I’ve created a thread to coordinate the BEET effort. You can sign up here or there. Don’t beet around the bush, just join! BEET - 2026 European Focus Crops
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I don’t know if I have such space to concentrate on any one and the ones of those that could produce easy excess have their difficulties here. Beets and salads still don’t know how to reliably get seeds and tomatoes have LB problems plus just overall trying to make cross population before the real work starts. Squash is hard to give enough space to get huge excess plus there is always possibily of failyre due to weather. Watermelons I’m happy to keep at least some alive to seed with the hard selection I’m making. Favas is the only thing that I could get a lot of seeds, but only after next year. Although I might need to add some more diversity so might need to make seed increase from those before I can mix them with what I already have. I will still have some to lots of seeds of most of these crops to share as well as others as before.
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Jesse, it might not have been clear to you from the invitation, but people are welcome to join for a number of reasons. Seed increase is not the only goal - we can also benefit from a collective effort to acquire and grow out more genetic diversity, which we can then pool or otherwise make use of in the community. The crops that don’t do well in your location - like salad, beets and watermelon - are exactly the kind of projects our community can benefit from solving through adaptive seed. One goal of the project is to have agricultural problems we can solve, while we create data and convincing stories (proof of concept).
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Regarding minimum number of crops growing to be part of this project - I feel that we still didn’t reach a definitive conclusion since we agreed that it is ok for Isabelle to take part, esp. since she will be our fava coordinator, but after few comments from me, Malte and Laura - quoted bellow, application from Soeren Community project: Focus crops in Europe - #5 by Soeren is still in the air so to say.
I’ll repeat part of it and say that I’m up to lowering the treshold to one crop. Personally I think Soeren’s moschata squash would be a nice addition to our collective efforts on that species.
Also if the community thinks each of us needs to focus on more than one crop, we should be really clear when doing exceptions what are the reasons, maybe even state them in advance (in the first post).
I would really like us to be clear on this, to avoid future misunderstandings.
@ThomasPicard @marcela_v @stephane_rave @Hugo @Bore @Sebastien since you were at the meeting in Croatia where we defined this project, can you add your thoughts on the subject? Everyone else is also welcome to comment, of course.
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Getting people involved with just one crop is enough for me : what’s essential being to collectively make progress on the same crop by focusing on it in a shared topic : that’s gonna be exciting… then the fact that people grow 1,2,3,4 to 6 of those 6 crops is of zero importance to me.
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The proposal is that people are welcome to participate in the project by only joining one crop focus. So far I haven’t heard any concerns, so that tells me the consensus at the moment is for support.
I join Thomas, my energy lies in doing collective progress and on the individual level, that each of us commit to doing something next season that benefits the community. So introducing collective goals and doing something different from just “my projects”.
In hindsight, the “minimum three” was mostly in the context of our meeting in Croatia to see if there would be enough growers to cover 5-6 different crops. Now that we have participants joining from the wider community, that criteria becomes less important for me.
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Thank you @MareMare, @ThomasPicard and @malterod for weighing in. I will wait another day in case somebody else wants to give their opinion. If until then nobody weigs in with a convincing argument to keep the rule, I will change the starter post.
Sorry, Laura, for not responding to this sooner.
I admit that I was a little put off when I read that we were turning away people who could only invest time or space in a single culture. But my reaction should have been to say so in order to open up the discussion.
I agree with all of you that even if people only take on one culture, that’s already great… especially since it’s often their favorite culture that they’re going to invest time and energy in.
We also need to start a discussion about the next steps in the program. Choosing one or more cultures, succeeding with them, or at least helping the community move forward by sharing your experiences (positive and negative) is great… but then what do we do? We centralize seed shipments somewhere (I think Hugo volunteered), but then what strategy do we use?
- Do we mix everything together in one big grex?
- Do we start making several with different cultivation profiles? (northern grex, southern grex, clay soil grex, grex, etc.) > What information should the grower report back?
- Do we repeat a year of cultivation in different locations to amplify or begin selection?
- Do we just use the starter kits and let people do the work at home?
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Hi all,
the community has spoken. I changed the starter post to reflect that all participants are expected to choose at least one of the proposed crops. So participants can do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or even all 6 crops, whatever suits you the best.
So I would like to formally invite @Soeren again and extend a warm welcome to you if you decide to participate!
Thank you @stephane_rave for bringing up these important questions. Yes, we have many questions to discuss.
- Do we centralize all seeds with @Hugo (if we even remember correctly that he volunteered)?
- Or do the crop coordinators do their respective crop?
- But what if we don’t find a coordinator for lettuce and tomatoes?
- And what about crop coordinators not in the EU (me)? –> it is one thing loosing a shipment that is meant for me. It is another thing to have trouble with the seeds of a whole crop. Frankly, I would not feel comfortable sending all our combined seeds over the swiss/EU border
- Do we even do a grex already for the growing season 2026? –> Earlier we said that it propably depends on the crop. But it is nevertheless important to discuss, so we can think about logistics and how to balance the labour and cost of the whole thing so nobody burns out.
