompose. Now the strip looks a lot like just soil, but underneath it is still bamboo. So if someone who doesn't know looks at it, the norther slope which marked the border to my land is now 2-3 meters inside my land. Therefore it is important that all this north strip is just temporary and that I burn it as soon as I can so the original slope can be seen again.
My bamboo stacks are just south of that strip, and I have now filled the tiny gap there was between the strip and the stacks, with branches.

It's a mess

Going back to the wall of branches, one more day and the whole thing was finally moved over to its new home.

No more branch wall

Let the flattening commence. Once the weed and the bamboo on the floor is cleared away, I will spend time burning bamboo mostly. In between burning, I will chop down sugi trees in my plot and also bamboo trees in my north neighbor plot, after I get OK from him.

Spider-man

I took a couple of hours and cleaned out most of the beds in the garden, and put in winter seeds. It's mostly things I don't think thief animals would be interested in... like onions, beans, carrots, daikon and broccoli. But one never knows.
Also to prevent the ever growing bigger passion fruit plants from freezing to death again, I wrapped their stems in bubble wrap (yeah, that's the first thing I found laying around. I'm lazy) and partially covered the lower part of the plants with fine netting. Hope this makes the frost a little milder for them and they don't explode like last year.
Oh, and I took this interesting photo one night when I was tucking the chickens in. They seem to have gotten themselves a house pet.

It's pretending to be a fly on the wall

Second burning

Last Saturday I went to the forest prepared and determined to use a full day and see how much bamboo could be burned. I started around 10:30 in the morning, with a pile of half-soaked wood.
It took me maybe 10 minutes to uncover the barrel and get anything to actually catch fire, but once that was done, the fire was on...

I kind of was expecting this whole pile to burn within a day

I threw in more and more wood whenever I noticed there was space opening up in the barrel, and in between I spent time picking weeds and moving bamboo that is laying around and pile it up along the north wall. I knew around 4 PM the sun starts to go down and it would get dark and scary so I counted a bit backwards and with a bit of margin decided to start putting out the fire at 3 PM.
Based on that I decided to add one last load of bamboo around 2:30 PM, and just let that burn to ashes. Figured half an hour should suffice.

After. Around 2:30. Barrel is still burning though.

So, yeah. I could burn a lot of wood, but not as much as I wished. Burning everything will take a few months if I burn say once or twice a week... I guess I shouldn't wait till all bamboo is burned before starting to cut down sugi trees.

First burning

This! Is! Sparta! (Just noticed this is my 300th post)
Last weekend weather was expected to be cloudy in the morning and rainy in the afternoon so I thought it was suitable for trying the burn barrel. Headed over to the woods and found this cute mushroom had made a home on my bamboo pile.

Almost felt sorry to stack more bamboos on top of it

Most of the bamboo was still damp from the constant rain a couple days before so I had brought with me some paper to start off the fire. But it didn't want to take... I ended up burning all the paper but not even the tiny bamboo branches had caught any sustainable fire. After maybe 10 minutes of trying all that without results I happened to glance at the bamboo stack on the north which just as designed had kept itself mostly dry.
Picked a bit of dry bamboo from there which easily caught fire with just my lighter, and used that to start the fire in barrel, removing the dampness of the remaining bamboo...

..and after that the fire was almost perfect

Of course every time I threw a new bit of bamboo in, being all damp, the fire got smokey for a few seconds, but after that it went back to almost no smoke, so the few air holes in only the bottom of the barrel were enough I guess. After maybe an hour of burning, I noticed that the clouds started to disperse, and the sun came out. Later it turned out to not become a rainy day at all. I kept hoping that the clouds would gather so none of the nearby homes would think about hanging out their laundry and get angry at my fire. At times when it got smokey and the wind went the wrong direction I felt kinda bad... but I suppose they are used to it especially with all the farms and farmers around that area, who burn everything. At least I don't burn plastic or garbage. Just wood. I figure if they chose to live there they must have understood what it means, and have a bit of tolerance. I won't be burning everyday neither...

The barrel doing a real good job

Anyway, after 2,5 hours I called it a day. At least for a first session it should be enough. I had burned more bamboo than I expected too. Plus I wanted to know how much "after work" would be needed, i.e. putting out the fire, emptying the barrel and cleaning it, and letting it get cold so I could cover it again with tarp.

