This message hits hard! The heat wave in June scared me a lot! Germany is more or less back to normal right now but rain is missing and who knows when the next wave will hit us.
The southern European countries have not been this lucky
Not knowing what the future holds was one of my motivations to get me into landrace gardening, and the heat wave showed me that I can’t just do this on my own. Which led me to this community.
As you said: there is no real sense in sticking to a system that doesn’t work. We need to build a new one. Reach out a helping hand to whoever wants to join.
I oftentimes feel quite alone but try to remind myself what amazing things people can do once they put their mind to it and even more so in a community!
It really is sad that growing traditional crops(for temperate climates) has been getting harder the last years. If it really is that bad:
There are many parts of the world were such high temperatures / low rainfall are considered common. There are lots of cultivated plant species that are adapted to such conditions!
You could try out some other crops like Pearl Millet, Sorghum, Cowpeas, Tepary Beans(although it might be too cold for these, they are a desert plant!) or Okra for pods
Here, millet and sorghum grow well, but okra doesn’t work at all.After several years of testing and using seeds from different sources, it’s been a failure. The seeds and EFN germinated, but then the plants stopped growing at two leaves for the entire summer; the seeds from @marcela_v produced 30-cm-tall plants with a few flowers but no fruit; and this year, the seeds from @JesseI germinated but were destroyed by the heat in two days.
If I water them a lot, it’s a little better, but these plants require a lot of water here, unlike in other regions. If you have an explanation, I’d be interested in finding a way to overcome this hurdle with direct seeding.
Cowpeas and tepary beans will be tested in the future for sure.
My okra plants are currently also around 30 cm tall. Less than 10 seed germinated during May with almost no rain so I have very little plants comparing to the amount of seeds I put in the ground - more than 200. But honestly, I give them so little attention that I am shocked any are growing at all. Also I sowed directly many sweet peppers from your master grex, and 6 plants germinated and are growing. They are still quite small because they were in tall grass until last week, but now making better progress.
