Bones into the soil

Winds are howling and temperatures are dipping...
The lows are around zero degree with the highs hovering around five degrees...
There was sleet last night and snow is forecasted for this evening...
The Japan Inland Sea is choppy and fising boats nor fishermen are nowhere to be seen...
Hopefully, my plants are bracing well for this cold weather...
We bought two pieces of 'chicken skeletons' from the supermarket two days ago...
My missus make soup stock from them...
We do not throw away chicken bones or fish bones...
The same goes for other kitchen scraps...
I just took the bones to the potager and had them buried in one of the plots...
They make good fertilizer...
And the cold winds... ooh... had to make a run back to the house...

Marigold, cosmos, zinia...

Even in the cold weather, the marigold plants in the potager still bloom...
They emit a very nice fragrance...
I plant them as 'companions' to the veggies as they are supposed to ward off harmful insects...
Their petals are reported to be edible but we have yet to try them out...

The cosmos plants self-seed in our potager...
They require minimum care...
The one thing that I have to do is to thin out the crowded patches and oohla, I get pretty cosmos all over the garden...

Zinias are also self-seeding in our potager...
I sowed some seeds years ago and like the cosmos, they need minimum care...
We are very happy with these three flowers as they make very good cut flowers as well...
The marigolds especially, last for days and days in the vase... 

Tomatoes, daikon, beans, malabar spinach

A friend of my wife sent us some seeds of this Sicilian Rouge tomato...
Tried planting it very late in the season...
Not too bad in that we get to harvest some fruits just before the cold came in...

Planted daikon (radish) for the first time...
Been harvesting them for some time now...
While they are not the biggest daikons around, they are very tender and good to eat...
The leaves, supposedly vitamin-packed, go very well with tofu, sauteed that is...

We like fava beans very much...
So much so that we decided to plant plenty of them this season...
We have about 30 plants, compared to only four last season...
I understand from a blog that the leaves taste good, so we might try to cook some this time around...

Snap peas are crunchy compared to snow peas or silk field peas...
We had all three types last season, but we are planting only snap peas this time...
Reason? Wife's request...

Ceylon or Malabar spinach (not related to the 'normal' spinach) is high in vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium.
It is low in calories, but high in protein... just what we need...
Leaves are thick and succulent...
Seeds remind us of the corals in the sea...

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...

Wild grapes, Swiss chard...

We are very lucky to have several wild grape plants in our property...
They are very capable of taking care of themselves, which means zero attention from me...
I just prune them and position their canes in such a way so as to provide easy harvesting...

We used to make preserves out of the wild grapes, which we consume with yoghurt...
But lately, I decided to make grape juice...
We managed to get about 1.5 liters of the juice last season...
No sugar added, and they tasted so natural and refreshing...

My missus wanted to have some color in the potager...
So, I purchased some swiss chard seeds from the internet...
The reds are good to look at, but not so good in taste...

The green swiss chard taste very good, and they have excellent texture which is pleasant for the tongue...
The leaves are huge, and we get a plateful with about just three leaves...
We pluck off the large leaves from the outside and they keep growing and growing, thus providing a long harvest...
They are beautiful to look at and good to eat... urrmmm...

Mini radishes

Mini radish is quite fun to grow...
I put one seed in one hole amongst other vegetables...
The instructions say that they can be harvested in about 20 days...
But I normally harvest them in about 30 days...
This red radish was about 10 centimeters long...

The white icicle radish is delicious when freshly picked, just like the red radish above...
The larger one measured about 13 centimeters, while the shorter one, about 8 centimeters...