Technical difficulties

I'm having some technical difficulties with images at the moment. Once this gets sorted out, I'll have this week's update posted in no time flat.

Gone a week, come back to a Tokyo windstorm

Last week I enjoyed a 7 day vacation in Hawaii and am a bit bummed to be back to real life here in Tokyo. On the other hand, only 51 more weeks to go until the next Hawaiian weeklong vacation!

I didn't have anyone who could take care of these plants while I was gone, so I did my best and topped them up with water and hoped things would turn out for the best. Unfortunately Tokyo is in the midst of a spring windstorm and there has been quite a bit of damage to some of the plants.

Strawberries devastated by the wind

The strawberries seem to have taken the brunt of the wind. The larger, taller plants are all broken near the soil and any fruits that we might have expected seem to have dried up. It may not have all been a wind problem, as no one was watering them all week, but seeing how torn up the leaves and stems are seems to show that the worst damage came from being battered around in the wind.

Interestingly, the shorter (more delicious berries) on top seem to have done okay. I suspect because they aren't so tall they didn't catch the wind as much and just pushed through the storm.

What I'm not too happy about is that the plants on top are foregoing fruiting and are just sending out runners. Runners are great when you want to make more strawberry plants, but not so great if you want strawberries. I'll have to find a pot to catch the runners in and start them before it gets too hot. They will become next year's plants. I still wish I could get *this year's* berries, though.

Corn seedlings thirsty for water

The corn seedlings seemed a bit better. Although the vinyl covering that protected them was torn off during the windstorm, the seedlings seem to be doing okay. However, because they are in such small pots, the soil was bone dry and a lot of the seedlings were wilting. I gave them a shot of water this morning and hopefully we'll see some life in them. These are for giving away to other veranda gardeners. We certainly don't have room for 16 more corn plants here.

Corn in the planter doing great

Surprisingly, the corn in the planter, directly exposed to sun and wind for a week without anyone to care for it, has done great. All the planted seeds have sprouted and they look great. Sadly, there are too many here and I will have to thin them out. This is always the most difficult part of gardening.

The thinning will be done next Saturday so the most vigorous corn can be identified. Hopefully the strawberries and corn seedlings in the starter pots revive!

The 2013 spring crop

This season we are sticking with a few favorites and trying a new vegetable.

Strawberries

As before, strawberries are always welcome and this year we've got a brand new planter for them.

The planter is terra cotta, which will absorb and hold heat. Also, it is tiered to allow plants at different levels to receive even amount of sun without getting shaded by each other. This kind of planter seems to be very productive, according to the ones I've seen around.

We've got 5 plants of two types planted. In the center are two small akihime plants. This is a challenging type, but the fruits are extremely sweet and fragrant. In the three outer pockets are tough and tall beni-hoppe strawberry plants. This type is easier to grow and should be very productive.

Avocados

In three planters a few feet away, I've started some avocados. I love growing them, and I love eating them. My wife doesn't seem to appreciate them as much as I do, so I had to start these seeds in secret.

The one in the middle has sprouted and is making some vertical headway. The others are still unsprouted. I will not be expecting too much and won't feel too bad if I have to grind these into mulch later if they don't start soon.

The soil they are in is full of uprooted plants from around the garden, which is why it looks like such a mess. It's just extra mulch, as far as I'm concerned.

Sunflowers

Although it's a bit early, I planted a handful of miniature sunflower seeds. During some spring cleaning, I found a package of seeds from eight years ago.

If something comes up, I'll be happy. If nothing comes up, I can't say I was expecting anything from these 8 year old seeds. This planter is actually my mulching planter, so if the seeds are dead they will just get turned into the mulch and will find life as the soil for some other plant.

Corn

The big new crop we're trying is corn. With spring two weeks early in Tokyo, the timing is just right to start some corn for an early summer crop.

This is the main planter with two corn plants expected. Under the surface sprouts are just becoming visible.

  

In addition, I've started a bunch of corn seeds in a starter tray. 

To protect the seeds from the wind and from drying out, I placed the instant shelter over them.

Flowers

Finally, in addition to fruits and vegetables, my son brought home a pot of anemones from school.

These flowers add a splash of color to all the brown soil and terra cotta. It's nice to have something nice in the veranda garden, even if it is only aesthetic. If the sunflowers don't sprout, I've given a bit of thought to getting some other flowers to keep the anemones company.

Thanks!

Thank you for coming back to the Veranda Gardening blog. It's been a while, definitely. I am looking forward to learning about how corn grows this season. If things go right, I'm hoping to have a weekly update of all the plants around the garden!

Starting over

Since the last time I wrote in this blog over two years ago, I was looking forward to a new growing season in Tokyo starting in the spring. However on March 11 Japan was hit by the largest earthquake in modern times and a tsunami 30 meters high. This did not happen near Tokyo, but the effect shook the whole country.

Worse, and the reason I haven't written anything, is that soon after the earthquake the Fukushima nuclear reactors failed in the worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl. The land immediately around the reactor is irradiated and will be unusable for production for the next several hundred years. The dust plume caused by the Fukushima explosion spewed radioactive material, cesium mostly, into the atmosphere and that material settled throughout the eastern Japan area. Tokyo was also dusted with this material.

