October Harvest 2

With no sign of a frost yet, the garden is still producing tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, and the first of the winter carrots too.

Spinach, called horenso in Japanese is harvestable now too. Horen is Chinese for Persia, and so means plant, so the Japanese name means "Persian plant", Persia being the area it originated from before being introduced into Japan from China.

Lettuce, retasu in Japanese, are also being picked. I planted 3 kinds with seeds from England. Lettuce was introduced into Japan from the U.S. after WWII.

October Harvest

Started to harvest some edamame this week. Edamame means "twig beans" as the pods grow in clusters from short twigs attached to the main stem. Edamame is the name used in English nowadays, but in fact edamame are just immature soy beans. They are boiled lightly in the pods and then eaten mostly as a type of "bar snack", though I read that in the West they are served at expensive Japanese restaurants. I prefer to let the beans grow full term when they become Kuramame, black beans. The crows took most of the beans I planted, so I tried starting some in pots and they succsessfully transplanted, so that's the way I'll do it next year.

Still picking tons of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. Eggplants grow so easily and are so prolific that people don't know how to use them all and many just rot in the gardens. The best way I have found to preserve them is with this Sri Lankan Eggplant Pickle recipe. It's a lot of work, but well worth the effort.

Rice Harvest

The rice harvest has been underway for a few weeks now. Mostly it's done on weekends or holidays, as most rice farmers have full time jobs doing something else. Some people use combine harvesters that cut the rice and strip the grain in one operation, and some just cut the rice and let it dry.

Temporary drying racks made from Giant Bamboo are a common sight now.

In a village up in the mountains near Iwami Ginzan, the farmers build an unusual support to hold the drying rice. people come from all over to photograph it.

The rice is taken to the mill building that every settlement has. The motors hum non-stop for weeks as the rice is hulled. Behind the shed the rice husks collect into piles. The husks are used as mulch in our vegetable gardens.

It is often said that Japan's grossly ineffecient rice harvest is funded by the LDP as a way of wooing the rural vote - a rural vote can be worth 3 or 4 city votes-, but I think there is another reason. The money the farmers receive doesnt stay with the farmers, it ends up in the coffers of the zaibatsu. Rice farming is completely mechanized, with every farmer owning many pieces of equipment, often only used once a year. As well as the equipment manufacturers, the chemical companies also make a fortune as Japanese farmers use a LOT of chemicals.

Mountain Whale

Looking into the eye of a whale..... a Mountain Whale,..... which is also known as inoshishi,.... a wild boar. It was called mountain whale as a way to circumvent the proscription against eating meat. A whale is a fish and therefore exempt. Rabbits are classified as birds for the same reason.
Monks and buddhist priests, and devout buddhists, ate no meat, but most Japanese ate any meat they could get,... frog, snake, badger,.... dog was popular in Edo.

Inoshishi are classified as a pest as they destroy many gardens. My own gardens have been raided several times. Last autumn my neighbor set a trap next to one of the tracks that the boar were coming out of the forest on. In 3 months he caught 3 full-size boar.

We no longer have a hunter in our village, so a friend from another village was called and he dispatched the beast with one shot.

The tail is cut off so a small bounty can be gotten from the town council.

I have read that in parts of Japan many boars are killed as pests but the carcasses just burnt.

Round here inoshishi meat is prized, and from each one caught I got a leg and the ribs. Fresh boar meat is tender and very tasty.

I caught these little guys on the road a few years ago. They were just standing, waiting for their mom who was down in the rice paddy. Maybe one of these little cuties, a few years older, was what we ate :)

September harvest

The gardens continue to produce an abundance of tomatoes, both large, and cherry. Most of my neighbors trim their tomato plants to a single upright vine which soon dies. I make a cage of steel mesh and let the plants spread like a jungle. I'll be picking tomatoes until the first frost in late November, and then there will be kilos of green tomatoes to have too.

The bell peppers continue to fruit. I let them ripen now into sweet red peppers. They too will kepp producing for 2 more months.

Had a small harvest of swedish turnips, known as swede in the UK, and rutabaga in the US, no-one here has seen any before. The tops started to rot, probably due to the excess ofrain the past month, so they should have grown a few more months and gotten bigger.

Still more eggplants to pick everyday.

This years sweet potato harvest will be small again this year. The vines were doing great yesterday, but sometime during the night wild boars (inoshishi) dug up and ate a lot of the fattest.

Millet harvest

Harvesting pearl millet right now.

When I was a kid, millet was what you gave to the budgie! Later I discovered a health-food cookbook from the 1930's that had a recipe for millet souffle that I made often, so I was pleased to try and grow some millet.

It grows easily, and very quickly, reaching a height of 3 metres in a couple of months.

Once its cut and dried, then the hard work of threshing must be done.

For all the pseudo-religious waffle one hears in Japan about rice, its worth noting that for most of Japanese history most Japanese ate little rice. A porridge made of 5 grains, rice, wheat, 2 types of millet, and "beans" was the staple, and of these millet has the longest history in Japan. It was grown by the Jomon a thousand years before the Japanese came to these islands.

We use it added into bread, and it also makes an excellent broom!! This one is still good after a years use.

August harvest

This month the Kabocha are getting ripe. Introduced by the Portugese in the 16th Century from Cambodia, its is the commonest member of the squash family in Japan. My riverside garden has unused land on 3 sides, so I plant kabocha along the edges and let it spread into the waste land. Wild boars and monkeys like the young fruit, but neither go down to the riverside gardens.

