with pleasure !
Friday was with our local collective, our annual sale of young trees. For 5 years we have been committed to make a group order with a local nursery so that the inhabitants have access to quality young plants at reduced rates (2.8 €).
This also allows the association to have some profits to finance other actions.
My first wish when I started this project, was that all these new trees could maintain our natural heritage which suffers from the summer heat had many old trees dying.
The second one had a more symbolic value, which was to say we will plant 1 new tree for each inhabitant of this very vast rural territory (dozens of small villages) with 90,000 inhabitants.
however I hadn’t set a deadline to achieve such an outcome, and I intend to live as long as possible to get there
This year 761 new trees have joined our landscape. Wild trees, but some of which are quite rare in the region such as Sorbus torminalis and Sorbus domestica.
2020 : 928 trees
2021 : 1 313 trees
2022 : 674 trees
2023 : 1887 trees
2024 : 761 trees
with the results of previous years we have arrived at the figure of 5,563 trees in 5 years!
That is 10 times faster than I can do with my job in a city that has a lot of budget… the success of the ecological transition is therefore strongly linked to the sum of small actions actions that everyone does…
Let’s plant trees!
During our evening we also made a sale of our bread (82 kg!) but also flour (100 kg!) that we make from our wheat population.
After a little break related to the abundance of exchanges and orders of seeds to launch the season 2025, here I am back hard as Iron and sweet as love!
January was also an incredible time to grow the community. Here a recording I made for the local radio (radio Cactus) to make known the Adaptation Gardening spirit to other habitants of my rural territory.
This free, open-access podcast is shared with you here because I know that other francophone communities will be able to use it as a support to promote all the incredible work done by each of us here!
then… Going to this new season that will be stunning!
some seed collection of the population ‘Emerald Naked Seeded’ from EFN and growed in 2024 .
6 first TGS F1 garlic taken from the French genetics bank ! An exciting project you will hear about as it involves other GTS members
after a very hot week for the 18/20°C season, here is yesterday morning’s puny spectable…1°c with a day of snowfall…non sens, because tomorrow it is expected 15°C and return of sun
some nice raddichios, that will be the first seeds for a project of grex in progress.
new garlic production for 2025
new project of japanese Daikon grex
last leek to be harvested
the first fava bean germination…very late this year because I did not manage to sow in the fall but only 1 month ago
the rhubarb that returns just for the first snow of the year
in the cold greenhouse, the chayote coming from Majorca for this new test. Thanks to @Tanjaeskildsen
with maturing fruit of Citrus ‘Thomasville’ (complex rustic hybrid)
at left germination of leek grex @Hugo and @marcela_v and mine
on center future germination of celery stick rainbow grex (yellow, white, green, red and pink form)
at right germination of perennial leek Bendigo Bitza from @gregg_muller Australia ! the climate change is assured for them
with this winter weather what could be nicer than receiving a GTS buddy for a good meal and a seed festival. Thank you for stopping @ThomasPicard during his intergalactic tour !
huge quantities and bags of seeds on the table !
in the nursery, first collection of the most rustic varieties of olive trees in france. They come from mountain areas, or the most northern area…
Selection criterion resistant to -15°C and more.
We must launch an olive orchard in the coming years, to make our own oil in the Brionnais! project a bit crazy but still very stimulating
I love it all😍 What sn exiting season ahead!
I am looking forward to see how the olive project will develop. I planted many olive seeds into the ground as well
it’s a longer-term project with the trees, but I hope we’ll have the opportunity to let you taste organic olive oil from Brionnais in 15 years’ time !
If anyone in the group knows of any hardy varieties (that come from high mountain areas, or geographical areas far to the north) in their own country, I’d love to have the information, or even better some cuttings !
