Adaptation / landrace projects in continental Croatia, EU

[marcela_v (Marcela Velfl)]

Hello everyone,

like some of you, I have fallen deeply in love with landrace & adaptation gardening perspective. And I have exchanged, bought and brought from my travels many different types of seeds which has greatly enriched my existing seed bank which was mostly consisting of heirlooms and open-pollinated varieties.
This season I am going all in with the landrace approach and mixing everything I can get my hands on.

I am growing in continental Croatia, zone 8a or 8b depending on the year. It is constantly changing. I am able to garden most of the year with every passing season with some periods of colder weather.

I started a circular garden on a big plot of land which was used for monocultures just 3 years ago, and I let it regenerate for 2 seasons. I was growing on 20% of it, allowing weeds to grow and just cutting them to create natural mulch on spot. This year I am ready to expand and plant on 90% of the land. I have already planted many frost-hardy plants and they are all doing great. I am planting food for consumption in the circles, and I have many in-ground beds which are for experiments of all kinds around the circular part of the garden.

The beginning stage, and then after one year…

I am inspired by no-till, no fertilizer, no added amendments or compost, minimalist watering throughout hot summers, regenerative, lazy gardening. I was practicing all of it before even discovering landraces, so I guess I was off to a good start.

I will be sharing as much as I will be able with all of you the progress on my projects.

Photo of a beautiful sunset just days before I upgraded support poles around the circular part of the garden, to set up a lot of space for vertical growth… now it looks like this, but it is not finished yet…

There was a lot of rain here and unusually warm weather resulting in a lot of grass growing around as you can see it.

I have already planted many varieties all mixed up from different sources directly into the ground, and they all germinated well. This part was mulched over winter, and soil was beautiful. I just went through it with a pitch fork, and it was ready for planting. I have very heavy clay soil, and mulching helps a lot. Three years ago there was almost no worms in the ground, and now probably hundreds of them in just one square metre.

Here you can see mixed onions grown from seeds. I sowed some directly, and some in trays. In this circle there is a lot of green peas, beetroot, dill, coriander, camomile, lettuces, garlic, kale and broccoli, carrots. and on the other side lamb’s lettuce, broad beans, onions, spinach and I will add more brassiccas and lettuces everywhere where there is an empty spot, or slugs ate sth.

I already transplanted a mix of brassicas for breeding in one bed, and a mix of leeks to the other just next to it.

Also I decided to direct sow a mix of bush beans to see how they will do in colder temperatures. Although it has been close to freezing for days, one variety of beans has already germinated without cover. I put a cover only today, because frost is expected tonight.
The same for summer squash… I put them in the ground 10 days ago, and they are also doing great. I just took some random seeds from my mixes of squash seeds.

Beginning of February, I already planted a mix of fava beans I got from many of people here who are growing in EU. And almost half of it germinated, and it is doing great. I planted them as fast as the show melted into quite hard soil. I am looking forward to see what will come out of it.

Since I traveled to Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey, Serbia and Bulgaria in the past 6 months, I also brought many seeds with me. I don’t have photos of all of them, just my latest photo from the Bulgarian trip. Apart of all these packages I bought in various shops, I got 3 kilos of different beans I bought on local markets, and I received some seeds from local gardeners.

Currently, I have many plants still indoors waiting for warm weather. I planted many mixes of peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, rhubarb, artichokes, basil, TPS I managed to get from various sources - exchanges with people on the from, ordering from different countries, and seed hauls from my trips.

Many different tomatoes, including some landrace varieties, wild tomatoes, and cherry. There is more in another location.

These eggplants came from @JesseI and this photo was taken 8 days after sowing them. They are still my fastest growing eggplants

Basil all mixed up. Some trays stayed outdoors without a cover, so some just didn’t make it over night, but many did.

Lofthouse peppers I got from @stephane_rave are also doing great

There is more, but it will come later, with time… this was just a teaser.
I have also started a Facebook page (‘Cosmic Gardener’) to document my project and to share it with Croatian audience because it is quite a novel concept among seed keepers. I have planted seeds in mind of more than 30 people in the past 2 months, and so far it seems most of them are germinated, and many are interested. It changed a bit perspective on gardening and seed keeping for many of them

[RayS (Ray South)]

Excellent.

