2014 Plan (Spring Planting)

In the farming experience program in Setagaya, farming plan was created and provided by the field owner, who is the old farmer in my town, at the beginning of the year.

Fundamentally, vegetables can be categorized in spring planting type and autumn planting type. So, we started planting from March to May and harvested from June to September. Now, we have just completed autumn planting from August to September. We will eat them from November to January.

We planted the spring planting vegetables:

<March>
- Spinach (under the cheesecloth)
- Potato (the middle all)
- Turnip (beyond the cheesecloth)
- Komatsuna, a kind of spinach (beyond the cheesecloth)

<April>
- Corn (the second photo)
- Taro (beyond the cheesecloth)
- Tomato (the top left six)
- Cucumber (the top right four)
- Eggplant (the bottom left three)
- Paprika (the bottom right one)
- Pumpkin (no photos)

After planting, some maintenance is needed. For example, we did cull the young buds of the corn. Because we planted 3 seeds in a hole. So, we made 3 young buds to 2, and 2 buds to 1. The final one will grow up as a corn tree. The culled 2 were disposed.

Also, to make up tomato trees and cucumber trees, we tied the vine of cucumber (as shown below) with the pillar using the string. Since the vine grows up faster, we did the task once a week or more.

So, from June, we got harvest them even though shape of some vegetables were strange compared with the market products and some were unfortunately eaten by caterpillars.

<Turnips>

<Komatsuna (Japanese spinach) eaten by black caterpillars>