Post your country pictures!

Finding land, working a small plot or anything else countryside related
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Zasso Nouka
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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by Zasso Nouka »

They are entirely doable without black plastic if you have the time to stay on top of the weeds, we farm several thousand tsubo now so just can't keep up with weeding by hand. Pretty soon garlic and autumn sown onions should start their growth spurt and pull ahead of a low growing living mulch like clover and tall grasses (their seeds can survive for around 7 years in the soil) won't start to be a problem for another few months by which time your alliums will have finished. The main danger to Alliums is getting swamped when they are small during the winter.

To alleviate the clay issue see if you can get hold of some momigara after the rice harvest this year. Most farmers around us just burn it off and will give you as much as you want even delivering it to you or letting you bag it up if you will take it off their hands. Spread it on thick and mix with the soil, it takes several years to break down so will help your soil immeasurably over that time. Could be worth paying one of your neighbours to run their tractor over your land once you've spread the momigara rather than trying to dig it all in by hand, they may even do it for free as it wouldn't take more than about 20 - 30 minutes with a tractor.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by BrettRas »

Yesterday was fine weather at Goryodaki in Ojika :D

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Re: Post your country pictures!

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You lucky, lucky man. Yesterday here it couldn't decide whether it wanted to rain, sleet or snow and there was a bitterly cold wind blowing all day long :angry-screaming:

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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by paradoxbox »

Harvest time! I took a whole load of fukinotou that are a little past the prime harvest time, but still edible! I'm debating whether to cut off the petals or just eat 'em. I'm not particularly picky and I happen to love bitter food and drinks so.. This should be fun :) fukinotou tenpura tomorrow night, methinks.

Also lots of wild rakkyou! Pain in the ass to clean it, but I love the taste! Greens go in scrambled eggs, the bulbs and some greens go in butter garlic mashed potatoes. Yum.

Pretty happy with how today went. Started out with crap weather, ended up as a beautiful, warm sunny day with puffy clouds and blue sky and a basket full of fresh organic food.

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My newly discovered katakuri plants. Beautiful.
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Re: Post your country pictures!

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In just a single month one of our vinyl houses has transformed from its winter setup into its summer configuration.

Winter arrangement with fleece and vinyl tunnels
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Summer configuration with salad and snow peas on the left and zucchini and tomatoes in the middle and the right hand side will be planted with bush beans later on to have them through the rainy season.

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The tomatoes will gradually climb up the support strings above the zucchini which will be removed in about 8 weeks time as they gradually stop producing so many fruit. We are also back crossing some of the zucchini varieties we produced last year and sent seeds out so that we fix the desired traits and reinforce them. Bees don't have access to the vinyl house so we don't have to worry about accidental cross contamination.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

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It's still shaking occasionally down here, but life goes on. We fired up the BBQ today for our first time. We've cleaned out our koi carp pond and plan to use it as a BBQ/ fire pit. The brother in-law is a Yaki Tori cook so I didn't argue .
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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by xxxxtom »

ZN I've always wondered isn't it to hot in a poly tunnel in summer to grow veggies?
Is it almost a insect free environment ina tunnel?
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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by Zasso Nouka »

The barby pit looks great by the way xxxxTom, brilliant use for a koi pond.

Poly tunnels can get quite hot during the summer months but you can mitigate that with shade netting (white works better than black) on the outside and a further layer near the roof inside that traps a layer of hot air above it. Then with vent netting down the sides temperatures can remain fairly reasonable.

They do keep a lot of the larger insect pests out like butterflies and moths but smaller ones can make it inside and then have a protected environment generally without any predators, unless you introduce commercially available ones.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by xxxxtom »

It's not the best pic but does anyone know what type of snake this is?
I was doing some serious deweeding or unearthing the old bolder walls that wrap around our house and came across 3 of these and a blind snake. Not sure if they are juvenile as all three were around the same size about 400 mm.
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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by BrettRas »

Hmm, hard to see from that photo. Any markings along its side or head?

Few links to peek at to help identify:

http://snake-center.com/library/venomou ... imacophora

http://baikada.com/JSM/archives/1956

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