Potatoes and sweet potatoes harvest, 'tasai', and wild boars...

It snowed today... and for the first time this season, there was some accumulation...

Harvested our potatoes this afternoon...

They were killed by the frost... first time to experience this with potatoes...

Am very happy with the produce that tipped at 5 kilograms... 

These, from seeds weighing 1 kilogram... 

And for dinner, my suweeto haato made chicken curry with the potatoes..

Hmmm, super tasty...

Among the greens we have now, the 'ta-sai' is probably one of the most resistant to the cold weather...

And it tastes very good too...

Our sweet potatoes did not do that well this season...

Harvest was rather measly.... 

A notable development this season, however, is that, wild boars have finally 'discovered' our potager... 

Three days ago, they came for the third time... stepping all over our garden...

It is not a pretty scene... yet, there is nothing much for them to eat in our field...

One of their favorites is the sweet potatoes...

Luckily, there is space within a fenced area nearer to our house...

Anyway, made a blockade (with recycled wood) on their approach route...

Hope this blockade is sufficient to make them give up coming...

The lone lemon, potatoes, spinach...

We bought the lemon tree seedling in April 2006...
Five years later, it gave us the first fruit...
Yes, the one and only precious, precious lemon...
Other than the seeds, we used the whole lemon in our cooking... that is, the flesh and the peel...

Three days ago, I almost let out a howl when my sweeto haato told me that most of our (purple and orange) sweet potatoes had become rotten...
Reason was, I did not bother to cure them after I harvested them last autumn...
I imagined we could finish consuming them before they can even have a chance to rot...
Ooh, that was a painful lesson...
Anyway, the above picture shows one of my favorite foods, cooked by my better-half of course... boiled (purple) sweet potatoes spruced up with onions, garlic, black pepper, olive oil, a little salt, and vinegar... 

Didn't have a problem with the other type of potatoes...
The harvest was too little, and it didn't take us long to consume them all...
I love the potato salad with mustard seeds, whipped up by my sweeto haato...

Our spinach is doing not too badly although they are quite 'mini' due to over-crowding...
I am quite hopeless in 'thinning-out' the vegetables as they grow...
Even then, mini as they are, they are delicious just the same...
Picture shows a common home-cooked dish of spinach with sesame seed, sesame oil, a dash of salt, a little brown sugar, and black pepper...

Last harvest for 2011

Am not sure what this plant is... 

Shall have to look the references up one day...

I supposed the fruits must be quite tasty as the birds do come for them...

Update: Thanks to Debra for suggesting that this could be 'bittersweet'. Did a search on the net and indeed, this plant belongs to the bittersweet family. The bittersweet in Debra's write-out looks like a climber but not this one in our garden. I think this plant we have is called Japanese Spindle. It is not a climber but an ever green shrub with shiny leaves.

Harvested some round daikons today for my suweeto haato to make a new year dish with carrots...

Also harvested the butter scotch pumpkins... 

All six of them, including the one that was harvested some time ago...

In total, they weighed about 4.9 kilograms...

As we retire for the night, my missus is about to put one pumpkin into a dutch oven and placing the dutch oven inside our wood-stove...

We are experimenting to see if the pumpkin gets cooked with the remaining heat from the wood-stove... 

Plus, harvested the last of the sweet potatoes...

The purple-flesh murasaki sweet potatoes were the most productive of the four types... 

All in all, they weighed in at about 15.2 kilograms...

Very good by my standards...

Our favorite sweet potato however, is the orange-flesh An-no...

They are super sweet, almost like honey...

Rather unfortunately, productivity was low...

We could manage only about 2.9 kilograms of this delicious sweet potato...

And to close the 2011 chapter is this little camellia...

Ok folks, looking forward to the new year when we get up next morning...

Wonderful autumn days...

It is days like these that I wish would last forever...

The temperature throughout the weekend was a pleasant mid-twenties...

No rain, no wind... heavenly it was...

And the moon at night... wooh,  so bright and lovely...

Spent the weekend doing a wide range of activities in the garden...

Last year, raccoons came by to rob us of our sweet potatoes...

Luckily this year, there was still no sign of them coming...

Anyway, harvested some of the sweet potatoes in our potager...

We had four types: Anno (left), which has orange flesh and is really delicious... Naruto Kintoki (right top), which is the main type sold in the stores around here... and Murasaki imo (right bottom) which literally means purple sweet potatoes... have yet to harvest the fourth type, Beni-azuma...

Read about the rose hips in Tanya's Lovely Greens blog...

Then asked my missus to harvest the rose hips from the wild roses in our property...

The hips are tiny, less than one centimeter or so...

They taste sourish and we shall be having them as tea, eventually...

Tried growing some hyacinth beans this year...

They have flowers that resemble those of wisterias...  

Apparently, they make good curries...

Will certainly request my missus to give it a shot...

Lantanas have taken a liking to our garden...

My missus bought only one pot some years ago but it seems that they since self seeded...

We can find them in numerous places in our garden...

Sweet potatoes, mandarin oranges

Grew three species of sweet potatoes last April...
The racoons got the better of the potatoes, but luckily they left some behind...
The above potatoes are called 'Anno'...
The flesh is orange in color and is extremely smooth, moist, and sweet...
We take them simply baked, with no additives of any sort...

We have a few types of oranges in the orchard...
These mandarin oranges are fruiting on their first season with us...
The tree is still rather short, yet it produced six fruits...
The 'proper' way is actually to remove all the fruits so as to channel the nutrients to make the tree larger...
As such, the tree will be stronger and its produce, better...
Oh well, let us see...

Sweet potato thieves in the hamlet

Returned home after two weeks of holidaying in Malaysia...
We knew from the news that it had not rained at our home throughout this time...
The hot temperatures and the rainless days...
My missus was most concerned that our pond would be all dried up and our goldfishes, all dead...
So, the first thing we did upon opening the gate was to rush to the pond...
The pond was dried, but luckily not completely...
In the remaining little water, our goldfishes were there, alive...

The next thing to check was the potager...
Was very surprised to see my sweet potatoes being dug up...
I had planted three varieties of sweet potatoes...
Altogether, there were 42 plants...
Initially, I thought it was the work of wild boars...
But after some investigation, we could not find any foot marks of the boar...
And, the dug-out areas were just too 'neat'...
Boars would have been more 'destructive'...

The thief or thieves took almost all of the sweet potatoes...
There are about three or four plants that were untouched...

Japanese society is supposed quite 'safe' and free from such things...
Oh well, another lesson learnt... was really looking forward to harvesting them... sigh...
Next season, we should perhaps harvest the potatoes before we leave for our summer vacation...

Harvesting sweet potatoes

I know, this photo is a bit off-season...
Tried my hand at growing sweet potatoes last summer.
'Naruto Kintoki' is what they call this specie.
Harvested them in early November last year.
Wooh, the joy of pulling those giant potatoes out from the soil...
They needed to be put in a dry place, away from the direct sun, for at least a week so as to allow them to 'sweeten' up.
Gave away some to neighbors and friends.
Still, took us months to slowly enjoy nibbling on them.
On hindsight, we should have harvested them earlier, as in mid October.
As such, we will not be overwhelmed too much by their size.
Will certainly continue to plant these goodies this season.
They really taste good, and they are easy to grow.