Kazagashira Niwa

Totally moved the topsoil to the side of the garden and made a huegelbed with it. The reason is that it is infused with many little pieces of blue paint that came down from the roof. Not knowing how poisonous this pollution is I first have tried to take out the most dense polluted soil, but came to the conclusion it is much more mixed than I thought. Impossible to take out. Super annoying. I have added a lot of bokashi (basically pickled kitchen waist) to the huegelbed and hope the micro organisms in the soil will help to break down any dangerous materials. Next I removed all stones from the soil down to 60 cm (I like to grow burdock/gobo ) With the stones I could make the edges of the newly made raised garden beds. Ideal lizard habitat! Lizards will help to eat the bad bugs that damage my vegetables. Then I added more bokashi and compost in the soil and added some composted cow and chicken manure in the end. One bed got carrots, parsley lettuce and marigolds. The others will proba...

Bamboo smells great. I hope I will be able to distil essential oils from it, some how. This is a test run with orange peels. Not bad.

After we asked our 82 year old neighbour whether she would know anybody who could allow us to grow vegetables on their land, she went out on a little research and came back the same day with two proposals. First: a little plot filled with bamboo stalks of about 150 square meter. Originally this was a little vegetable field and we can use it without conditions. As a field it is not so interesting but I can now use bamboo freely for trellises and other building projects. Just great! Next: two little patches of good quality field. The owner is getting older and is looking forward to pass me on his knowledge of growing vegetables while he is slowly stepping out of the art. Also great! The first patch is now growing beans, carrots, onion, gobo and radishes The second patch, a little further up the mountain is half potato, and for the other half I am trying out the famous three sisters combination: corn, beans and pumpkin. Marigolds are in preparation and some medicinal plants to be pla...

And are growing wheatgrass to be juiced. It is really nice to drink fresh fruit/vegetable/grass juices. My belly receives it so well.

Our neighbours are so friendly to put nicely sorted branches at the garbage. Perfect for making woodchips. I bought a wood chipper so I can make my own wood mulch. The mulch I think will be necessary to keep the soil from drying out in Summer, and also to improve drainage after the heavy rains in this country. My plan is to put many fruit trees on this small plot of land. They require a more wood, and therefore mycelium based soil support.  

The south side vegetable beds slowly got extended a little, and are now filled with lettuce, onion, kabu (turnips) and komatsuna. Komatsuna seems to grow really well here in December. The others are a bit sleepy and don't seem to grow very fast. Since half December the weather went below 15 degrees Celsius most of the time. New grow bed on the slope with the help of some bamboo.