Gardening with Communists

So remember this long winded rant? Well after a bit of awkward miscommunication, I went ahead and committed to a little patch of dirt. As a bonus for volunteering to tend the earth, I was awarded a few more patches of dirt. Then my next door neighbor showed up with some old planters that he had filled with nice dirt and told me exactly where I should put them. It is official, my social life is over. I am now chained to my town lest something get ruined by frost or excessive heat while I’m away.

Aside from discovering muscles I never knew could hurt so much, I’m also trying to relearn everything I know about gardening. I never really stopped to think about how regional farming practices are. I learned a little about this the hard way when an overenthusiastic teacher picked all my Halloween pumpkins I had growing at school a good two months early because 1) they were “so big” and 2) (Japanese) pumpkins are "all picked before September".  It would be easy to blame this mishap on the arrogance that comes with seniority, but really, how much do you know about the needs of foreign produce? Would you know when a daikon is ready to be picked, or which kind of trellis is best for a Japanese eggplant? Me neither. Which is why I’m in a bit of a panic now that I’m responsible for so much dirt.

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be massive number of English speaking farmers in Japan sharing knowledge of Japanese produce and farming conditions online. So I’ve lowered my expectations, and settled for gardening advice that is both readily available and within my language abilities. Welcome to the reading room at my elementary school. There are the requisite picture books, volumes of brain teasers, and a little young adult fiction for the big kids. There are also heaps of books on trains, fish, and surprisingly enough, farming. It might just be a rural or regional thing, but school gardens and personal planters for students seem to be pretty common features around Kyushu schools. And so, when I have a spare moment on a slow day, I’ll sneak off to the library, just past the train section, and pick up a densely illustrated volume on container gardening, or the different varieties of sweet potato, or just for kicks try deciphering the appeal of growing rape.

While seed packets here do come with the basic information like planting guidelines there’s not much appeal in growing the same varieties of turnips, radishes, and beans that I can buy easily enough in the grocery store. Heirloom seeds just aren’t that popular with hobbyists, at least not those that shop at the local Nafco. Plus, with access to dirt, I have the potential to grow some of the things I’ve missed eating. Exotic things like collard greens, beets, or rhubarb! In fact, I suspect I could do some pretty brisk trade in Halloween pumpkins and Brussels sprouts with the foreign teacher crowd at the right time of the year.

The trick now is to learn enough about local soil and weather conditions to apply them to my sparse knowledge of non-Japanese varieties. I still can’t nail down Kyushu’s frost date, but I’m pretty certain that our planting zone is on par with the American South. Can I grow watermelon? No idea, but I’m going to try anyways. Wish me luck.