Unskilled Gardener at the Old Japanese Farm House

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00:00Hey guys, another video for our Buying a House in Japan playlist.

00:03Some of you might remember that project, the unskilled gardener put a boundary around that

00:07bamboo because it kept expanding across the driveway, and that's worked really well.

00:12So we've been wondering if we can do the same thing with this huge bamboo we've got over

00:17here because it does the same thing, it wants to expand across the garden, which we'd love

00:21it to do because we love the bamboo.

00:23It gives us great shade in the afternoon, it has birds in it, all sorts of creatures,

00:28snakes and micado as well, but it's just a bit too spready.

00:33We want to keep the garden, we need to have the grass for the kids to play on, so we can't

00:37let it take over, and in the other direction there's power lines that it starts to touch

00:42as well, power line and phone line, so you can see how full of beans it is from spring

00:48through to autumn, it just keeps shooting, and it puts up these shoots really quickly,

00:54and within a week they're a metre or two metres tall, and they're like asparagus, they're

00:59really soft and really wet, and they grow up really tall, two or three metres, four

01:04metres, and then they start to get little branches and leaves and then they start to

01:08thicken up and then they become hard like wood.

01:11But just for that first couple of weeks, they're really soft, so it's a constant fight, we're

01:17constantly fighting them off, constantly breaking them off and cutting off the roots and things.

01:23So the plan was actually just to do one side, but it did get out of hand, so you can't

01:30really swing a big tool in there, so the biggest tool you can get in there is a shovel, and

01:39then it turned out that a few other tools were required as well, so a shovel and a crowbar

01:46interestingly enough turned out to be really useful.

01:50The good news was that the main big fat root that comes out, that those shoots come up

01:56off, the big thick root, is actually not very deep, which was good news, because we weren't

02:03sure how deep we'd have to go, and that big thick root is actually not very deep, you

02:09can see it there, just underneath those leaves, and then from that it sends out smaller roots

02:15lower down to get water. So as long as we put a barrier to stop those big thick roots

02:21that aren't very deep, that should stop it expanding. No doubt it'll keep trying to,

02:27and we'll probably have to keep cutting bits off now and again, but we suspect if it works

02:34half as well as it worked around the smaller bamboo, that was really effective. So same

02:39material, it's about $3 a sheet, 1.2 meters, and they all clip together. It's really good

02:46stuff, we used it once, and then after that we've been using it all over the place, some

02:50of you will be aware of that. But it's really good, it's made for market gardens and things

02:56like that, so it's made to be really strong, and stand up really well in the weather, so

03:02it's the right material. So just a bit of experimenting here, the trick is, you can

03:07just sort of throw it in, but they do join together, which means if you make your hole

03:11sort of the same depth all the way around, you can pretty much make it all the same height,

03:15pretty much. But it's a bit tricky, you've got to sort of, in some places of course your

03:21trench has to be deeper than others, so it was a bit tricky. But you can see there, sort

03:26of a diggy tool, the gloves were useless, kept getting big blisters from all that work,

03:31it took hours, it was like two or three hours a day, every day for two weeks, something

03:36like that. So a couple of hours before work, or a couple of hours after work, or whenever

03:40the opportunity presented itself, and slowly dug a trench around. So I'm going to do half

03:50originally, the front half, and then it's sort of, no I might as well do the whole thing.

03:55See the root, you see the big root there, and the crowbar, the crowbar is the tool to

03:58get it out. And then the other tool is to sort of dig down deeper, and the shovel, and

04:07back to the crowbar and the shovel, and the tomahawk, tomahawk's good too. So it was a

04:13bit of a thing, but quite pleasant sitting in the shade of the bamboo, because the weather

04:17was still pretty warm when we started this job, still is now. And sitting in the shade

04:24of the bamboo, interesting when the breeze blows through the bamboo, it comes out the

04:28other side really cool. So we love the bamboo, it's really, really good, very pleasant to

04:34be near. So yeah, digging the roots is hard, slow work, got to be really patient, dig through

04:43them, dig down. The soil that was coming out, we're just throwing on the grass, just sort

04:50of filling any sort of lower parts of the grass, just using it like topsoil. Oh yeah,

