Onjuku Gardening Club -Day4 : Cultivator debut!

It’s a Day-4 of the beginner’s gardening challenge.
With the help of the kind people in Onjuku, do we look like full-fledged farmers?? 😂

First, Building a bridge

The second field is a full-fledged location.
To get to the fields here, you have to cross this very thin log. There is a waterway running below.
The first time I went to see here was Sunday, September 5th, when the fields were full of grass. After that, with the kindness of Mr. Takiguchi who lent us the fields for free, he also sprayed herbicides.

We had waited for a month.
At 8 o’clock in the morning of Sunday, October 10th, our teacher brought a cultivator for us.
Before that, in order to bring in a cultivator, it is impossible to use existing thin logs, so we needed to build a bridge with a certain width.

So, in the early morning of Saturday, October 9th, the day before, with the help of my uncle, we got the scrap wood and had it carried, and a bridge with a width of 900mm and a length of 3,600mm was completed.

By now, we have already relied on three local uncles to prepare for the pre-cultivation stage.

Cultivator appeared!

Since this is the first time for all of us to use a cultivator, we first learned how to use it and how to fill it with gasoline.
The first person who tried was my husband. Because the soil is hard and he hasn’t got the hang of it, the cultivator seems to be naughty at first, and Yuriko burst into laughter looking at it😂 She was also not able to handle it well at first, but soon got the hang of it.

Mixing Rice husk and fertilizer with soil

Since the soil here is hard, our teacher taught us to mix this rice husks with the soil.
After the discussion between us without a teacher, we decided to proceed with the following procedure.

1. Soil Cultivating 3-4 round trips in the same lane.
2. Rice husks, carbonized rice husks, and chicken manure (fertilizer) given from our teacher are put into the field.
3. Use a cultivator to mix them with the soil over and over.

Teacher in the next field appears!

Somehow we got used to the cultivator, and when we were wondering,
“Well, are we going to make ridges next?”,
Mr. Hamayoshi who rents the next field appears!
We really appreciate his kindness to give us a lecture and all the instructions.

We were too amateur to see, and he really taught us how to take steps.
He lent us the rakes and threads & poles used to make the ridges, and even another cultivator, and he was with us throughout our work.

BEFORE/AFTER

Thanks to everyone in Onjuku, it looks like a field now!!
Everything is new to us and it’s really fun!
Thanks to starting this vegetable garden, I haven’t had any interaction between the people of multi-generation so far.