HOME GARDEN NOTE

Grow it, understand it, eat it.

I'm Eiko. Eight years of growing vegetables organically and without pesticides in central Japan, and a teaching licence in science — so every article ends with the mechanism, not just the instruction. Each one comes with diagrams.

Where these notes come from. I garden in central Japan, roughly USDA zone 8b–9a. Most of what's here is about how plants work, so it travels anywhere — but where timing matters I write it as "weeks before your first frost" rather than a calendar month, so you can put your own dates in.

About the diagrams. They're in Japanese, because they're the same diagrams as the Japanese edition. Under each one there's a box headed "What this diagram says" with every label translated, so you're not missing anything.

Cover a seed with three times its own size
🌱 Start here

Cover a seed with 3× its own size 🌱 Why most seeds never come up

Nearly every seed that fails to sprout was simply buried too deep — a seed reaches the surface on the food packed inside it and nothing else. The three things germination needs, why firming the soil matters, and how long old seed stays viable.

BasicsAbout 9 min
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The basics

FUNDAMENTALS
Cover a seed with three times its own size

Cover a seed with 3× its own size 🌱 Why most seeds never come up

A seed reaches the light on the food packed inside it. Bury it further than that food can carry it and it does everything right, in the dark, and still never arrives.

BasicsAbout 9 min
Thin when the leaves touch

Thin when the leaves touch 🌱 Once they overlap, you're already late

A shaded leaf still spends water and nutrients while producing nothing. Also: why edamame must be cut and never pulled, and why leafy greens work the opposite way round.

BasicsAbout 8 min
Water the hole before you set the plant in

Roots only drink at the tip 🍅 So water the hole before you put the plant in

The older part of a root is plumbing; only the tip absorbs. Once you know that, teasing out pot-bound roots and firming soil against the rootball both explain themselves.

BasicsAbout 9 min
Each colour of mulch film is a different tool

Each colour of mulch film is a different tool 🌱 Choose clear and you'll get a bed full of weeds

Black stops weeds because they can't photosynthesise, not because they can't germinate. Clear film hands them everything they need. Plus how to lay it so the wind can't get under it.

BasicsAbout 9 min

By season

THE YEAR
The weeks before your first frost

The 6–9 weeks before your first frost 🍓 With strawberries, depth is everything

The last sowing window before winter, counted from your own frost date. Strawberry crowns stay above the soil, beans go into winter small — and the real hazard of this season is rain, not insects.

MonthlyAbout 16 min

About

WHO WRITES THIS

This is the English edition. The Japanese site has 104 articles covering the whole year, every vegetable, pests, soil and tools — translations are being added here gradually.

→ Go to the Japanese site（日本語サイトへ）

I grow vegetables organically and without pesticides on a small plot in central Japan, and I've been doing it for eight years. I also hold a teaching licence in science, which is why these articles tend to end with why rather than stopping at what.

Nearly everything here started as something I got wrong first. Where I'm not sure of something, I say so.