04:57tiles, look, mentioned in a previous video, anywhere we dig in the garden, we find pottery

05:03and tiles. Just anywhere you dig, anywhere you dig. There's car parks in our town that

05:10they've just sort of smoothed them over with a grater, and they're just covered in pieces

05:15of pottery. So it makes you wonder, every time you dig one up, it's like, I wonder how

05:20old this is, could be 50 years old, or it could be 500 years old, you never know. But

05:25of course, all the way around, we're finding little bits of pottery. So slowly getting

05:31there, it was a real job, you sit there for a couple of hours and go a couple of meters,

05:36and then, oh, time to get ready for work, go to work, come back the next day, get a

05:40couple more meters done. So lots of blisters, but it was a good job. Yeah, the gloves don't

05:49work, tried the gloves to stop the blisters, but for digging out the holes, nothing better

05:53than a bare hand for reaching into a hole like that. Might have missed it, because I

06:03sped the video up too much. One stage there, working with the shovel, a snake tail wiggling

06:10snake tail. Didn't see the snake, didn't see the snake, but obviously hit the tail

06:17with the shovel, and took off a couple of centimeters of snake tail, and it was wiggling,

06:22it was wiggling, because I must have just cut it off with the shovel, and saw it wiggling

06:26like a worm, and picked it up and looked at it, and it was a snake tail. So some poor

06:31snake had his tail just sticking out there somewhere, and I've collected it. So we know

06:38there are snakes in there, we've seen them in the garden before, so we know there's

06:42snakes in there. Get the occasional centipede as well, so there's Mercari in there as well,

06:47so probably wearing gloves is probably not a bad idea, but it's just nothing better

06:51than a bare hand for getting a grip on something, and feeling things, and digging out the dirt,

06:56and separating the dirt from the weeds, because we won't throw the dirt on the grass,

07:01and then throw the weeds in the rubbish. So slowly getting there, it's starting to join

07:06up with the other side, which was about 80 centimeters, so we had to get the, get one

07:12more piece, and cut, cut a bit off it with the grinder, and then put it in place. So the whole

07:24job, the barriers, and a couple of bags of, well one bag of concrete, because we already

07:32had half a bag, one bag of pre-mixed concrete was 4,000 yen, so $40, which is a bit of a thing,

07:41some of you guys know we don't like spending money on that, on the old farmhouse, because

07:45we know that eventually it'll all get demolished probably, but it's just so much work goes into

07:51keeping this bamboo under control, that it's worth spending this time and money on it, just

07:57to contain it, so don't have to spend so much time on it every weekend, because as it is, every

08:03weekend we're sort of fighting against it. We love the bamboo, but we just don't want to take over

08:08the house, take over the whole garden, which it would, if we let it go, it'd take over the whole

08:13garden, and then the kids would have nowhere to play, and it'd bring down the power lines, to the

08:18left of the fat man there, straight above there, is the power line, and the phone line, and we've

08:26got to keep cutting it back from there, because in a wind, strong wind, like a typhoon or something,

08:30the bamboo starts to hit on the power line, and the phone line, so we don't want that,

08:37so got to try and keep it away, so it doesn't doesn't do that.

08:44So here's the end result, just put a little bit of concrete where the joins were,

08:49because we assume it's going to be under a bit of pressure from the inside, from the bamboo,

08:55so just where the plastic joins, the joins on them are really strong, they're pretty good,

09:00but just to give them a bit of support everywhere, just to support it, so if it does get a bit of

09:07pressure from the bamboo, that it's going to make it less likely for it to

09:11separate, help it stay together, and then occasionally too, if we can see some

09:19some pushing going on there, we'll cut some bits off if we have to now and again, but assuming

09:25instead of every weekend having to do something on it, we'll probably be able to just now and again

09:31as required. You might notice the mucky trees on the left there guys, some of you would have seen

09:37when they were planted, they're doing rather well, so it's hard to see but on the left there,

09:44the power line and the phone line, so have to do a bit more trimming on the on the bamboo

09:49itself this week. So anyway, that was that project, hopefully someone found that interesting.

09:58More videos coming soon!

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