タグ: gardening

What to do about Damage to a Fig Tree by Long-horn Beetles.

My another photo blog “LQ Laoshi’s Photo Gallery”(outside wordpress)


A fig tree is vulnerable to damage by long-horn beetles. Since the trunk of a fig tree is relatively soft, the insects make holes and go into the inside. In that case, the trunk of the tree becomes houses and also food. And then there will be so many holes on the surface and the trunk will have void inside. It quite often results in the death of the fig tree.

If it is in early stage with a little number of holes, injecting insecticide would be one of solutions. However, it means that the injected chemical could go up in the tree and reach to the fruits. So I don’t think injecting insecticide could be a solution as a countermeasure against long-horn beetles in a fig tree.

A practical solution is as follows. You need to accept the damage caused by long-horn beetles on a fig tree. In other words, you admit that a fig tree is short-lived. But it does not mean you need to give up the fruits. What you need to do is renewing your “main” fig tree in relatively short term. You make young trees using a branch and/or shoot that are taken from the existing fig tree. By keeping several young trees as the spares, and planting them every three or four years, you will get the fruits, even though some times the damage happens.

So, this year, I made three young fig trees using the existing fig tree’s shoot.

Photo taken in Niigata JAPAN


They were taken from a native Japanese fig tree. So those fruits are not so sweet because the species has not been improved like some western fig trees. But this kind is hardy and can stands for winter cold. Although its sweetness is not perfect, eating fresh is actually good. And a good thing is that I can make a lot of jam (jelly) and compote in autumn.

Photo taken in Niigata JAPAN

Took a Walk to the River, though Rainy Season is still going on

The spring semester was over. Summer break has started. But there is no time for me to take a rest. I have already started preparation for the next semester. Since the day before yesterday, I have been scanning the pictures on textbook so that I can use them on PPT slides. Since today is not rainy (though it’s dark), I took a walk in the afternoon. 

Bridge for Farmers’ Vehicles

Mountains whose heights were about 1000 meter were seen from the bridge.

View from the Bridge

A farmer and her husband were working to harvest onions.

Farmers are Working Hard on the Ground

Oh, by the way, this wordpress writing system is quite inconvenient. It is hard for me to operate. Now I regret starting writing this post. This is terrible.

Growing Rice in the Paddy Fields

I can see five peaks of Gozu Mountain. “Gozu” uses two Chinese Characters for “Five” and “Heads”.

Mountain Gozu behind the Paddy Fields

It is a kind of agony just to write sentences and insert images. I hope someone will change and enhance to make it easy to write and post a blog.

The board is saying “Let us make the river clean”, “You will be punished if throwing trashes and/or dirty matters in the river area”.

Unclear Board saying not to throw garbage

Flowers I saw on the way to the river

I am just wondering how other wordpress users feel about this very poor operability of writing system. I would like to say “This is a torture”.

Lily “Lollipop” in Bloom

The new writing system of wordpress has made difficult to write and edit a post. It seems a HTML geek is proud of building an automatic function to form “DIV” commands. But it is almost painful to me. I want someone to get the old simple writing system back.

By the way, I asked a neighbor to cultivate the land and grow vegetable so that the garden would not be an abandoned bush. On Monday the person was cutting weed for us but he mistakenly cut the lily that I planted several years ago (Because the lily was among the weed). He brought that lily to my house with some apology. My mom put it in a brown glass bottle of a cheap “energy drink”. Since the bud of lily was still young, we didn’t expect the lily would be able to bloom. To our surprise, the lily flower opened in the following day.

Lily “Lollipop” in the bottle of Lipovitan D

I bought bulbs of lily “Lolipop” several years ago in DIY shop “Komeri”. The bulbs were discounted because they were apparently unsold long time. I thought, if it were going to be a waste, I would buy and plant them in the garden. After that, Lollipop had been in bloom every year even though I didn’t take care of them. The neighbor didn’t cut them all, so some are still left on the ground.

Lily “Lolipop” on the Ground

Yesterday my mom went outside around the noon to get her lunch. It was so hot, so she gave up staying outside, just buying a lunch box, and then came back home. She told me to look at her lunch box that costed only 330 Japanese Yen. She wanted to show that there were a lot of things in a cheap lunch box that would be equivalent to three USD. But I have to say, I don’t think it is good to eat those cheap processed food. It should be bad for health.

