helenjp

compost = taihi You can usually buy it at garden centers, or you could just try leaf mold (fuyoudo), though it won't have as much organic nutrition. I live near a shiitake farm, so I often buy the old shiitake "logs" and crumble them up. I don't think it matters what size your bed is, except that *you should be able to reach the center without stepping on the soil, and * if it's really small, it might dry out faster. Good luck!

Chili seeds and seedlings : the current issue of "Yasai-batake" magazine (summer 2006) has a special on chilis. It said that there were details on where to buy seedlings, though a very quick glance didn't reveal that info to me! Sansho: I was thinking...probably the main reason why it is hard to grow is that it is a slow-growing tree, and we are inclined to over-harvest it. I read somewhere that you should not pick from it yourself the first year, and not give any to friends for 3 years! As far as the plant is concerned, if we pick the leaves the way we pick parsley, it's like using 10,000 notes like paper tissues.

I don't make all those types every year, and I only make small amounts, except for ume-shu! And the shouga-shu is mostly used in cooking or for kids with coughs...

From a seed company's website, regarding tomatoes. Tomatine may not be the only alkaloid produced in tomato shoots - I'm not sure. I assume that people are hoping that the axillary shoots contain less alkaloids than mature stems and leaves...but it seems risky. After all, alkaloid contents are notoriously variable (depending on things such as the time of day, for example); and some people are more susceptible than others, especially children. Alkaloids tend to act on the central nervous system, which is not a good idea! If you're lucky, they'll make you vomit, if not, they just stop your heart and breathing... However, I ate several nightshade berries when I was a toddler, before kindly offering my mother some, and I lived to tell the tale. Very likely a few very immature tomato shoots won't kill you, but I don't care to experiment!

Well, you could go and buy a Japanese mint at the store! Although I am afraid that garden stores very often name plants wrongly, so you might still not know what was in your garden . If it's not western peppermint, it might just be mentha gentilis, ginger mint...usually ginger mint is sold as a yellow and green-leaved plant, but there is also a plain green type which is quite common in Japan and SE Asia. However, even though green ginger mint may not smell so gingery, it probably wouldn't have a straight peppermint scent, so I'm GUESSING peppermint. And just to console you, there are so many types of mint that it's often hard to identify them; so if your mint grows well, smells good and tastes good, and insects don't destroy it, it's a GREAT MINT!!! Generally, types with reddish stems seem to be more resistant to insects than green-stemmed types, so you're in luck.

Hmm...those really do have redder stems, don't they. I know that the commercial m. arvensis cultivars are green-stemmed, but I believe that some types are redder, and I don't know if ALL Japanese wild types are green-stemmed or not. However, since the leaves of your plant are smoother rather than hairy, but the plant smells of peppermint, I can't help thinking that maybe you have a wild western peppermint (mentha x piperita) rather than a mentha arvensis...also, the leaves look to have shorter stems like m. x piperita, rather than longer stems like m. arvensis, but only the flowers would tell you for sure. If they flower mostly in spikes at the end of the stems they are peppermint plants, if they flower in little balls all the way up the stem, they are m. arvensis. m. arvensis in flower peppermint plant and flowers - but not all peppermint varieties and cultivars have stems as dark as the photos on this page.

Shino Farm has habanero seedlings...don't know anything about the company, sorry. Hiroyuki....hmmm. Your mint could be hakka (M. arvensis), with slight reddening because it's still cold, or because it's not the high-menthol green-stemmed cultivatar you can buy in shops. They don't look as red as the stems of m. gentilis or m. gracilis, which are the only reddish types I would expect to see in Japan. I am a bit puzzled to see that the leaves don't appear to have many hairs though. The hairs help spread the scented oils onto the leaf surface, so m. arvensis has slightly hairy leaves. (You have to look closely though). Again, maybe they'll get hairier when it's warmer, and the plant is producing more oil. By the way, when you crush the leaves, do they smell just like mint toothpaste, or do they smell fruity or lemony as well as minty? I'm just curious, you don't have to hurry to answer my questions!

Thanks! Ill look forward to it!

Just curious...the mint that you said grows wild near you, Hiroyuki... Does it look like the mint in Torakris' photo? And what color are the stems? Green, reddish, or purplish-black?

