Mare's island garden adaptive style in Med climate

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

Hello everyone, In this place I want to document various things I have growing, small projects and such. Before I jump into it, some general info. I live on a small island in Adriatic sea, Mediterranean area. When I say small, I mean it - whole island is just 15 km2.

Climate wise, winters are mild, mostly wet and very rarely have freezing temps. Summers are hot, more so lately, and with little or no rain. Most rain falls in late autumn and winter, spring is more variable but we usually get some rain during those months too. Periods with small amounts or no rain can be anything between 2 months (just summer) to 6-9 months.

We do have strong winds, there is a specific one for Adriatic area called ‘bura’ - can go to gale force strength, but also blows with very variable speed so it feels like a kick when it goes from low to high speed in a split second. It is a very dry and desiccating wind (most times) - winter ones are stronger, have a great wind chill and can bring lot’s of fine sea-spray aka salt (black fence can be white from it); summer ones don’t get that high speed usually but are hot ‘foehn’ type wind (literally it’s like a giant hairdryer blowing over you, plants, soil… everything).
Basically when ‘bura’ blows air humidity is very low and it dries out everything, in winter it gets colder, in summer it gets hotter, and if it’s strong enough you get a fine layer of salt on everything.

Due to bura wind and being surrounded by the sea, air humidity can be anything between very dry or very humid in any time of the year.

We have poor (not fertile) and shallow rocky soil, in many areas it is hard and compacted with many small rocks, average depth in most areas is 5-30cm above limestone parent rock. I’m guessing that my garden has a bit more depth, but not much, maybe 40-50 cm (or not?), but that last part above parent rock is probably mostly small rocks really tightly packed.

Few general photos of my main gardening area, you may notice it’s a mixture of everything - from annual and perennial veggies to aromatic and medicinal plants to olive trees and some other fruits and berries. Also some edge vegetation that is mainly for protection from winds and noisy neighbours. Olive trees were already there when I started gardening in this space (some 20 years ago), and for the rest - I like biodiversity, I can’t help it :-).

Right now garden is still ‘in-between’: some summer plants are still there and thriving - basil, squash, peppers finally started to give some fruits, regrown tomato or two; autumn/winter crops are starting out, some vigorously like artichokes, & nasturtium, some such as most leafy greens need a bit more time to show properly -or the first round was completely eaten by new species of slugs on the island (that has finaly managed to establish itself as a permanent island resident in last years).

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

Two really precious resources on the island are water and soil. I’ve mentioned already how our soils look like, many dry stonewalls helped to keep the resource on the island instead of erosion to the sea. We don’t have permanent or seasonal freshwater resources on the island - no lakes, rivers, creeks etc. One or two built freshwater seasonal ponds in the forested area. No public water supply system in our houses.

We live off rain for everything from personal and household use to irrigation (every house have built concrete water tanks and its own system of pipes. There’s an option to buy city water that gets to the island with watercarrier boats, but I avoid it as much as I can, it’s very bad quality (very hard water and contains ‘fecal’ microorganisms above limits safe for human drinking) and it involves ordering way ahead and additional logistics.

I do need to irrigate in summer, but I do it by hand and it’s not effective as it should be or productive, it needs to be dealt with. In the mean time I do irrigation in drought periods, in summer I try to do it 2-3 times per week and not often, generally I refuse to do it daily.

Since our soils are completely marginal for agriculture and water is scarce (at least in warm half of the year), if we don’t want to do a lot of input in manure and drip line irrigation, regenerating our soils and building landscape capacity to hold more water coupled with landracing our crops is really the only way to go.

My general growing style is (almost) no-till, no fertilizers except some compost and composted manure now and then (less and less over time), no -cides. I’ve already mentioned diversity of plants, it’s not just for eating and our own use, building soil & nurturing habitat and food for wildlife - pollinators, predatory insects, spiders, lizards, snakes, birds etc. is important too. Also, more different types of flowers right next to our crop plants all through the growing season means more pollinators, which means more crossings in our landraces .

Here’s an example of some other growing spaces around our house.

It also shows some of the creative ways of using abundance of rock to add more structure in landscape, help with water retention and use and have more space for growing stuff. This huge ‘pile’ of rock behind/beside the olive tree is more than 100 years old!

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

Now that you know what conditions I grow in and general style it’s time to see what’s going on around the garden at the moment.
Just one other thing - I grow in polycultures. Even beds for annual crops are planted as a mix of different stuff. No nice rows of one species or another here

You can see here (and in previous post photo) nasturtiums that are self-seeding like crazy all over and happy to pop up with first autumn rains.
This is a grex in its 5th season with mostly vines, some bushes and intermediary types too, various flower colours with new ones showing up each year.