Known as Tomorokoshi in Japanese, the yellow sweetcorn is the only kind of maize grown in Japan. My first year here I grew a crop of Navajo blue corn, and probably will return to it for next year. It was probably introduced in the late 18th Century. Roasted corn ears are a popular matsuri food. Japan is the world's largest importer of corn for animal feed.

Zuccini (or courgette) has given me problems for years. An orange bug has destroyed my crops each year. This year I grew the plants under net until the rainy season passed, and so far so good, I'm harvesting. You can find zuccini in the supermarket, but its not very common. No-one else in my village grows it.

And this is what it is all about!!!
Fresh, 100% organic ratatouille,.....garlic, onion, green pepper, zuccini. eggplant, and tomatoes..... everything except the olive oil came out of my garden!

July harvest

Here are some of the veggies I've been picking from my gardens this month.

Known as ninjin in Japanese, carrots were introduced from Europe through Nagasaki in the 19th Century. They grow pretty much all year round, but my main crop I plant for winter harvesting.

Most people round here have never seen beets, though the leafy variety known as Swiss Chard was introduced in the 19th Century. Hokkaido now grows a lot of sugar beets. As with carrots, my main crop I grow in the Fall, and mostly I pickle them. Pickled beetroot can not be bought in Japan.

Tomatoes were introduced by the Portugese in the 17th century, though improved strains were introduced from the USA in the 20th century. This variety of yellow cherry tomatoes I hadn't tried before. The larger red tomatoes are just starting to get ripe and I'll be picking them continuously until November.
Of course we have also been picking kilos of green peppers and eggplants!

Shiso

This plant is a volunteer in my garden every summer. Known sometimes as Beefsteak Plant in English, but also by its Japanese name of Shiso, it is a member of the mint family. There are 2 species of shiso, green, and red. Anyone who has had sashimi will know green shiso as its leaves are the bed on which the sashimi lays. It is also used in salads, cooked as tempura etc. Red Shiso, pictured above, is used to give umeboshi and pickled ginger its distinctive purple color. It also makes a fragrant, tasty lemonade.
Boil the leaves for about 5 minutes, strain, add sugar to taste and then let cool. Add citric acid (lemon juice) and store in the fridge.

June harvest (part 2)

Here's a further look at what we have been picking from our gardens in June.

Green peppers are one of the plants that do so well that people allow them to rot in the garden as there are just too many. I bought 2 freezers to keep all our excess vegetables available year round, so we don't let them rot. Called "pima" in Japan, they were introduced by the Portugese in the 16th Century, although did not become popular until after WWII.

Another plant that usually produces more than people need is the eggplant/aubergine. Introduced from China about 1,500 years ago, the Japanese word for them, 'Nasu", means grows quickly. My favorite way to preserve the excess is with a Sri Lankan pickle recipe.

I tend to favor veggies that grow easily with little maintenance, and green beans/French beans fit that description. Known as "ingen" in Japan, apparently named after a zen monk named Ingen who introduced them to Japan in the middle of the 19th Century.

June Harvest part 1

June harvest (part 1)

Japan is a very fertile place! It's also very wet, with a mild climate, so it's very easy to grow a lot of food. Here is a selection of what we've been getting from our gardens this month. (I already posted about Lima beans)

Compared to Europe or the U.S., potatoes are relatively expensive in Japan, and there is not a great variety. I'm a meat 'n potatoes kind of guy, so a big chunk of my garden space is given over to the mighty spud. In our village this year everybodies potatoes did not do well,.. the plants were stunted and yellow, but I still managed to harvest about 40 kilos, certainly not enough to last the year, but never fear..... one of my neighbors, a full-time farmer - a rarity in Japan- , grows lots, and as she grows them for sale she throws out any that are under 4-5 cms. Once she found out I love those tasty little spuds she now gives me about 60 kilos every spring!!! The potato was introduced into Japan about 400 years ago by the Dutch. Coming from their base in Jakarta, potatoes became known as "jagatara imo", now shortened to Jyagaimo.

Garlic was known in Japan in ancient times, being mentioned in the 7th Century Kojiki. In the Heian period it was known as a food and a medicine. At some point there was a Buddhist proscription against eating garlic and so it fell out of favor and didn't start to be eaten again till the Meiji period (late 19th Century). The Japanese palate shies away from "strong" flavors, and so it is not used a lot, mostly in Italian and French dishes. We preserve some in soy sauce, and in olive oil.

Various kinds of small onions, spring onions, green onions, etc have been grown for a long time in Japan, but the large, globular onions were not introduced until relatively late, in the Meiji period. It was introduced by Americans into Hokkaido, and the american influence on the newly colonized northern island's agriculture is easily visible today. From there it spread south. It was also introduced on a lesser scale in the Kobe area from an American living in that Treaty Port. I always plant some of our onions close together and then pick them when they are small,... perfect size for pickled onions, something not available in the stores here.

Sky beans.

Finally finished picking my Lima beans! It was a bumper crop this year,... probably more than 50 kilos. Called Sora mame in Japanese, it means "sky beans", because when the young pods first start to grow on the stems, they grow upwards towards the sky rather than hanging down.
Its not sure exactly when they were introduced into Japan, but probably around the end of the Edo period. They are quite expensive in the supermarkets because they don't stay fresh for long, and so are not particularly popular. They are usually eaten boiled or grilled. Recently at a ryokan we were served rice with a few lima beans mixed in.

I like them! Mainly because they are easy to grow, they take very little tending, and also because they grow through the winter and so supply fresh food to the table by spring.