John that's similar to the proportions I use - but I find that low-sugar umeshu takes longer to mature. Didn't get my umeshu started (hoping to get to that today...) but I have got my Ume Sour underway - that's roughly equal quantities by volweight of a good vinegar (this time I used cider vinegar as an experiment), rock sugar, and green ume. I make this every year, varying the amount of sugar, and find that leaving it for a year makes it very mellow indeed to drink (1 part syrup to 3-5 parts water), even for kids. This is the time of the year for fresh, young ginger, so try making Shouga-shu. I'm considering a small batch with ume and ginger rather than lemon and ginger... Shouga-shu 200-300g young ginger root, sliced 1 lemon, zest and sliced fruit, pith discarded, optional 200g rock sugar 1.8 liters white liquor (or quantities to suit, in proportion) For green shiso leaves - try this version. Plain herb liqueurs can be really "lawn-clipping" in flavor. Shiso-shu 1.8 liter pack of White Liquor Green shiso leaves and optionally, fresh seeds or flowering tops: 130 dried leaves, 200g fresh. Use whole. 150-200g rock sugar or 1c honey 70g ginger (sliced), optional 4 lemons, optional – remove zest, remove and discard pith, slice. Use zest and fruit Place all ingredients in a large glass jar. Remove lemon and ginger after 1-2 months, and leave shiso leaves indefinitely. For medicinal purposes drink 20 ml straight or dilute with hot or cold water, once or twice daily. Dokudami-shu (houttuynia cordata) For medicinal purposes, the whole plant is pulled up while flowering, washed and dried (often in the sun, to drive off the stinky coriander-like smell, though you can also dry it in shade if you are careful to dry it thoroughly). You can include the root (washed) even. However, I'm considering trying some with the young leaves, shoots, and flowers, to see how that fresh orangey-coriander scent comes across). For medicinal purposes it is usually made without sugar, so that it can be used externally. Some people swear that strongly alcoholic white liquor should not be used for this, only shochu or even white wine. 500-600g by weight of fresh dokudami (before drying) up to 200g rock sugar or honey, optional 1.8 liters of white liquor or 20-grade shouchuu Infuse for 2-3 months. And just in case I forget when that season rolls around... Chrysanthemum sake is drunk on September 9 for long life and good health. Use yellow flowers and cover with 3 times by weight of white liquor, infuse for 1-3 months. The simple version is just to strew a few chrysanthemum petals on plain sake.

We have a goya (bitter melon, momordica charantia) addict in our house, so we often have lightly-pickled bitter melon on our cold tofu. It's even more addictive that way!

Hiroyuki, I don't get to teach the students who major in practical horticulture - the students I teach are mostly doing more academic courses, with only a small amount of practical work. The last few years I let my plum trees grow so huge that they completely shade our tiny vegetable patch...which is already heavily shaded by the 3-story apartment house next door . So I have only a few herbs along the side of my house and in planters, and no vegetables growing at present. However, when I was a student in New Zealand, students used to rent houses in groups, which meant that we had only one season to make a garden and harvest the vegetables (we must have been very unusual university students - one of my friends even kept bees...). In those days I discovered that raised beds planted in wooden frames, or ridge-and-furrow gardens, created warmer soil, and allowed me to use rich soil more efficiently. I have the old Square Foot Gardening book, but not the edition you ordered. The author has a section on cold frames, where he suggests setting the frame at an angle in the ground. This is also useful for ordinary raised beds. In other words, if you dig out the south end of your square a little, and set your frame on that slope and then fill it with soil, your entire raised bed will get maximum sunlight and warmth. I used that slope technique in New Zealand by making big ridges and deep furrows - much bigger than usual. If I poured water into one corner of my garden, it would run along all the furrows and down the slope to irrigate the entire square. The ridges were big enough that I could plant tomatoes and corn along the top of the ridge, where they had good drainage and plenty of sun, with beans or potatoes beside them, and lettuce near the bottom of each ridge, where the soil was moistest. You can use containers, but you will have to work much harder at watering your plants - if you use a frame with no bottom, you will have the advantages of good, warm soil and fast growth (containers) plus the advantage of better water supply (growing in the ground). That "mesh" box you show should be lined around the sides with plastic, or the soil will dry out too fast.

Not forgetting that it freezes pretty well...

Japanese make flavored salts by pounding the aromatic in a mortar with coarse salt, and then drying it a little before storing it.

Osaka is hellishly hot in August - as are most places along the Inland Sea at that time of the year - and Kyoto also gets very hot, as it is in a sort of basin between mountains. You could beat the heat by looking at temples more in the hills than in central Kyoto - for example Uji (try Fucha-ryouri vegeatarian cooking, more Chinese-influenced than regular temple food), or Ohara to the north. It's too long since I lived there, though, so hope some other eGulleteer will give you more up-to-date advice. Just take it easy, be prepared for late-afternoon thunderstorms, and enjoy things at your own pace! Mt. Koya has temples where you can stay. I have stayed there at various memorial services for my first husband, so one way and another I don't recall much about the food (it's vegetarian of course). It's considerably cooler than the surrounding areas. I have been near Sendai in the summer, and it was cooler than Tokyo. Hokkaido, while cool, can be fairly crowded, especially in mid-August. Holiday travel peaks on August 15 in Japan, so try to have bookings and plans for that week (including the weekends either side) made well in advance.