This one is easy for me, growing from September to late june/early July, have a lot of flowers which cross easily. There is a lot of leaf biomass so at this point I have to cut it down regularly, it will take over the garden otherwise, but that just gives me a lot of salad greens and the rest feeds the soil. Flowers in spring add so much colour and taste to food, love that the whole plant is edible. Since it’s growing so well it also serves as a trap/food plant for various caterpillars that would otherwise decimate different brassicas I’m growing.

There’s basil grex too, in front and some in the back, still nicely growing and flowering.

Actually, I have basil in 2-3 separate populations. It started as a ‘basil for pest’ and was grown few years in pots near kitchen, mostly your regular green leafed for pesto type with some dark opal plants and later on one very large leafed plant. Purple leaf colour from dark opal disappeared fast, but it’s genetics show in leaf shape, purple colour of flower stem and (other parts of flower beside petals I don’t know the English word for). I’m still growing it as a ‘in pots for pesto’ population.

In 2023. I started on more resilient grex for growing directly in garden ‘beds’, so much less water and more sun in the summer. It was mix of my own seeds and a diverse Macedonian population (from Kokopelli). Any new basil seeds I get goes here, no matter how it tastes and what it looks like.
This is the one you can see in the photo. I like how it’s going so far, this year plants also struggled through summer but surprised me how good they bounced back in September.
There is variation in leaf size, taste/aroma, colour of flower stem etc., plant form - more or less bush like. I’m keeping seeds from all plants that survived for now and hope to start some selection on taste next year, maybe keep two subgroups based on taste on different sides of garden.

Some more ‘garden basil population’ photos

Here you can also see some loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) growing from seeds. I’m hoping to get a population of loquat trees more resilient to a desease that renders fruit unedible. This is one of long-term projects and this seedlings are the first ones I tried.

Some more basil - population growing in pots for pesto - grown separately in pots near kitchen, one reason is to ensure a good crop while ‘garden population’ adapts and evolves. It gets water regularly and is mostly shaded during summer days. Classic basil taste is also important, we do a lot of pesto genovese, so this population will keep going for now. Any new basil that has this taste goes here too. Focus here, beside taste, is on good growth. I started to save some seeds from the plants with biggest leaves separately, my mum like those for easier picking so that will be a sub-group to play with too.

This ones were seeded in spring and grown throughout summer. Some plants are done, but some still need to flower and set seeds.
There are also some strawberries here, still giving some fruits in October

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I’ve started a second round at the end of august, plants are still very happy, we’ll see how long they will last and if there will be flowering and seeds from this round (those two pots in front are from summer growing group)

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

Some other experiments/projects with trees from seeds:

Peaches from seeds - I have several peach trees growing from seeds, some were self(bird)-seeded, some I’ve put seeds in.
Oldest one came up by itself right under a younger fig tree. It gives some fruit for the last 4-5 years, but it’s location is problematic and taste of fruits is so-so. I’m leaving it here for now, to have some fruits and to play a bit with pruning, to see how it behaves and what is possible.

My goal for peaches is good growth from the start, vigorous and robust plants, and taste, naturally. Good drought resistance, can stand strong winds and some salt, those would be traits needed for my location, it would be really good if the trees are on a smaller side. Since they grow well here I seed them directly in the ground where I want to have peaches. With early pruning I’ll try to keep them low and slightly push the selection in that direction.
Also I need to get my hands on old ‘vineyard’ varieties, those are some of the best peaches I ever tried, firm fleshed and juicy. Most of the seeds for now comes from bought fruit, mostly from farmer’s market (that is not on the island!).

Other trees are still young, three of them are in their 2nd, 3rd and 4th year respectively and doing good.
Photo of this year saplings, there’s 3 in here, also doing good. I’ll leave them all for now and see how they grow, before I decide which one will stay.

There is an artichoke from seed here too and some young raspberry shoots. In front some lettuce seedlings, seeds for this came from european swap box.

Some almonds growing from the seeds from local trees. I’ve grown them in a big wooden box to see their germination and behaviour, this year I’ll do more in a smaller flis pot that is also good for air-pruning roots.
Waiting for colder weather to transplant them in their permanent place.

