My artworks of summer vegetables

An unwelcome artwork by Mr. Bug.

This week's harvest

 I'm very happy to see the bumper harvest of summer vegetables but I and my wife are wondering how we can consume them? 

 Anyway, I sliced a cucumber harvested just now and enjoyed the sliced cucumbers with mayonnaise.

The growth of my summer vegetables

 Now in Japan it's in the mid of "Tsuyu/梅雨", a early-summer rainy season and I and other gardeners were expecting a lot of rain but according to the latest weather report, this rainy season might bring less rain due to rain systems which are pushed down to the south away from Japan. Actually, we have seen no rainy day since the Japan meteorological agency had announced officially the start of the rainy season.

 Due to the less rain than average, I have to visit my garden everyday to water my summer vegetables before going to my office. That kind of routine sounds boring but the fruits of labor like flowers and growing fruits animate me.

 1. Eggplant

2 Cucumbers

3 Green eggplant's flower           4 Tomatoes

5 Basil

Planting summer vegetables

 I was looking forward to planting summer vegetables because I installed some organic methods to ward off aphids as I mentioned in my previous blog. And I and my kids planted the sprouts on the gardening ridges covered with silver mulching sheets.

 List of my summer vegetables:

2 eggplants
1 green eggplant
3 tomatoes (Momotaro)
2 cucumbers

A green eggplant, my first try.

3 tomatoes (Momotaro)

 I invented a new organic method to repel aphids! It's "a silver pole". It's very simple to make it! Just taping plastic poles with aluminium adhesive tape.
 I hope those methods will be "silver bullets" for protecting my vegetables against bugs.

Pulling out cucumbers with my daughter

 Helping me in my garden in the mid of hot August shows my daughter's attitude toward gardening, I believe.

 Today's weather was so hot and humid that I sweated so much even when I just walked to my garden but my daughter, who is in her summer holiday, loves to work with me in my garden and pulled out my cucumbers and the plastic poles. Her good help could save my working time. My cucumber's leaves began turning brown since the mid of July and the fruits also grew halfway. That's is the sign saying the cucumber was close to death. So I decided to pull them out.

 I harvested about 50 cucumbers from the 3 trees. I believe they could give a bumper harvest and my vegetable space in my fridge was full of them. After pulling them out, I added fertilizer, cow manure and ash powder to the place for the cucumbers and mix them up for the next autumn vegetables like Chinese cabbages(Hakusai cabbages), which my daughter loves.

 As my summer vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes have gone, my eggplants have grown well and my daughter feels it joyful to harvesting some of the fruits. I planted different breed of eggplants which can have long fruits. You can see the difference of length between a long one and usual one.

Cracked but juicy fruits

 The rainy season, which gave tons of water to my vegetables and damaged my carrots, has finished and a hot summer with scorching sunshine started. As the sunshine was becoming strong, the growth of my summer vegetables was getting so fast that some of them has become too big while I was absent for a few days. When I visited my garden last time, most of my tomatoes were still young and partially red but today I found most of them became as big as my fist and were cracked. The cracks might be caused by too much water the tomatoes sack up. But it's OK. I will not sell them but enjoy them at home. My tomatoes are cracked but so juicy.

Still my tomato trees have many young fruits so my family have to consume them to secure space for them in my fridge.

Today's harvest:
15 tomatoes
2 egg-plants
5 cucumbers

Only 1 intact tomato among 15 I harvested.

Today's dinner:
Tempura of egg-plants and Manganji chili peppers.

Today's dinner
Fresh tomato salad.

Today's harvests and my wife's birthday.

 It's been sunny in the last few days during a rainy season, which was the important opportunity to work in my garden. We have to watch the growth speed of summer vegetables like cucumbers since they can grow much faster in this season due to tons of rain and strong sunlight. One of my cucumbers became too big while a few days. Big cucumbers has a thick skin but less water inside so we can't use them for salads. Well, I'll have to pickled it in rice bran.

  The fruits of my black chili have also grown well and I harvested some of them with green peppers. They were moderately size to enjoy their taste so I'll stir-fly them with sliced beef in oyster sauce, which is my favorite recipe.

  My egg-plants' growth is slower than usual with fewer and smaller fruits. I think the slow growth might be caused by consecutive cropping.

 The tomato harvesting season has arrived! I found many tomato fruits have been mature turning red, whose size were as big as my fist. I'm very excited with this good results since I failed to grow bigger and delicious tomatoes many times. The success is due to Less fertilizer. Too much fertilizer could be consumed for their leave's growth not for their fruits. My tomatoes are "Momotaro/桃太郎" which is popular variety in Japan.

 My sweet corncobs were about 15cm/7inches. I've not found any damage by bugs yet.

 Today is my wife's birthday so I rushed to a flower shop after working in my garden and a floral designer made a flower bouquet for my wife.

Flowers, fruits and love for my wife

Pickling cucumbers in rice bran

 Pickling vegetables is not only a way to make them delicious but to preserve them for longer. As many cucumbers are harvested, I've been eager to make "糠漬け (Nukazuke)", one of the Japanese traditional pickled vegetables in rice bran. When I was a child, my mother or my grandma got tons of rice bran for free from a local rice shop since rice bran was seen as just by-product at that time. Many Japanese households had their own taste of the Nukazuke with adding variety seasonings to rice bran.

 Now we can buy a packed rice bran, which is specialized for the pickled vegetables, mixed with salt, pepper, and other seasonings in local shops and I also tried it.

 First, I have to make "a rice bran bed" for cucumber to be pickled there. Add water to the rice bran and mix them up with hands to make it sticky. We have to care amount of water to be added since too much water make the bed too watery.

 When the rice bran bed is completed, put cucumbers onto the bed and,,,,,

cover them fully with the rice bran and keep it in a fridge for a few days.

 After 2 days, I found water coming out of cucumbers in a cup inside the Tupperware which shows the cucumbers had been pickled well and ready to be served. 

  The taste was moderately salty, juicy and very crispy! They go well with steamed rice but my favorite way to enjoy pickled cucumbers is to eat them with cold beer!

Cucumbers in "Cute" shapes

 Sometimes easy tools can make gardening more fun and I found funny tools in the Internet.

 A pair of "Cucumber Molds" are clear-plastic molds in heart-shaped and star-shaped and you can imagine easily how the shape of the "molded cucumbers" will be when they will have grown.

We can use them easily and quickly. Open the mold and put an young cucumber into it and,,,

                                   
 Close and lock up the mold. Literally a cucumber was molded.

3 days later, the molded cucumber's grown in a star-shape.

 I and my kids said "Wow!" when I cut the cucumber. Yes, it was truly a star-shaped cucumber.

  My kids sang "Twinkle, twinkle little star, now I've found what you are♪" while they were eating "the Stir-spangled Salad".

Harvesting all potatoes

  It took 4 months since I and my daughter planted seed potatoes and today all of them have been harvested successfully. It's difficult for me to see an opportunity to harvest them in the mid of a rainy season but I managed to harvest them while the sunshine was seen, which was only about a hour.

 I'm very satisfied with the size of those potatoes which was much bigger than the last year's ones.

Today's harvest:
3 cucumbers
100 potatoes