330 Yen Lunch Box (=3USD)

Green beans that I planted are growing in the garden although it will take more than a month or so from now until the harvest.

Young Green Beans are Growing on the Ground

I found the gooseberry was turning to be red. Taste? of course anything from the garden is always sour. I have already confirmed it by the most reddest goose berry fruit.

Fruits of Gooseberry Now Turning to be Red

And this morning I found that flowers of hollyhock started blooming.

Rare Color of Hollyhock Flower

Uh,… I wasted my one hour to make this post. The blog that people hardly view is called “an isolated island on the continent” in Japanese. Mine is also like that.

Fruits and Vegetables are Growing in the Garden.

A fruit of silverberry (goumi) has turned to be red. Actually there were only three fruits on the silverberry tree. This is one of them.

I have already taken this one. Only two goumi(s) remain on the tree now. They are still green.

I don’t know whether this silverberry is edible or not. As was obvious for the case of strawberry, nothing from my garden can be sweet. They are always sour so that you would like to jump up when you put them in your mouth.

I left the silverberry like this on the table. Soon I found that this small tiny red fruit had disappeared. I asked my mom where the silverberry had gone. She answered that she offered it to the deceased my father. And then I saw this small red thing was put in front of my dad’s photo.

Flower of cucumber has already had the young cucumber .

This is a flower of egg plant.

This is a flower of pumpkin. If it was a female flower, it would be a pumpkin. But you know, the flowers are almost always male flowers. A female flower is very rare. There is no easy thing in this world.

This yellow flowers are not of pumpkin but zucchini.

These vegetables were not that I planted. Since I am very busy in days and nights for the online teaching things, I asked a neighbor to cultivate and grow vegetables in my family’s garden. I should be thankful to him.

But there is a one vegetable that I planted.

I planted some seeds of green beans. Seeds were sold by 200 JPY (tax exclusive) that was approximately equivalent to 2 dollars. The seeds were imported to Japan from the country where the authority used teargas to disperse the peaceful demonstrations in order to do a photo op in front of a church to show a man holding a book that he had actually never read at all (probably).

But anyway, it is not that big issue, I mean, where the seeds came from. Because they have germinated safely on the land of Japan. If I can harvest green beans, I will boil them just a little, dip into mayonnaise, and then eat them in hot summer night with chilled beer. I am looking forward to doing so.

How to Take Care of Your Tomato

This is to show you how to take care of your tomato in this time around.

You need to cut off the buds of branch so that the main stem can grow. The orange circle in the photograph shows a bud coming from between the main stem and a leaf. It should be removed.

This photograph shows, by a blue circle, that an unnecessary branch has been cut off. In this time of season, you need to check this very frequently like almost everyday. If you leave those branches to grow, your tomato will be terrible and chaotic with many stems and branches such that you want to start singing “Welcome to the jungle!”. Cut them off, or you will get small size tomato.

I took a Walk after the two Online Japanese Classes on Friday

I went outside in Friday afternoon when I finished the online Japanese teaching.

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I walked on the road of a river bank.

 

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I was looking for something to take a photo. But there were not much to do so.

 

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I saw onions were thrown by the road. Probably a farmer thought it as useless. Already becoming soft, it didn’t seem edible.

 

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Mountain Sugana-dake was there, behind the paddy field.

 

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Iide Mountains was far from here. Snow remains only on valleys.

 

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On the way back on a bridge, I saw two birds. Flying and floating. Being capable of two things is great.

 

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It was already 5p.m. I have got to get back to my house because I need to cook the supper. I ate a slice of salmon with a bowl of rice in the supper.

Many are Still in Green in the Garden on May 16th

It is cloudy today. So the color of the photographs are not vivid.

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Pink Azalea among white one. It is amazing that part of branches has flowers of different color.

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Even in one flower, two colors are co-existing.

 

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Will I be able to eat sweet peaches in summer? I should not expect much. In Japanese, if you have a wish that you are expecting in future, it is said that “A devil is laughing at you”. This tells you that you shouldn’t expect too much in the future because it is uncertain.

 

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I didn’t expect the silver berry to have fruits because there is no other silver berry tree for pollination. So, of course, this is only one or two fruits on the tree and it is likely that it will fall without growing.

 

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I planted two kinds of prunes for pollination each other. However, there are very few numbers of fruits are on two trees. One tree has two fruits and the other has none. When it successfully turns to be purple, I will put the photo of it, if it happens.