I think that many people already have seeds of the crops they have chosen. I for my part will certainly grow my own squashes, the tomatoes I got in croatia from Jesse, but for example I still need fava seeds. On the other hand I can send in squash seed if nessecary.
So, what would be the advantages and disadvantages of distributing seeds for the growing season 2026:
+ All people get diverse seed
+ We already can compare notes on what kind of genetics did well at what location (collect data)
+ People that already have their own landrace in progress can compare their own genetics with the new one they got via the focus crop program. This may already constitute some proof of concept
- Logistics may be too much for our fledgling project
- Danger of putting to much pressure (workload, financial, psychological) on key persons in the network. While we can do something about the finances (communal chipping in), the workload and stress can not be underestimated.
And what people should report:
At minimum people should propably post in the corresponding threads when they put their seeds out, what their conditions and cultural practices are/ were (weeding, weedfabric or jungle? Manure, compost, or no inputs?) Then they should document what kind of harvest they got (total yield, fruit weight/ size) and the harvesting date/ span of time. It would be great do document during the growing season but I would not make it a requirement, life can get crazy and unpredicable.
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Laura, you’re doing a great job! Thank you… 
It’s amazing to see this shy young woman we met a few days ago in Croatia taking the lead…
I love it! Concrete projects are always a source of revelation for certain discreet people…
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To make things simpler, I suggest we answer those questions in the respective subprojects. There will be different answers depending on the crop. And, perhaps more importantly, it takes the initiative into the smaller groups to self-organize. The goal is to increase seed for the community, raise the quality and understanding of these crops as well as create some stronger stories (that might be used for proof of concept etc). It is up to each group to see how they can take a step together in that direction.
As for the crops that don’t have a coordinator yet (lettuce and tomatoes), I think that would be the best use of our energy in this thread in the coming weeks.
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Still, I think same applies. I grow most if not all species every year, but being able to participate goes year to year and crop to crop bases so I rather keep the option open. I can try some and I can share seeds if there is to share. But like salads seems still like one way road. Only one variety has consistantly made seeds and couple made just barely one year. Not sure if some of the volunteers had crosses, but still very little to go by. Same is with beets until I can figure out how to keep them till spring. I could take same favas to increase diversity, but others I might better abstain from trying to acquire more seeds and instead make a proper selection year or 2 with squash and melons. Tomatos making more crosses to get to multi species cross hybrid swarm.
Just checking in here to hear if the two remaining crops (lettuce and tomato) still have a chance of getting going.
Tagging everyone who signed up for them to hear: Is anyone willing to take the lead on one of them? The role of being a leader is open for your interpretation. The main goal is just to get something started, help rally people and work together with the goal of increasing seed, diversifying or raising the quality as well as making some interesting documentation for that crop to the benefit of the whole community.
Lettuce: @stephane_rave @mare.silba @Hugo @malterod @Bore @mtttthwww_vdp, @Saskia, @Evelyne, @jackpeppiatt, @Anita
Tomato: @Laura @ThomasPicard @stephane_rave @Bore, @Evelyne, @Tanjaeskildsen, @Jacek, @Anita, @WojciechG
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As planned, I will be actively involved in growing tomatoes and lettuce.
However, I will have absolutely no time to coordinate everyone’s efforts with all the projects I already have underway on my side. 
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I too will grow tomatoes and lettuce but I’m not able to take the lead for a group.
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I’m definitelly growing lettuce, but also not the person for taking the lead on the forum (as already said in Croatia meeting) - I’m prone to be absent from forum for weeks due to other obligations and also different growing projects, also need too much time writing even smaller posts etc.
I don’t have a problem writing introductory/first post sometime in the next weeks, if nothing yet exist at the time I want to write what’s happening with my own lettuce. But am completely wrong person to rally others, organise people and keep the conversation going in the particular thread.
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Thank you @malterod for bringing this up and to all the people that chimed in. If you @mare.silba want to make an introductionary post for the lettuces, that would be great. If you don’t find the time, no biggie.
I propose that we just make a thread for tomatoes and lettuces and let the participants fill them themselves. Maybe it will be unstructured and messy, maybe the people will come together for a common goal. But we will see..
Does anybody want to do the introductionary post for the tomatoes (with no additional duties, no strings attached)?
Maybe write about what the challenges are with tomatoes in your location and why you want to participate, what germplasm you start with and then others can follow suit…
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I’m noting that @Justin is doing work again this year to get people together and collaborate on tomatoes: Join a tomato trial EUROPE 2026
It shares several of the goals that are potentially compatible with this project - specifically raising the bar and doing seed increase for the community. I suggest members who want to help us as a community develop tomatoes more go join that project.
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I am also in favour of this, as long as it is OK with @Justin. We can also do a hybrid approach where some people work with Justin, some work independently but with common goals.