I also have a young plum and a young apricot in ground growing from seeds. Will start some more from seeds too this winter.
I see grafting in my future too, hahaha, I’ll need it if I want to do fruits from seeds with selection for taste in my small growing space. And I’ll say I wish I started with trees from seeds 20 years ago too…

Some Quercus ilex seedlings. This is a native evergreen oak here, we still have some forested areas on the island. It’s the first time I’ve grown it from seed, trying to see germination rates and if I’ll need to do some stratification/scarification in the future. I’m happy with this round, some 20-25% of germination (which is really a lot for this species) without me doing anything, I’ve just collected acorns from few trees around the village this late January/early February and stuck them in soil. Not too long later young shoots appeared!

I need some Quercus trees for more shade (and wonderful microclimate control during heat), not just in our place but in public spaces around (guerilla gardening hehehe). There’s also a need to rejuvenate our forest with new seedlings due to the bad management practices. I hope to be a main resource for that with locally grown and adapted seedlings.

I also started to play with jujube seeds, freshly put into the soil, we’ll see at spring time if they manage to germinate.

[stephane_rave]

Hey Mare, really happy to see your garden space and all your planting experiences !

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

Hey Stephane, it’s good to hear from you. I had in mind to do a thread like this for a while but would always get stuck reading other stuff around the community. Gathering in Antibes with all those interactions and meeting you guys live was obviously a kick in the but that I needed

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

On to cucurbits!
Kind of a new crop group for my garden. Seeds I got from the european serendipity seed swap box were the key for any success. This really shows importance of community and availability of diverse enough seeds for growing in difficult conditions.

I’ve tried to grow zucchini during all my years of gardening, where I would get a plant now and then that survived but no pollinated fruits ever, and few times tried to grow butternut and some other squash (mostly from seed from farmer’s market) which would maybe get few male flowers and die out promptly.

So in reality this is my first year of really growing different cucurbits and I have some results. Very happy about it :-).

Some of you know a story about my first zucchini fruit ever, so here it is.
Last couple of years I tried several more bought varieties and one I’ve got from another gardener on the island. Nothing happened there. This year I’ve sown those varieties again and some others that I’ve got from direct swaps and the swap box and bingo.
Turned out I’ve had to find varieties and seeds that were grown in harsher conditions, with no or minimal input in fertilizers and low water input. Of some 40-ish seeds (direct seeded) and seedlings that were planted in the garden only one made it through the summer. All the rest very quickly succumbed to various insects and drought/high temps. Thanks to @Richard and his seeds I’ve got a first adult zucchini plant with one mature fruit.

It looks like there could be at least one other fruit that will be strong enough for pollination. Maybe there isn’t enough time for properly maturing and having viable seeds, but it’s still warm and it might just surprise me. If not I’ll just eat it

This is first year I’ve tried growing cucumbers. I don’t like to eat fresh ones, but I decided to start a landrace for pickling cucumber which I love. Seed is from a bag with that said ‘cucumbers mix’

First round of seeding in spring produced just one plant that survived enough to gave me one mature fruit - saved seed from that one. In august I’ve sown another round and it does much better then ones growing through summer. I’ve decided to save few fruits for seed, and pick the rest for my first pickled cucumbers.

Yes, they are growing in the same box as those young almonds, and there’s one sweet pepper plant too. It looks like tree seedlings, at least some, like to have companions and added shade during first year of growing through hot summer. I did a similar thing with Quercus seedlings (from previous post) during summer and they were also happy.

I have some more cucumbers in two big garden bags near by. At some point I’ll start growing cucumbers directly in garden beds too, maybe even next year, we’ll see. One goal is short season, so next year I want to try second round of planting with seeds from the first round. I want to have plants that grow fast and strong and that can put out a large crop as soon as possible ready for pickling. That makes them more manageable to fit in the ‘time and space’ schedule of growing.

[Richard]

@mare.silba

Thanks to @Richard and his seeds I’ve got a first adult zucchini plant with one mature fruit

You are welcome. Glad to hear that.

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

I’ll return to veggies and landraces, but first I’d like to share what was happening last week. It’s olive picking time here and some of you were interested what it looks like etc.
This year was exceptional for olives, at least in this region so everyone got a bit crazy with picking olives, and how much did we managed to pick and how much oil they gave is a talk of the village ever since I got back from Antibes.
Also, olive trees are an integral part of my garden system so it makes sense to show you that part too.

Among others, I have one old and great olive tree, native variety of eastern Adriatic coast but it’s not that much represented in the area. It had abundant fruits which were really healthy so I wanted to gather and make oil from it separately.
That one tree gave almost 80 kg of olives wich is great. It did gave just 10% of oil, so just over 8 liters. But the taste is excellent, I’ve never tasted so nice olive oil immediately after pressing (one or two days old). I’m curious how will the taste develop over the next year.