 

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They are Tsugaru-Apple. This shows another issue to me. I’ve got to reduce the number of the fruits for the better harvest. I don’t know exactly but it should be one fruits with 20-30 leaves.

 

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Strawberry is still green, too.

 

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This is just a weed.

If my work for online teaching is not so heavy, I would like to go outside and have a fun in this comfortable season. It is not because of corona virus, but heavy duty for the online teaching that prevents me from living healthy life.

Afternoon Walk under Strong Sunshine in Niigata, JAPAN.

I don’t have any online class on Thursday. However, I know that I have to work through the night today because there are two classes tomorrow. I felt I had to exercise my body, so I took a walk again.

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Rice had been already planted in the paddy fields around here.

 

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I wish that this small rice seedlings grow and survive. When autumn comes, it will turn to be golden and bring us a rich harvest.

 

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There are not many flowers in my house, so this was the chance to take a photo of flowers. This orange one is a popular spring flower in Japan.

 

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I don’t know much about this type of flower. Is this a German Iris or something?

 

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I think this is a kind of chrysanthemum. And the word chrysanthemum always needs auto-spellcheck.

 

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Let me tell ya. I am not a railway geek. I believe that being a railway geek surely ruins boy’s fortune. A boy should never be a railway geek. (Perhaps reiterating it makes a reader suspicious of me, though)

 

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Again. I have to pay more attention to a utility pole. When I took this photo, I should have avoided coinciding of the utility pole and the peak of the mountain behind.

Tomato and Egg Plants in the Garden on May 12th

These days I work through the night several times a week. I don’t like TV says “tele-working” is new normal and “Online education” is wonderful, this and that. I would say it is too hard for me to spend day to day because I have to make three hundred PowerPoint slides a week. I can’t go outside. Even I cannot find a time to go shopping in the nearby supermarket located in the place of 10 minutes walk from the house. Actually I could not take a bath for several days because I worry I may fall or get a heart attack in the bath. My fun these days is just to look at the garden and take a photo.

 

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Because I have to work very hard for online teaching kind of things, I do not have time to manage the garden. So I asked a neighbor to plant something on the garden. He and his friend planted some vegetables already.  The photo is a tomato. The card on the ground says that this is Tomato that is easy to grow.

 

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Yellow flowers of tomato.

 

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He planted egg plants.

 

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The fruits of peach are too many. I have to reduce the number of fruits for better harvest. And comes below are Azalea flowers in the garden.

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Azalea flowers last short. When they are gone, the garden will have little flowers. If I had a time, I would like to plant many flowers to make the garden colorful and beautiful. But it is sure that the online education kind of things prevents me from doing so.

Took a Walk in the Afternoon. Late Spring in Niigata, JAPAN.

It was 4:10 in the afternoon when I finished the online Japanese teaching. I had two online classes yesterday. Since I prepared for them almost through the night, I just wanted to go outside. The sky was clear yesterday, although it had become not so clear when I started walking in late afternoon.

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Wisteria flowers were in full bloom in the play ground of nearby junior high school. I think the tree is very old because I think it has been there since I was a kid.

 

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A view from the bank that is just behind the junior high school. There is a small ship building factory there. Community paper said that some American people came to the ship builder there to make an old style wooden boat, if my memory was correct.

I think there were many boats that went up and down the rivers in Niigata Plain (Echigo Plain) in the past like 19th century. Of course those navigation are now very rare. But what I thought was that if I devoted to a research about the history of water transportation in Niigata Plain, what would it be like? For example, writing a dissertation about it.  Uh.., it would be just a micro history in a small rural community. No one would be interested in such a tiny issue. I think I will not do a such research, probably.

 

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Snow is melting on the Iide Mountains that is located among Niigata, Fukushima and Yamagata Prefectures.

 

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I should have paid attention to the utility pole when I took this photo.

 

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I was walking on a bridge that was almost the same age as me. The peak of the mountain in the photo is 1,293 meter if my memory is correct.

 

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I don’t know this mountain’s altitude exactly. Probably it may be 1500 meter. Its cliff looks like an inside of split bowl. It was said that the cliff was the mouth of the volcano in the very old time, but I am not sure.

 

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So the paddy fields are now filled with water. It seems that the rice seedlings have already been planted there.

 

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This was the last photo I took yesterday.