From mid-May, when the soil temperature in our fields reaches around 15°C (59°F), we get incredibly busy with bed preparation and planting. We’re growing all the classic summer vegetables: tomatoes, eggplants, various peppers, cucumbers, edamame, squash, zucchini, taro, okra, and many others.
Planting Nightshade Vegetables Among Oats
We’re planting nightshade family vegetables in beds where we sowed green manure oats before winter last year. For several years now, we’ve been dealing with bacterial wilt disease that seems impossible to control. Since it’s said that when roots are damaged by root-knot nematodes, plants become more susceptible to bacterial wilt, we’re using oats as a countermeasure against these nematodes.
We tried planting tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and cucumbers among the oats that we sowed in late autumn last year. We’ll see how this turns out…
We only cut down the oats where we plant the tomatoes. The oats have started producing heads – these are the raw material for oatmeal!
Grass Mulching on Beds
We’ve stopped using plastic mulch after preparing the beds and have switched to the extremely labor-intensive method of laying grass mulch on the beds instead. This involves harvesting weeds and then carrying those weeds to the beds. As a result, my aging body is falling apart!
Vintage Tillers Acquired This Year
For this year’s cultivation, we’re using a Kubota diesel tiller (K1-75) for soil preparation and a Mametra (MRV-3VD) for bed management – both vintage machines we picked up from junk dealers and are using after repairs. The cultivation blades were quite worn, so we replaced them.
Other Summer Vegetable Seedlings
We’re also planting the usual suspects: squash, zucchini, corn, edamame, okra, and bitter melon, raising seedlings and planting them in grass-mulched beds.
Almost Ready for Harvest
Just as we’re finishing up planting the summer vegetables, our onions, garlic, and fava beans are almost ready for harvest.
コメント