Growing Pains

Growing Pains

Living, as we do, on the same latitude as the south of France, we’re ideally placed for growing summertime fruits and vegetables.

Living, as we do, in Japan, we also have the rainy season to contend with.

This mixture of heat and moisture means plant life verily shoots up, the fastest of them all being … weeds. <sigh> 

Keeping on top of the weeding makes growing a real pain, especially if you’re trying to do things The Right Way, and be organic.

So what we do here is fight fire with fire. Or more accurately, weeds with weeds. Tons, and tons, and tons of them.

Deliverance

At this time of year, riverbank annual weed growth is luscious but (mainly) yet to set seeds, and the city government sends out hoards of troops to nip the problem before it gets unmanageable. That’s where this organic household (and others in the know) start making phone calls. 

We use the imported weeds to smother and kill the resident nasties, a six-inch mulch putting paid to the problem. A top dressing of chicken poop will help the mulch to eventually rot down, and cultivation shows a year-by-year improvement in the soil structure.

And, like The Best Things In Life; it’s free.

Spreading the mulch might seem onorous, but the bales unravel much like a sleeping bag. The trick is to do this when they are dry (20 kilos apiece) rather than they are wet (up to 80 kilos each). If I had a tarp big enough to cover all the bales, I’d throw it over and lay it down after rain (the best time for mulching), but, to be honest, I don’t think they make tarps that big:

Snake

 So I’ll just have to wing it, assuaged by the knowledge that this patch of earth; this patch of earth from which my family and I, and others dine, is becoming richer, and richer, and richer, conversely, thanks to weeds.

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