Stephane Rave encouraged me to document my project.
So here goes.
I’m a slow landracer, been going for some years, just adding variety, no deliberate crossing so far, never found the time so far.
Spinaches, been growing in the greenhouse since november on compost, some five ish varieties.
Lettuce mix from @mare.silba , some apparent crosses. I’ve got a four season lettuce growing wild outside, i’m just going to mix everything up, i’ve got enough seeds of varieties i’ve been growing for a while to just keep throwing it out every so often around the self seeding four season lettuce. Mixes will appear normally.
And some mixes like this one or the big grex @marcela_v send i want to first get loads of seeds of @stephane_rave his grex, i’ve got to produce a lot more of this year as well.
Grex of kales,already flowering… Not happy. A north facing rack behind of willow branches will permit the peas to climb on if the snails won’t have them all.
Cathy’s ridiculously vigorous polar peas get a place here, i’ve made a rope rack for them to climb on and hopefully they’ll aim for the peach trees. I want to use this old hugel culture spot for a grex of perennial kale’s as well later this season.
Wonderful to see your pictures Hugo. If you grow out seed from the perennial kale grex I’ve included in the seed chain, note that they will often flower a lot - it’s a feature, not a bug. They’re perennial because many of them survive and continue to live. The flower buds are some of the most delicious part of the plant. In my climate, I love to grow flowering kale.
Yeah In the present moment it’s nice to see your site, the evolution of your projects, then it creates the desire to follow you more and more (like a story in several episodes)…in a few years these photos will also be very useful to us to tell all the progress made together!
Personally I was first convinced of the interest of landrace gardening by the harvest photos and video of Joseph Lofthouse, who took me to read the book and then to take action.
Even failures, or work in progress are good to document by image, which will always serve to tell and show the fantastic epic of landrace gardening.
Storytelling is the key to the transition, knowing how to tell, document, make people dream to embark more and more people in this green revolution that we are initiating!
Small rush video could be cool to keep also in archive if one day we are joined or hooked by someone who would like to make a documentary film on the subject. Always to show where we started and where we arrived because the human brain is very bad to have a fair memory over long periods.
Glad you followed my advice for this follow Hugo, I follow mine now lol. I am working on a subject followed by my garden in the coming days
Thanks Hugo! I’d echo Stephane’s comments on the documentation being very useful and appreciated! I learned/absorbed a lot from @JesseI 's 2023 thread. Looking forward to following along here.
Hi Mathewwwww. Happy you’re keen. I didn’t think of that! With computers and phones and hard drives breaking, it’s good to document. Encouraging. I see some older pix from permies sometimes and i’m happy i posted them because i’d never have revisited them through the mess my photos are.
Where my four season self seeding lettuce popped up dominantly i’ve added Marcela’s grex. Snails are butchering, will add @stephane_rave his Charolais grex as well.
So. I’m making space to seed or plant. I had wintercovercrops like Miners lettuce and Lamb’s lettuce. It was intercropping with other things.
Hère is a bed that always fils to produce. It was full of Egyptian walking onions. But they come big with foliage, middle without foliage and small bulbs. Then it turned out it killed the small Bulbs, but worked fine for the bigger ones. When all seeds fall down it’ll be too thick so i décidés to use the space differently. Remove the miners lettuce…
Rainy day. Made a climbing rack from hazel branches i took out of the hedge. More to come. But don’t know where and how. It’s your fault for sending me all those seeds.
In the national newspaper this morning :
a group of seed activists named GTS, at the origin of the disappearance of the hedges of Morvan in France! they exchange too many seeds, nature has failed to provide enough tutors…
Hahaha… On a serious note. My neighbor cattle farmer doesn’t do hedge cutting. Oaks and hornbeam tower over the poor hazelshrub. I have helped the oak a bit killing it. I hope the farmer doesn’t notice. He’s very serious with his trees. Hé got fines for not cutting his hedges by inspection. We use it as firewood if they die.
@mare.silba send me a landrace of lamb’s lettuce. Valerianella locusta, if i read cotrectly. It became big! I like that because it flowers now and covers really well. I dont know if it’s a bit alleopathic, but suspect it. In a minute soil is clean for planting. I’ve sown millet and a grex of long beans. If somebody is interested i got seeds.
Made space for potatos. I had the idéal for a covercrop to block out the sun ans kill off the grass. It worked not well. The black radishes grew too slow. Only recently it blocked the sun out. Weakening the potatos popping out under them, it was time to harvest many seeds!!
Light for small TPS and some drought hopefully will keep the snails at bay. Seeded salads, calendula, red beets and parsnip all over that plot for more snail distraction and the survivors will be selected for snail resilience. TPS and companion/distraction corps.
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