Stephane, I would recommend you reach out and touch base with the ‘One Green World’ nursery folks in Portland, Oregon. They are very friendly folks and they have a decent olive section in that nursery and are really pushing them North of Cali in a concerted effort. They do a lot of work with that pseudo-hardy Mediterranean type plant population as well working explicitly with analogs from the mid highlands of South America (if I recall off the top of my head, they target plant analogs from the highlands of Argentina. Lots of interesting pineapple guava, for example). Here’s ‘One Green World’s’ Olive page: See specimens HERE. And, as another recommendation, the folks at ‘Cistus Nursery’ on Sauvie Island north of Portland in the Willamette River as it travels to meet the Columbia. They were always extremely willing to discuss all things hardy in climate parallels. I remember discussing several olives they considered worthy of trying in zone 7 areas. I no longer live in Oregon and I certainly have no ability to even fathom growing olives here. BUT, it may be worth your time talking with their nursery folk and simply giving them a message to see what comes of it.
One last thing here, I reached out to my besty - an absurdly amazing botanist and general plant wizard in Corbett, Oregon. He semi-regularly
visits his ancestral lands within the Istrian peninsula as he still has family there. He had this to say: (I’ll keep this in mind and see if I can’t get him to send me said cuttings and I’ll send them your way)
I have 10 rooted cuttings of Buza an Istrian northern variety that I’ve just started. In a couple of years I’ll have enough plant material to make more!
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thank you very much Joseph for your contacts and for telling at your friend botanist.
One green world and Cistus are on the same latitudes as where I live. So they probably have the same problems with the cold some winters.
The former have a good collection of unusual olive trees, and I’m going to contact them to discuss their provenance of varieties that surprisingly arrive from work at the Yalta botanical garden in Ukraine.
As for Cistus nursery, I’ve been following their work for a long time; they have a very, very interesting range of plants, and even make hybridizations, notably of the Mahonia genus.
Yeah, I used to live and farm on Sauvie Island. Hilariously, I mostly used their nursery to take away their discarded pots and use them myself. LOL. But, to your point: an incredible array of stateside Mediterranean plants. Let me know if you need any assistance in your quest my way. I have ample means of contacting and requesting from folks. If need be, I could very easily have materials sent here and I could send them to you if there are any hold-ups or hesitancies for whatever reasons. Happy to help anyone and everyone trying to push the extremes in their locales. I essentially farm on Mars so am doing that with nearly everything I do outdoors.
On Friday evening, I gave another presentation on adaptive gardening to a local garden club. Over 20 people turned out to discover the new possibilities for the garden.
I talked during 1h30 about human/plant coevolution, the transfer of seed production from farmers to firms, seed types (F1, GMO, heirloom, population varieties…) and the methodology for starting a grex and then a landrace.
Everyone was delighted with the photos of productions and successes that each of us can display here. (thank to everybody)
New arguments have been successfully tested, such as “plant incest” in relation to the reproduction of pure varieties (thank you to @marcela_v), and also that the local varieties they can create while old will be a blessing in Inheritance to the following generations, and that this may put them on a path to immortality
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Some of them were completely hooked, and told me that from this weekend onwards, they would be tackling sowing with other methodologies and prospects for 2025.
congratulations Stephane and thank you for the good you are doing. I am impressed by the ability several members of this community have to hold a 1h30 long speech on the subject in front of a seated audience. I mean I could speak for hours, but just in small groups and based on a questions / answers type of process.
WELL DONE !
Excellent Stephane! Where was this? Brionnais or your home town?
You seem to be on a road to perfectionize your presentation. Could it be filmed some next time?
it was in Charolles, the city of the breed of meat cow “la Charolaise”. I spoke of this anecdote of landrace by showing the photo of your neighbor who crosses meatcows.
@isabelle In order to talk as long, I have a slide show support with 80 slides. This images a lot the words, and above all allows to keep the thread although every time the explanations are not exactly the same depending on the level of gardening of the spectators. Of course I leave time for questions -answers that allow to see where the subject is less easy to understand.
I hope you told em off those folk breeding this ridiculous cow , too big calves to be born naturally and bad bad mothering. What a way to bankrupt a farmer.
I literally five minutes ago send those pictures to Marcela who is in Brussel on a farmer convention.