[stephane_rave]

WOW really amazing ! massive diversity, beauty of abundance, melting of genetic…all this energy is really impressive and communicative !
European friends if climate problems ravage our gardens don’t panic, I think we will all have something to eat by migrating to continental Croatia side lol
Marcela, Eager to follow your circular garden project and these good vibes !

edit : my Sweet peppers Charolais Brionnais landrace is a F1 grex with Lofthouse sweet pepper grex with also Holy italian and Moutain roaster landraces from Wild Moutain Seeds, and lots of early heirloom with good taste like Jimmy Nardelo, Doe Hill, Sweet chocolate, Mandarine,…etc

[marcela_v (Marcela Velfl)]

Thank you
Yes, in case the rest of Europe just goes crazy, you’re all welcome here… I have plenty of food for everyone plus big surfaces to work the land and to create the craziest landrace projects ever

Your peppers are really all doing great They all seem like one variety because they are all growing like one. I am looking forward to see fruits of it

[marcela_v (Marcela Velfl)]

So, here is a little update on what’s going on in Croatia. We had a period of rain, but warm enough to plant. So I’ve been planting non-stop for the last month and a half. And still planting as soon as I take something out of the ground.

I’ve been collecting arugula seeds, some spinach, camomile, and many peas varieties, including peas I got from @polarca from Norway. It seems that they are doing quite well in warm climates. Out of 30+ seeds, 5-6 plants survived and they are giving a lot of pods. I am keeping all of them for seed because I have plenty of other peas for eating. They had amazing flower colors, as well as seeds… here they are…

I have planted a lot of rhubarb from seed (including those from the Experimental Farm Network), and I will transplant them in autumn. In the meantime, I got more seeds, and I will add more.

Then comes the broad beans. I planted many mixes of seeds in 2 locations, and many failed due to slugs. I did not remove any slugs from beds where broad beans are growing. There are also many flowers in same beds, onions and lamb’s lettuce. So I let the slugs enjoy in this circle, while I was selectively eliminating them from other beds, for a more gentle approach, and to have some food left. Because they would eat all of it for sure.

Here is one part of 2 circles growing the following in a small space (from left to right)… tall peas on the net, runner beans on the outside of the circle and will soon replace peas, then support poles are for mixes of tomatoes, then I have mixes of bush beans with mixes of peppers in between and some carrots in the shade of beans. Then next bed has broad beans, flowers, onions, radishes, and lambs lettuce. The next bed on the right has many different eggplants, celery, flowers, bush beans and tomatoes.

These are many different varieties of radishes going to seed.

Yesterday I planted more bush beans on the surface next to the tarp. I used this method for the first time here. There was a lot of grass, so I just covered it with a tarp one month ago, and yesterday I discovered that the soil under was perfect for planting. Moles helped to make it soft and fluffy, and grasses dried. So I got mulch as well. I planted 4 types of beans and different zucchini here, and covered the area next to it, to plant sth there end of August.

Big Hill tomatoes. I don’ remove grass… just go around like a sheep to graze it a little bit… and I will be mulching many surfaces in the next week in areas where I don’t have plants covering the whole surface.

New support for countless tomatoes which survived bad weather and slugs. I planted out more than 500 of them thinking many will not make it… well 99% made it, so now I had to get more support for them, because I put beans and squash on the ground. Next year I want to plant a lot of tomatoes and leave all of them on the ground.

Behind the tomatoes are more than 40 varieties of beans - green, bush and pole beans… mixes of melons, mixes of watermelons, cabbages, tomatillo mixes, mixes of squashes, mixes of corn… and I sowed white clover everywhere hoping it will outgrow other grasses, so I will leave everything to grow a bit more until I cut down the grass a bit.

Here are mixes of eggplants growing quite close to each other. I also thought maybe slugs will eat them, but most survived. There is also celery in between, beans and tomatoes, as well as flowers. I will mulch this part because they are all growing quite slowly, and I don’t have irrigation, so I am covering the ground with mulch.

Potatoes from TPS for the first time. I got more than 60 plants that survived. So I am looking forward to see how they will do. I will add more soil around them and mulch them as well.

Grass and everything in between…

And lastly, the view from the above. I had to climb to the roof to get this one. Circles are not clearly visible anymore because it is green everywhere. This is just to give you a perspective

[stephane_rave]

great project that grows well!
So it’s not just the amazing birds on the roofs these days

[marcela_v (Marcela Velfl)]

Time really flies fast when harvest season is in full bloom. I have been canning a lot of jams because most of the fruit trees are packed, especially pears. Everything made this year will contain pears.

I have been planting and harvesting something non-stop since February, with a short break now during August due to extreme heat. For that reason, I let some grasses overgrow my crops so they provide shade.