After burn

I poured water to extinguish the flames and also bring down the temperature of the barrel itself so I could grab it. That took only about 12 liters of water. After that I dumped the ashes and coal in a pile nearby and poured maybe another 12 liters on that so it stopped steaming. Then wiped the bottom part and the barrel's inside with towel, so it wouldn't start rusting right away, and let all of that cool down and the remaining water evaporate. All that took maybe 30 minutes tops.

Inside of the barrel after I wiped it 

and after that it was time to wrap up and go home. Nice.

I also put a plastic lid on top of the barrel under the tarp

Burn barrel

I just want to pause and think about how much different the forest plot is now, and how far I have come, although I am not finished at all.
So I took these pictures last week, trying to take them from the same spots as the ones from before I cut bamboos. (Before pics are here:  https://mrbnatural.blogspot.com/2018/03/i-hate-bamboo.html )

It is really different

And hopefully when I finish it will look even nicer 

Burning bamboo in the pit I had made works OK, but it is not efficient cause I have to break down the bamboo to tiny 30-50 cm pieces before I toss them in. And I can't burn any larger amount at once if I want to keep it safe. Maybe I can burn 10 bamboos within 3 hours or so.
So I started looking around and found a guy who makes and sells burn barrels pretty cheap, so I drove over and got one. And put right where the fire pit was.

Brand new rusty

Although I just noticed the burn barrel doesn't have air holes in its sides... It only has holes in the bottom shelf (above the low square opening).
So I guess I will do a trial burn, and if it is not smokey, fine. If it is smokey, I should try and remove the bottom shelf and see if it improves. If not, then I have to haul the thing back home again and drill a dozen side-holes.
Oh, I also finally removed the shredder, which was just sitting there all dead. I will see if I can give it to some junk collector...

More typhoons

Just when I thought we were done with typhoons, another approached us. It was supposed to be the biggest in 60 years. The news said it is like 10 times bigger than the last one this year, and that one was pretty huge and disastrous, and we were urged to prepare for worst and evacuate if told. Its calculated path was right above Chiba. So I prepared for the worst.
Before that though, I paid a visit to the forest to burn a bit of bamboo and to check that the newly cleared path was still there. When I arrived I saw the city office' truck parked at the entrance to the forest, and further down I saw 3 guys walking the path toward my plot.
Hooray! They're here to check where they should be pouring gravel. I ran and caught up with them and showed them around. Told them where the path goes and how it is expected to look.
They said they would do it today, but they had typhoon preparations so they promised to do it next week. Yippeee! Finally I can drive there.
I cleaned up a little more inside my plot, and moved the logs of the sugi trees that I fell a couple of weeks earlier and laid them along the new path, to mark where my land is. Those logs are pretty heavy and it's not as easy as the bamboos to just move aside by any passerby.

My plot is opening up from the center and outward

The path with logs

My plot seen from south-west corner

Anyway, back home and shut the shutters and tape the windows and wait for the worst. There was a lot of rain and an earthquake, before the typhoon hit us.
The typhoon was pretty normal to be honest. It was over within an couple of hours and not much had changed when I looked outside the next day. Even the forest was almost unchanged, except maybe 2 trees that had fallen. None of them in my plots though...
I suppose when they said the typhoon was the biggest ever, they meant the area it covered, rather than its wind strength. There were some tornadoes maybe 5-6 hours before the typhoon came, and those caused much much worse damage, like tore up houses and turned cars upside down and killed people. Otherwise, the typhoon brought with it lots and lots of rain and people were suddenly wading to their nipples in water. None of that was near us though. We saw it all on the news, where they showed how rivers were overflown.
The next morning, I checked the forest and it looks like one tree that was leaning dangerously over my other plot which I hoped would get cut down, had actually decided to fall over, but was stopped and supported by one of the sugi trees in my plot. Oh well, I guess it will fall when the next typhoon hits.

It's leaning all right.

I hope the city office folks don't think it's too scary to lay gravel under there...
Speaking of leaning trees, both the walnut saplings in my garden are leaning fiercely to the north-west. Even normal wind is pretty strong there, so even though I planted them straight, they keep leaning more and more. I guess I have to come up with some sort of support till they have grown bigger.

I'm just using ropes right now, but need something more stable