Last year, which was the first year of planting a diverse mix of seeds was a success. The weather was good, the season was long, results were great. This year however I had a severe frost on 7th June, and after that the driest year ever. Drought still continues, even now. This is the first year ever my rainwater tanks have never overfilled.
The crop is like 20% of the last year one. I will be collecting the seeds, but I do not expect to get many. Fruits are ver small, only a few are of acceptable size. These I will value the most and I will surely plant seeds from them next year.
My major concern now is wheather I should continue my practices as they are now, or rather start switching to practices more suited for desert climates … but I am in a Cool Temperate climate for God’s sake …
It is evident to me that bad things are going on regarding climate, water, winters and storms. All is getting more unpredictable and violent. I can only hope that landrace gardening will help us to deal with that.
Anyway, there is still some squash to enjoy, and seeds to collect, so it is not entirely lost season.
Sorry to hear 
. Sounds like a major selection event so I think you’re right on to consider this year’s seed precious.
About changing management practices I’m not so sure. But I’m sure you’ll figure it out!
I understand your question about preparing for Mediterranean agriculture. It is exactly the way I reacted last year. So I found rice, mil and arachis to try to grow. But this year’s weather turned out very low in temperatures in brittany (contrary to the rest of france) during the whole summer except for a few days over 25°C . So the rice has difficulty to mature, and I have no hopes for the arachis. I will try again next year. My approach for the future will be to xonduct simultaneously both types of cultures : the usual ones of my region and some more exotic ones.
I’m sorry things didn’t work out better for you this year.
On the bright side, you have a lot of people to get advice from on this forum about growing food in a desert climate!
Very very bad yields on my “all cucurbits” project too here, not due to weather (very mild summer in all south west France, and rainy, after a dry winter… only the end of august-beginning of september was hot… + we had rain more than enough: 100mm in May, June and July, 50 in august… so for us a year like 2021: cold and rainy, contrasting with 2020 and 2022: hot and dry)… but due to a change of practice after a first year with plastic tarps to kill the meadow AND make a harvest. It would be a bit long to explain but to summarise:
- after removing the plastic tarps in mid september last year I sow a cover crop mix. Oats, faba, peas and vetsch came strongly but rye failed (the seed was too old). MidMay 2023 I crushed the cover crop and then implanted small cucurbits + did my my first direct seedings…the plants did not thrive, and the meadow came back… too big to weed, I left my cucurbits do what they could. Was it due to the coolness of the soil? The lack of mineralisation? The allelopathic substances known to be in the oats plants which were dying? I think it must be a mix of each of these + a lack of overall fertility + very very low ph in some parts of this very sandy soil + no irrigation which dors not help.
So for example I harvested 6 very small squashes on my “big maxima” patch (100m2), so it is about 10 kilos where I harvested 200 or 300 last year, and shared them in “open garden” event. Same story for watermelons, gourds, melons, etc.
So I had some kind of deep agronomical failure! Now I will till (hopefully for the last time!), sow a new cover crop (in very high density) and then I think about strip tilling my lines of cucurbits one or two weeks before direct seeding them, and maybe add manure to help with the low fertility… or do 3 to 5 cover crops over 1 to 2 1/2 years until the fertility gets better. I’ll have irrigation next year so that could help.
… betting on landrace gardening as the other leg of a no till/cover cropping approach to do what plants could not do before, using recombnation plus natural selection is my overall appeoach (ex: direct seeding or broadccasting post cover crop), but this year I believe the intensity of selection was too strong: I cannot make a harvest, so will not feed myself with the cucurbits garden (1200m2!)…
Thankfully the irrigated garden is fine! Carrots, parsnips, kales etc.
That sounds like competition might be what caused them to fail. I have done some late sowings with other crops (salads, spinach etc) that haven’t grown as expected and I think it’s been weeds that I didn’t completely eliminate. Not sure if there is some invisible with chemicals etc, but they do take resources when they have a headstart. Similarly I have had failures when I have things planted too tightly. This year also had curious failure on watermelons that I sowed without plastic. They started fairly well and weren’t that much behind when it was july, and so save in better weather, but after that they stalled. I think it was high density planting and other plants that were ahead had really big growth spurt so they might have had too much competition. Might be compination of several factors, but I have to think competition had something to do with it. I’m going to test it out next year with little bigger trial and more space for plants
hello thomas, I am sorry about this difficult season you have had. Compared to last year, it must be a real disapointment. One factor could be that last year your have “selected” for long heat waves and drought resistance so your grexes from last year were not yet in good genetic conditions to stand this years’ climate. Or did your sow this year something else than what went out least year ?
@jesse : competition between plants when planted very promiscoulsly is an interrogation for me . Joseph says you may plant closer than conventionnal recommendations, but how much closer ? double density ? quadruple density ?
I does depend on nutrients and weather. Based on my experiences and some studies I have found (watermelons, sweet potatoes etc staple crops) there isn’t that much to gain with high density, especially if weather isn’t favourable. In studies highest might have been 10 times lowest, but yield only double more. And there was quite a large variance in densities where it didn’t have significant affect on yield. I think it was 2-3 times from lower end to higher end in many studies where there wasn’t affact on yield… It did have affect on yield quality with lower densities making more high quality yield. So I’m thinking it might be better to go lower densities when it comes to mature plants so there is more flexibility with weather. I do sow densely and thin to what I want. Also intercropping different species allows for more dense planting as requirements differ.
well , I was thinking about cross pollinization, not yield . At the GREX stage, I am not interested by yield. But still I would like to observe the development of some production.