I’ll start with some failures of the season:

• sweet peppers: most of them were eaten by slugs in the beginning, especially those that were direct-seeded I was away for 4 days in spring, and everything was gone. Some survived, but they are a bit behind because of the extreme heat, and now I am waiting to get some in September to collect seeds of the thoughest survivors, so it might actually end up being a success… let’s see
  -potatoes from TPS… I had only sarpo mix and some other varieties that were not from GTS people. I got those too late in the season to plant them, so I am looking forward to next year. My plants managed to grow a bit, but they were completely eaten by beetles. I discovered that there are some mini potatoes in the ground, so I am letting them overwinter… and hope maybe something grows next season.
  -direct-seeded brassicas - most were eaten by slugs… recently I discovered some mini survivors in the grass, so I am hoping they will grow a bit now and then give seeds next year.
  -pumpkins: most pumpkins don’t do well in my soil with no-input. Only several plants survived so they will be my foundation for next year’s project.
  -lettuce: literally ALL of my lettuce was eaten by slugs. And I am sure they were so satisfied with their bellies full. Now I am looking forward to planting Mare’s lettuces which are crosses between 4 varieties and seem like they are slug resistant.

About successes of the season so far (through photos):
Fava beans - I let all fava be eaten by slugs. I didn’t even try to bother to remove them. They ate some of the plants entirely, but many managed to survive and gave seeds. Most of the seeds don’t look perfect, but I am going to plant them again. Those that are on the left are from plants that were not touched by slugs. Many were growing quite tall, and forming pods facing up.

Corn
-I already got this type of corn cross-polinated between many varieties, and I am loving it. This plant was knocked over by the storm, so I decided to look inside, and discovered a pure gem. They should be bluish/purplish when they ripen. Plants themselves are almost 3 meters high and grow quite well in low-input conditions.

In another part of the garden, I seeded more than 20 different varieties of heirloom corn, and I am hoping to see some interesting crosses. They are different sizes and different colors. And I will select further next year for the ones I like the most after they get more genetic diversity.

Okra - 2 years ago okra was a complete failure in my soil. it grew to max of 10 cm, and then died. This year I got one mix from the Experimental Farm network with more than 20 varieties, I added some from my travels in different colours, and I got very diverse mix. I put them in the ground without caring too much about the depth and spacing. Firstly they were stagnating because I was not watering them or fertilizing them. Then after one rain in July, they took off and now they are much bigger and stronger. Plants look quite fragile, but we had some really strong winds in the last several days, and all survived.

Beans - I was able to get some spontaneous mixes in bush beans and I was suuuuper excited about it, because I didn’t attempt any manual pollination. I am still waiting to see the pole beans because they took off only on the last 2 weeks when we had cooler weather, but many were able to produce even during a heatwave. So I am keeping those for next year to continue the selection of those which survive slugs, and those which produce in hot climates.

Tomatoes - I was able to multiply many varieties including the more promiscuous varieties from Joseph and GTS. Big Hill is doing great. It was growing slowly and had many green tomatoes… and now they are all ripening withing a short time frame. I have many cherry varieties, but many more bigger varieties from all around the world.

Pole peas from Norway did great in my climate, even when it was very hot. Plants were healthy from beginning until the end of their life cycle. I seeded around 30 seeds directly, and 6-8 plants survived moles. They got more than 500 grams of seeds, mainly dark red. Which I love <3

There is also soooo much more going on, and many seeds I was able to multiply. Many I didn’t even plant so I have plenty of stocks for experiments next season.

Now I already planted many brassicas, onions from seeds, lamb’s lettuce, corriander, green peas, mixes of beet root, mixes of carrots.

Another update coming in September…probably

[Jacek]

Beautiful and huge garden! Thank you for sharing. In my garde broad beans, corn and peas are also the most successful cultures this year. Slugs killed all my beans though. Out of 4 plantings only a few plants survived so far.

[stephane_rave]

courage do not let yourself be overwhelmed by abundance!

[marcela_v (Marcela Velfl)]

It is raining here so I finally have some time to post some updates…
But first, buckets of apples from the neighbour’s orchard… nobody harvests them, so I was so kind to take them and turn them into delicious compot

The only sweet peppers that were able to adapt here for the first season… they will be my base for next year.

Bush beans crosses yeeeeiiiiiii… well done to the bees and bumblebees.

Melons I even didn’t know existed in my garden because of the grass. Then I was surprised to see them, enjoy them and collect seeds from them. Some were eaten by slugs, but they didn’t eat the seeds because I found ground full of seeds, so I am curious to see if they will survive until next year.

Asparagus I transplanted after planting seeds in the containers. They are doing great so far.