So instead of starting up a new crop in the spring of 2011, I sent my family to Seattle for several months to wait out the initial dust plume and I refrained from planting anything that could be contaminated by the radioactive fallout.

The dust has settled, and the concern about radioactivity in the Tokyo area has also settled. Two years later, it's time to restart.

New Garden: Seattle

Seattle presents great challenges for veranda gardening. Especially in my particular case where I have a giant tree blocking a lot of sunlight in the mornings. Also, although the days last from 6:00am until 9:30pm during the summers here, it never really warms up and the light itself is not very bright. There is a lot of fog in the mornings, so mold is almost guaranteed. The lack of sun means a lot of popular vegetables will be unproductive. The cold means slower growth and later, shorter growing periods.

This is the view from the veranda. You can see the tree that is blocking my sun. Just a few meters over, there is a lot of sun, but that area gets mowed frequently so I can't use it.

Forgetting all that, I went out and bought some supplies and transplants.

I bought a nice, deep planter. On the right is a big bag of Miracle-Gro soil which claims to fertilize plants for 6 months. Inside the planter are three plants I've selected for this year's garden: Japanese Cucumber, Japanese Eggplant, and Red Bell Peppers.

The problem is that these plants need full sun, but I can't offer that to them. Worst case, they will meet their doom in a week or so. Best case, I hope they can produce a few fruits.

There were a lot of pots already here, but I wanted a long, deep one so that I could effectively use the space on the porch. I can't believe it cost $17 at Home Depot. How can a plastic planter be so expensive?

Seattle also has a slug problem. They seek out gardens and munch. I considered lettuce, but I've seen how much slugs like it, so I decided against it. In order to help prevent slugs, I used bricks to raise the planter off the ground. You can see it in the final picture.

Cucumbers need to grow upwards, but garden netting is extremely expensive here. One net was going for $15 a square yard. There is something really uncomfortable about paying that much for disposable materials.

I'm a bit proud of the cucumbers on the left. In lieu of paying an arm and a leg for garden netting, I built my own. The materials used are a thumbtack, twine, and staples. The thumbtack (not pictured) holds the twine to the wall. The twine is stapled to the pot, and each of those "steps" is a piece of twine stapled to the vertical twine. Home-made and probably costing less than a penny.

Things are started!

Garden Round Up: Tokyo

Vegetable gardens, when productive, can be extremely productive. Some people are so overflowing with green peppers and squash and zucchinis that they can't give them away fast enough. When they are non-productive, you'll sit there nursing your one and only vegetable only to have it stop growing at half size and fall off the plant before you ever had a chance to eat it.

This year I had a lot of success with strawberries, potatoes, and tomatoes. On the other end of the spectrum, my green peppers and watermelon were merely decorative. I also had a few unexpected plants show up, like the new avocado tree. If I needed to survive on only my plants, I would not have made it.

However, I learned a few things.

• The pepper prefers to be closer to the veranda wall where there is more morning sun. Although the afternoon sun is longer, it is dimmer and less direct than the morning sun.
• I need to teach people taking care of my tomatoes *how* to remove the "waki me". I had a very productive year, but because one branch grew out of the side, I spent a lot of time trying to find ways to prop it up. I should have been spending that time eating more tomatoes.
• Watermelons need to be started earlier. If left to their own devices, they will sprout a month too late and won't reach maturity in time to harvest. Also, they probably need better soil and more room to grow.
• Strawberry plants die. I didn't think about this until just this summer when all the plants that bore fruit this spring dried up and died. The one that didn't produce any fruits at all is thriving and is currently sending out runners. I'll catch these and start again next year. I may try a different pot and retire the one I'm using now.
• Potatoes need more time. I probably harvested them too early. They were small, but they were tasty! Next year I'll wait a little longer before pulling them up.

The garden in Japan is still producing tomatoes and everyone over there is enjoying them. I had a couple before I left and thought they were a bit tough and sour. I bet if I waited just a couple days longer they would have tasted much better.

That's it for this year. I'll be heading back in December, so the next time I write about it, I'll be deciding what to plant in the winter. I'm thinking of a few things, but it'll take a little more research to do it right. More than anything else, I've found that planning and research leads to better results than seat-of-the-pants gardening. Planting is fun, but harvesting is better.

On the road again

So where was I? Oh yes, I was about as far as you can get from Tokyo in 8 and a half hours. That's right, the lovely, rainy city of Seattle. Nothing like going from the brutal heat of Tokyo to the cool fog of Seattle, I'll tell you.

What about my garden? Well, if this were any old trip I'd just let someone else handle the watering and care until I got back, but this time around I'm going to be gone until mid-December. I don't think anyone is going to take care of it that long.

Since there aren't any new plants or seeds planted, I've decided to let the garden go for now. There just isn't any way to adequately care for it while I am over here. Also, that means that I won't be writing blogs about it.

So what to do until December? That's the question, isn't it?

How about do some short-term gardening here? Seattle has a different set of gardening challenges than Tokyo. It is cooler, the days are significantly longer in the summer and shorter in the winter, the amount of rain can cause root damage and rot. But what the heck. I'll give it a shot.

This Sunday I will head on over to the Home Depot near my house and pick up some gardening supplies. I need to figure out what I need and what I can grow effectively.