If you lack space, then close planting is good way of getting diversity, but I still think there are limits. Even if you don’t care about yields, it might still correlate with how much seed you get. Too much competition might also slow growth, and if your season don’t allow for delays, then you might not get seeds from those. Somewhere is sweetspot, but it really debends on what you grow and your climate etc. Debends on species how important proximity really is. Cucurbits maybe not as important to pack them as they cross easily and vines travel far. Crosses also tend to outperform others so that it might not even matter how much crossing there is as they will come on top if they have the qualities.
I think planting very, very closely makes sense if your goal is to be very hands off (for instance, dry farming), and you expect only 10% or so to survive. In that case, you’re expecting the environment to do the thinning for you.
My guess would be that if you want a good yield per plant and you expect 50% or higher survival rate, planting very closely is only a good idea if you want to thin manually. That is a great idea for any crops where thinnings are a tasty early harvest. Leaf crops tend to qualify.
I can also see value in planting very closely if you want lots of cross-pollination and don’t care about yield. That seems like a potentially valuable strategy there, too.
I have noticed pumpkin plants having much shorter vines when growing in hard conditions. I plan to plant more densely next spring. The amount of growing space I gave them this year was in anticipation of normal vine length I experienced the year before which that year grew in easier conditions. Basically just adding another dimension to what you said.
Excellent point!
I’ve noticed that bush pepo squashes seem to get just as big in harsh conditions as in easy conditions for me. Well, if they’re healthy. The unhealthy ones stay small and die without fruiting.
Maybe it’s because the bush-form squashes shade the ground underneath them so thoroughly that it keeps in more moisture? “Harsh conditions” for me tends to mean “no irrigation,” so that form may be ideal for making the most of whatever moisture the plant gets. Maybe the plant also benefits from shading some of its own leaves, which would reduce transpiration. My summer full sun tends to be really hot and dry. Hmmm!
Vining pepos in harsh conditions tend to stay smaller for me, and produce smaller fruit. I don’t necessarily mind that, especially if they grow underneath the bush pepos and therefore take up no additional space. Then that makes them a bonus harvest.
Maybe I did select for heat waves unintentionnally, but as 2022 was a first year grex and 2023 being the f1 stage I suppose it is not that: in my opinion there should have been enough variability within each population (originally created from 12 to 30 varieties) to get something eventually, so I lend towards too extreme conditions (coolness / low fertility / timing: competition with the just crushed cover crop, then with the meadow).
No I have sown the same about 20 populations of cucurbits: maximas in 2 seperate populations, moschatas, 2 pepos (pumpkins / seeds to eat), 3 watermelons (standard/long shelf life/fodder), 3 melons (fresh like armenian/standard/long shelf life), mixta, ficifolia, benincasa hispida, kiwano, cucumber, gourd, luffas, and a few other cucumis… + one early watermelon and one eatly melon grexes at my girlfriend’s place.
Anyway… huge effort, but nearly no 100% failure (apart from luffas, and long shelf life melons and watermelons on the poorest soil)… only 99,5% failure in average^^so to say, apart from watermelon, from 1 to 10 fruits per population. I look at it thinking intensity of selection was really too high, not because I did not make a real harvest, but because I do not get enough Seeds eventually: I had from 500g to 3kilos of each last year and that enable me to test a variety of techniques: from transplants to broadcasting and direct seeding… and then shared largely with others about the third. fortunately I kept from 10 to 20% of last year seed harvest as a security. So I think of it as a one year loss but also as a gift to get a better understanding. And time will tell what those tiny little maximas, supposedly from my “big maximas” patch will do next year!
A picture of nearly all the watermelons I had this year…even little, and few, we loved them
These are basicly yours Thomas. I need some for next year when i’ll be growing maxima in manure heaps. Some for un thé Serendepity Europe parcel, i might send some to Wojchiech if he cares. Rest is yours if it helps.
And there are the dry landed ones i could send you 95%.
Same for the Moschata
and i’ve got mixta from Ales seed exchange
Many thanks for the offer Hugo, I will gladly try some. I have plenty of seeds from last year’s harvest, if you are interested. I have collected seeds mostly from C. maxima.
Happy to be of help Wojciech. Summers here have been very hot with extreme long drought. This year it was back to normal, maybe even cool, but there was rain, every so often a well deserved soaking of a day of two.
I’ve been adding seeds from southern France mostly, and to be resistant to climate chaos looking to add seeds from Northern countries now as well.
It might diminish overall harvests in hot years, but i’m likely to add some explosive growth which could be interesting. Outgrowing hungry snails in spring somewhat better would simplify spring start-up.
So yes to exchange!
Oh yes Hugo! I would love to get some of each family. I have just found 3 or 4 extra pepos + 1 gourd in my summer cover crops lately :slight_smile. It is funny to me to see that at this stage (f1) they still look like their parents: we could find the original variety of each squash!
By the way, Anna from Italy is sending me 50 kilos of “evolutionary population” of bread wheat this week. I will send you 5 to 10 kilos for you and your neighbor, depending on the others (we will be from 8 to 10 to sow this and start adapting to our places, most from sputh west France)
@ThomasPicard That looks like good selection harvest of watermelon; many different types suggesting quite a few plants that produced and plenty of seeds for seed increase. Hopefully next year is better because of this years failure. Those white skinned look interesting. Haven’t seen quite that pale colour. Is it really chalk white or is it partially due to lighting? I could send you some seeds later, atleast from last years stock depending how much I have in each species this year. Same for @WojciechG or anyone who wants some. Maybe not as hot or dry climate in general, but there has been selection to both last few years as well as what would be really cool weather in central europe this year.