Beetroot grex I sowed end of summer and then transplanted. They are doing great. I will just cover them with some light fabric if the temperatures drop below zero.

One interesting watermelon - with red seeds, and quite good taste.

Okra plants grew to less than 1 m, and each plant gave the average of 3 pods with seeds, so I collected many of 10-20 different varieties, and I have some to share to everyone who is curious about them. Some of the plants are still doing great despite bad weather.

The sweetest melon ever

My happy place

Tomatoes that did well when the temperatures dropped dramatically.

Squashes in all shapes and colors. Many that I planted didn’t survive, but these did

Bush beans grex for next season with some natural crosses. This is the happiest-looking jar so far.

End of September harvest

Heirloom and landrace next to each other. Landrace corn was much bigger and robust, survived strong winds and storms. Heirloom varieties I planted with the hope to get some crosses were 100% eaten by some animals.

With Joseph at our event in Croatia

Joseph assisting in transplanting self-seeded clones of garlic and strawberries in my circular garden, all mixed up with each other

Four varieties of watermelon that made it without watering, fertilizer and removing grasses.

A mix of wheat I got from Joseph as well a mix from Mesopotamia I brought home with me last year. I planted them several days ago to see how they will do here.

Visiting some seed exchange events…

The last harvest of beans beginning of October…

Something fresh for lunch…

Zucchini grex, more than 10 varieties did quite well, and survived slugs that ate most of the zucchini flowers this year.

Cabbages in the forest garden are doing great.

Parsley grex for autumn and winter growing abundantly.

With my little gardener in training. She is 3 and a half (soon) and she knows how to plant and transplant plants, beans are her favourite toys, she knows most seeds and varieties of fruits and vegetables, she plants onions and fava by herself… She is my niece, but very similar to me, and I am sure she arrived to this planet to participate in many amazing gardening projects.

All kinds of alliums I put in the ground in the last 2 days. The middle ones are from the store, other are either mine of I got them through seed exchanges. The bottom box are onions which I got from seeds planted in spring.

I added to my garlic mix 3 varieties I got from a shop - one Croatian, one Spanish and one Chinese. I am looking forward to see how they will do. 2 weeks ago I also brought one Spanish variety from Malaga and planted it already.

F1 generation of my Swiss chard. They are all different sizes and shapes, quite resistant and not very interesting to slugs. I will plant them next season in bigger quantities, and then let them go to seed because next year I will have beetroots flowering.

One and only hubbard squash or a hybrid that grew for me. It was a bit small, but it was also quite late since slugs ate so many flowers.

There is also so much more that I didn’t even remember to photograph. If I take into consideration that it was only my first year of adaptation, I am super happy with all the wonderful results.

I already planted a lot of arugula, camomile, lamb’s lettuce, onions, garlic, swiss chard, brassicas, lettuces for autumn and winter and they are doing great. Let’s see if we will have a stronger or milder winter.

All in all I have some interesting seeds to exchange, and I cannot wait to start the seed exchange season

[isabelle (Harlé)]

@marcela_v

ush beans crosses yeeeeiiiiiii… well done to the bees and bumblebees.

Hello Marcella , I also thought I had surely identified crosses in my beans harvest, because I saw shapes and colors I had never seen before. And I was so happy about that.
Then when I joined the Joseph’s tour in the town of Rennes, where there is a pretty experienced seed saving community , I was a bit disapointed because the scientist amongst them told me that the bean genetics is very flexible and the changes of colours and shapes might very well come from simple intra-variety epigenetics changes, without crossings.
Do you have a way to dertermine whether you have genetics or epigenetic changes here ?
Anyway, if you have enough , I would be happy to exchange my new ones with yours !!!

[Lauren (Lauren Ritz)]

It is very rare in my experience for a solid color bean to produce stripes. It is also rare for a single plant to have beans with different colors, shapes, etc, unless those changes are a cross.

One pink bean in a pod with black beans, or a striped bean in a pod with solid colored beans, in my experience is likely to be a cross. I can’t say for sure that the orange in a few beans on a plant which otherwise produced only solid colored pink beans was a cross, when it was planted beside a striped orange bean, but logic says the color change was related to proximity.

The simplest way is to grow out the population. The pink and orange stripes persist, the purple “pinto” stripe, and so on.

Bean shape is another thing I watch. In the second generation you may find that the shapes start to reflect one parent or another. I have not been able to prove this to my satisfaction in the first generation, but there are often mature beans whose odd shape doesn’t match the other beans in the pod.