Here are some photos of that particular tree and me picking olives from it…

[stephane_rave]

oh great, to be able to make your own olive oil!
I almost wish that global warming continues here, only for this reason
when you say “it did gave just 10%” that’s not normal?

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

@stephane_rave

when you say “it did gave just 10%” that’s not normal?

The percentage varies a lot, from 6-7% up to high 25+%. So my 10% is on a low side, if you get 15% that’s considered very good, 20% is excellent and above is rare.

It’s mostly dependant on how much oil was in the fruit and that varies from year to year for the same tree. Some varieties have higher oil content, some lower. Time of picking regarding fruit maturity also plays a role in fruit oil content.

[isabelle (Harlé)]

same comment and same question here !!

[mare.silba (Mare K)]

There is one other thing I want to share before returning to posting about gardening stuff. It has nothing to do with plants, but everything to do with our island community, and with an impact on all of us. It is off topic, but I have a need to share it with you, especially to those that I’ve met.

This weekend, our beloved catamaran ferry ‘Princ Zadra’ (Princ of Zadar), that was a daily connection to the mainland for the last 20 years, got stranded with full speed on a small rocky islet, and next day it suddenly sunk to the bottom of the sea (at exact time a substitute ship on our line was passing by!!).
Fortunately, all passengers and crew are ok and without serious injuries, just a few bumps and scratches, and were picked up by locals from the nearby island very quickly after the impact. Still, we are in shock and feel like we lost an integral part of us. There is a saying that every boat has a soul, and when the boat sinks it’s like a person died. This is 100% true.

The connection between islanders and their boats - be it their private one, or ‘ours’ like this one that sailed a public line - is a special one that is very hard to describe to people that didn’t experience it. We will get another boat, but probably with different maritime abilities (very important due to our location!), and with a different crew, and who knows how those relations will go…

Princ Zadra and it’s crew were a part of our daily lives, a first step toward mainland and the rest of the world. It was the best boat of that type in Croatia, and one of the best crews too. They transported us, our young and old and sick, our food, plants, goods, medicines, you name it… and sometimes also our dead to their last resting place on the island. It’s crew were immensely helpful, up to the point you could ask them to do some errand in the city for you, we were like an extended family. During COVID times they were literally our lifeline for so many things. That boat was a place to catch up with people from nearest islands, with crew members and what’s happening in their lives, a place for sharing both happy and sad moments of your life.

One of my friends said it prefectly (note - this is a translation from Croatian):
“This boat wasn’t just a boat, for us Princ was a shelter and a home. It’s crew isn’t just a crew, they’re a family, laughter, joking along the way, long talks during long trip.
…
For us Princ Zadra is so much more than a ship and transport to the island. They are our home and family, countless hours on the steps and the bar with coffee and drinks and toasts, large number of jokes and serious conversations and smiles, fair number of compromises, and huge and endless love.”

There’s also more to it than sinking of Princ, we are also saying goodbye to the business that owns the ship and we (as in our communities) were in very good relations with them, and to the whole crew which had that constant presence in our lives for the last 20 years.

I’ll end this post with a side story:
Few of us had small blankets installed on board, for those trips at dawn when you would catch a bit more sleep on the way. After a while, beside us and our friends, those blankets were also used by crew for a couple of years to cover up a completely black main console on the bridge from the summer sun between sails from and to the islands, and sometimes also to cover ill older people on a way to the doctor/hospital. They served as communal multi-purpose blankets and ended up as collateral victim of the accident

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

Ah that’s sad, i remember you talked of this boat! R.I.P Princ Zadra.

Great for the olive oil! I hope to grow some more sunflowers next year, and invest in a press in a few years. Never will be as good as olive oil though.

If you want seeds of courgettes, i got a crazy amount soon of different ones.

[stephane_rave]

the sea never forgives, we can have the best boats, the best navigational tools… it often ends up taking back the boats and sometimes the men!

I understand your sadness, you have lost as your umbilical cord with the continent! I hope above all that a company will take over so as not to leave you as castaways isolated on your small island.

Fortunately you have sun and olive oil to relieve your hearts

[isabelle (Harlé)]

I have a history of sailing in my life. Born in a family of sailors. I spent almost 6 years on board a small sailing boat, between 2014 and 2019 , sailing the atlantic ocean to patagonia , chile and return. So I do know that wreckage can happen any time, and I also know that boats have a soul. Remember british people call them “she” , not like a thing, but like a person.
R.I.P. Princ