It has definitely been cold this year. Mint! I have my mint growing in a rather dry spot, where the woolly types of mint (e.g. apple mint) seem to do better than regular mint. However, my husband helpfully pulled all my mint and some lilies out during municipal "clean day" last weekend, so I have planted a small spearmint just to try my luck again. I've been feeding my family dokudami salad - the very young leaves and shoots at this time of year are not bitter. They have an orangey scent with a hint of coriander (and sure enough, my son who hates green coriander is not too fond of dokudami either). Dokudami went well with bland yama-imo. I remember reading about a guy in Shikoku who woiuld roll his seeds up in little balls of dirt (maybe aka-dama, which is basically clay), and then just toss them round in his yard. He maintained that the soil "capsule" protected the plant perfectly until the next rain, and then nourished it until it had sent roots down into the ground, without him having to do any digging!

I meant to buy some sashimi konnyaku...

Bury those boxes in the ground! You won't regret it! It seems as if there's no difference, but really, the box means you only need a small amount of "good" soil, while still having the advantages of ground insulating moisture and temperature content.

tips on germinating chile seed right here...but my guess is that it's just too cold, especially if you are trying to sow them directly outside. Try starting them inside, and preferably in some kind of medium that you can just transfer straight to your outside spot when the time comes, without having to pull at the roots - the less shock when transplanting, the better, especially for basically tropical plants like chiles being grown in the "wrong" climate. Ohba, I think you're OK for a while yet - my plastic EM composting containers didn't disintegrate for 10 years, and then only because they were left in the sun. Hiroyuki, I was thinking about your yard...why don't you consider something like the "square foot" gardening system? When I first read about it, it was called the "pocket handkerchief" system, but much the same thing...I'd use 1-meter square plots, divided into 9 or 12 squares. In your climate, if you raise the beds a little bit (that is, put something round the borders to contain the soil), you could probably just build up your new, good, compost-rich gardening soil on top of the ground surface...eventually roots and worms will break up the ground below. (It wouldn't hurt to give it a little dig though - no need to get too deep). You can start one square straight away, and use your second square for composting. Use EM or nuka or something to get it started, then cover thickly with soil, and plant on top - the vegetable waste will have broken down by the time your plants' roots grow far enough down to reach the compost. (Don't use meat or grease etc in this case - takes too long to break up, gets stinky, and may attract animals). If you really want minimum effort, I suggest you half-bury your planters in the ground. That way, they won't dry out so fast.

Thanks for that - I wondered what the crowding would be like. I never drive down that part of town - too much stuff has popped up there, with no big changes in the main roads...and all those highways and railways to wriggle past on your way south. I don't go to Costco often, and never on a weekend, but haven't found it too crowded.

Not yet...every weekend so far has been back-to-back with school stuff.

I think if I were using US flour, I might use 25-50% potato starch (or even cornstarch) for the batter. If you use too much potato/corn starch, the flavor is too bland, and the batter ends up more hard than crispy. I once used all-cornstarch batter on some parsley as an experiment...it was so hard that it SHATTERED!

Tomizawa online shopping service has durum semolina flour (that's not the little granules used for making desserts).

I've often heard (but never experimented!) that many sansai are quite palatable if eaten straight out of the ground, and that aku-nuki is only necessary if time elapses between picking and eating. Yesterday we had a dokudami (houttuynia cordata, a type of lizard's tail) salad, using the small, fresh leaves and leaf-buds, with a sweetish vinegar dressing, and mixed with cucumber and naga-imo. I've heard that Japanese dokudami is more orange-citrus tasting, and that vietnamese dokudami is more minty-coriander in taste. You can certainly taste a faint coriander flavor, and my son who dislikes fresh coriander wasn't very keen on it. It's quite a strong taste (like shiso plus orange), and a bit tongue-numbing eaten alone, but good with other vegetables. I believe it is good in soup too.

I'm a bit busy right now to reply thoroughly....but don't forget that the garden of a new house needs extra love and care (= money and hard work!) to replace the good topsoil that is removed or disturbed when the house is built. My garden now is too shady to grow many summer vegetables. However, we used to have a vegetable garden, and our children learned so much from it. Composting is a great idea - Ohba, can you tell me about your bokashi set-up please? I used to use it, but the plastic container finally got old and broke. I'd be interested to hear about what's available now. (I'm secretly fascinated by those indoor gadgets that speed up composting, because our compost was a bit too close to the neighbor's front door...).