Confessions of an Impatient Gardener
Years ago I read that Japanese-grown produce has the most ag chems per ton than any other farming nation on earth.
The explanation I remember was that Japan’s land—which let’s be honest is nothing more than volcanic rock farmed and farmed and then farmed again—died a very long time ago. Insects and disease today have the clear upper hand.
Living out here and watching the farmers close up, I can assure you this is accurate. You need to bombard to grow anything more than moss.
And I confess that I too reach for unnatural solutions.
The most obvious issue is bugs that seem to be…well, starving. Out here the ravenous crawlies are in control and we humans are barely tolerated guests. We are sharecroppers eking out an existence while the grasshoppers, weevils, skeeters, wood bores, spiders, wasps, moths, and FROGS are fully aware that they are our landlords.
Toru and I spend most of our free time in the Glen trying to grow a garden. Our tiny corner was a rice paddy generations ago, but when we showed up in 2022 it was nothing more than a hard-pan vacant lot of gravel and weeds that locals parked their mini trucks on. (Far below, I’ve included a pic of that humble beginning.)
So, yeah. We bought 100 tsubo of dust and rocks that hadn’t been fertilized or cared for since best guess 1970?
It’s not a total loss. The sun and rain are good here. If you toss decent soil into a planter box, give a tiny bit of care, and just leave things to happen on their own, vegetables and whatever else you want to produce will flourish.
Try to grow however directly into this “soil” and yeah, you are basically asking a plant to drill into clay and petrified magma. Get a bit of growth going against all the odds, and then the bugs come to take what’s theirs.
I’m a member of a “Gardening in Japan” Facebook group. It seems we are hundreds of mostly foreigners comingling on the page to trade sob stories about planting in volcanic clay. I learned pretty quickly that this FB group is also highly slanted toward people committed to growing organically.
So most of the posts are pics with questions for the group like, “Do you know what fungus this is?” or “What’s eating my artisanal tomatoes—is it this sweet little guy with 80 legs, 8 eyes, and venom that spits 10 meters?”
I’ll just come out and say it. It’s a group of Earth Mamas blithely ignoring the harsh reality of Japan staring them in the face. They are trying to garden in a country that is as naturally fertile as Mars.
I know you think I’m being harsh. I can picture your disapproving scowls. “Jack doesn’t care about our planet,” you tsk.
Look, I’m all for spraying vinegar on blooms, or gently wiping green soap on leaves when Mercury is retrograde and hoping for the best, but I’ve got a garden to grow and I’d like for it to be of some use by the time I’m 70. Is it unreasonable to want uninfested trees casting my shade? Am I a monster to demand moth and fungus-free bushes swaying in the coastal breeze?
Fortunately for me, 99% of Japan’s farmers and gardeners are squarely on my team. They too want results, think vinegar is for cooking, and have precisely zero time for worm-riddled cabbage.
The Japanese garden center is jam packed with every taisaku chemical countermeasure the country has ever developed, each bio-adjusted specifically for this island’s known issues.
Oh, okay…I can really now hear the do-gooder groans. Try and stay with me if you can. You’re not the one greeted in the morning by half a rose bush that was fully there the previous afternoon. Are you?
I bought a bag of all-purpose bug killer. I simply call it The White Powder. On the package the list of its target victims is satisfyingly long. Using a little baking sifter I dust happily down my rows of plants, adding a fine, comforting “snow” over leaves, and you know what? Now not only no bugs, but the plants themselves huzzah me when I come down the line every month to add another layer!
“Jack! Jack! Over here! More please!”
Yesterday I bought a different magic pouch, this time of tiny red pellets designed to slowly melt into the soil with rainfall. In Japanese it’s named “Root-Munching Insect Killer.” These are awful, thick, wet worms that live deep in the soil and simply latch on to eat up your plant’s entire underground existence. All in about a week.
YES, I KNOW. BAD. NOT GOOD. So I’m gonna assume you want these slugs gnawing on your garden’s roots? I’ll be happy to drop some by.
Unlike you it seems I’d like trees to have roots. And lemon oil and tarragon extract drizzled during the Harvest Moon ain’t gonna cut it out here.
We have a lawn. It was a request from Toru. He said it was for the dog to scamper on, but I think Toru just always had suburban U.S. dreams.
I was apprehensive as I surveyed our new weed and rock parking lot. This moonscape would have to be the base, the staff of life for any lawn we planted. But I had a plan. First, I would watch 700 YouTube videos giving advice on lawn planting (about 0.1% of the videos available on this subject btw), and second, I’d insist on only planting native Japanese sod. This domestic grass has been tuned-up in bio labs to bask in tropical heat, need almost no watering, and be “naturally” resistant to this island’s known maladies.
Simple decision, right? Well not if you go back to my FB group with what seems to be hundreds of foreigners nationwide who have planted Kentucky Bluegrass, Bermuda, Bent, or Tall Fescue. Seems they were all aiming to recreate Pebble Beach Spyglass in the volcanic rock of Kagoshima and today wonder why that isn’t working out so well. They post incessantly about patchiness, disease, and “unwillingness to grow” issues.
Silly Billies.
So I have one more ag chem in my arsenal specifically for Japanese grass. A visit to the home center will tell you the entire nation uses a product called Shiba Keep. One version of this magic granular powder simultaneously feeds your lawn while bio-zapping weeds and other undesirable sprouties. It’s genius.
Oh, just put a muzzle on it. I love my Shiba Keep and nothing you say will pull us asunder!
In early Spring, I dance merrily down the just-waking-up lawn and apply a fine dusting. Two or three times during the summer I do spot adds where I find truculent invaders attempting to reappear. Job is then done for the year—I simply stand aside as a lush emerald green carpet thrives. Voila.
Alright. Quit your howling. I admit that it all comes down to impatience. I suffer from a short-term, selfish need to produce a garden on this moonscape frying pan where we live.
Let me therefore make a suggestion. You come out here and battle the caterpillars first. Only then will I let you throw your tomatoes. (At least they’ll be organic.)
You turned that into that? I want to go to Japan someday . . .
And what the bugs don’t eat, the deer will.