As I was recently reminded, the science of genetics is rapidly changing and even those who have made this their life’s work are often stunned at the things being learned and the changes to long held beliefs.

Visible crosses--Can I see an F1 bean hybid? (2021 video)

[marcela_v (Marcela Velfl)]

Hm… yes… could be that there is always the effect of epigenetics, however in this case I am quite sure it was a cross… these come from the part of the garden where I was planting 20+ varieties of bush beans together. It was just 2 or 3 pods of each kind that were different than the others.

I also planted these varieties in other places in rows and there were no crosses, and these varieties are known to produce seeds that will be identical to the parent plant. But it seems my system worked. I need to inspect all of them once again to see how many crosses I have. So if I have more, I will share with you… if not this year, then next season. I will keep them to multiply them next year. But I also have many more of these that were obviously parent plants to I can share more of those with you, and you’ll have higher chances next season to get more crosses from them.

[isabelle (Harlé)]

Good to read you. I need hope !
I also plant them extremely promiscuously. I often have three colors of flowers on the same pole at the same time, so I think conditions are favorable to crossings.

In my harvest this year, I identified at least 3 new aspects I am sure I never sowed . And I have quite a lot of them, like a whole plant’s worth of production, if not two . I thought they were the result of last year’s crossings . Because someone in this forum wrote that the external coat of beans comes from the mother, so the crossings are not visible year 1, only year 2 .

What I start to understand, and maybe I am wrong, is that various colors on one plant or even in one pod are definitely epigenetics , and that only whole plants prove that there has been a crossing the year before.
discussion to be continued , but in the mean time, I would love to exchange my suspected crossings with yours …

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

I tried some superprimitive manual crossing on snowpeas which i marked with a scotch and they’ve worked out. It’s basicly ripping flowers apart and rubbing bits together a bit. With my plumb fingers even it was doable, so then everybody should be able to do it.
What i’ve gathered that helped is if the soil is really diverse in microbial life. The more diverse the bacteria are the bigger chances they go in the plant and start rearranging things. The lady scientist admitted they don’t really understand what’s going on anyway, soil is way to complex to do simple scientific tests on with millions of differing factors, hypothesis etc the basic of science is hardly of use. Even though every x years they double their knowledge, she doubted if we’re ever going to understand.
Even by exchanging seeds amongst the few of us we’re going to diversify our soil biology i’m convinced.
But yeah it would be good if we all start rubbing flowers together next year!

[Lauren (Lauren Ritz)]

Well, when those differing colors create a new variety with the same mixed colors the following year, I tend to think “First year crossing.”

The method? Who knows? But it’s happened more than once, with varieties that were new to me that year.

[isabelle (Harlé)]

@Lauren I agree I should wait until next year , to see what happens with those new colors and shapes.
I will sow some of them in an identified location and the rest with the others, for one more round of promiscuity growing.

@hugo glad to read that simple ripping rubbing of the flowers may be good enough to trigger crosses. I will certainly try this next year. Does that work will all legumes ? (I mean all that have a big enough flower, not like lentils…)

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

I hope it works for all of them. I don’t know, but am hopeful.
I kind of ripped open a flower to get to the male bits with pollen and stuff, exposing only that bit…
Then i pulled something on a young looking flower, maybe the landing platform for bees bit of the flower and it opened up the stamen. Anyway, pulling some petal leads to it opening gently. Then i put the pollen on the stamen(female part), hopefully before it selfpollinated, therefore i took the young flower.
They made seeds, and i didn’t kill it.
I think they’re all pretty similar, but summer was too busy to be making crosses. But in spring hopefully i’ll be there to see the flowers of snowpeas opening and i could make a little topic about it.
I hoped people in cities on balconies or indoors or whatever with just an obsession for one crop could find time to do this, but no luck so far.

[marcela_v (Marcela Velfl)]

I see that @stephane_rave is showing off with some media attention, so I will follow

I was interviewed after one workshop and talked a little bit for one of the biggest agricultural portals in the region

Kako dobiti otporno sjeme?

[stephane_rave]

congratulations for your commitment so comunicative Marcela! It’s thanks to your example of local workshop that inspired me that the media follow me

The local French press can’t compete with this beautiful article of the Croatian agricultural press ! Your journalist obviously has more structured ideas than my local journalist

However I note this little escapade, when the journalist seems scared to see you invade Croatia with pathogens in the seeds…you did well to reorient the conversation with positivity

go small media contest :
the first of the community who gets to pass on a national television talking about GTS and adaptation gardening will be covered until his death of seeds by all members !