I will join you and Marcela in this wonderful wild vitis hedge project. Grapes with such a wide palette of flavours sound dreamy!
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Marcela, your seedlings seems rather homogeneous in terms of leaves. This hybrid vine may have some differences in aroma and fruit in the seedlings…to be continued. Very happy to see this 3 little plant grow in Croatia ! 
There’s something of the spirit of our old Brionnais farmers in these plants.
Girls, I’ll let you know as soon as I manage to put these varieties together. if they’re banned, there won’t be many plant growers because there’s no professional market…
But it seems that one guy is more adventurous and sells all the collection as disease-resistant vines 
.
In the description he also mentions an interesting advantage of these plants, which is late budburst, so that the vines don’t freeze and bear fruit every year…
another great collaborative project on the road ! the forbidden vines named here ‘Vin qui rend fou’ 
(wine that drives you crazy) are aptly named! 
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some news from hell ! still no rain and temperatures between 35°c and 40°c (95/104°f) announced again over the next 10 days 
and as in a normal world, the pump for obtaining water is broken 
We have therefore been watering with tap water for a few days to continue making the plants survive… but is it really reasonable knowing that with these temperatures most flowers fall before they produce any fruit?
some very beautiful and good tomatoes are still present
the tropical corner with half-shade and water manages well even if it is more than 50°C in the afternoon… the water is therefore indeed the limiting factor for the rest of the garden.
Cyclanthera brachystachya and the first fruit !
Cyclanthera brachystachya + pedata on the same place ! I hope for some hybrids if it’s possible
after the potatoes a thick straw mattress to avoid letting the ground burn until autumn.
the only vegetables capable of surviving here without any watering… the chicory…and that’s great news for the future…
This autumn there will be a big grex in place ! 
I maintain live eggplants but no fruit and no large plants with however significant amounts of water !
some runner bean for seeds, if they product some…
very productive purple climbing bean ! this variety works all the time whether it’s cold or warm, dry or wet…
with the same seed of @ThomasPicard and also that of @marcela_v .. only a small watermelon in formation…yet very watered but doesn’t grow well…other small fruit in formation but the fruits falls after the hottest days. It’s necessary to continue adapting them to the extreme dryness 
a seedling of salad with a strategy of preservation in the sun…total shade.the corn was supposed to do the shade but high as leeks it’s a failure 
Island sunrise tomato that produces tape 
! Superb tomato, very very blooming in this climate. So I cross it with all the others to make a good mother out of it. the tape are my cross landmarks.
This tomato was developed by a craftsman for 9 years in British Columbia by Small Island Seed Co with L. Cheesmanii X L. Pimpinellifolium X L. Esculentum.
all the flowers are very excerted, then I cross them with other similar excerted varieties like Blue Ambrosia, Excerted orange, Caro Rich…etc
a sweet pepper deciding to mutate on a branch with variegata leaf, if someone has an explanation that would be great! I would try to isolate the seeds if this branch bears a fruit 
the others push but still don’t change color !
in the nursery the California sage of @julia.dakin are delighted with so much sun and heat.
on right Salvia apiana, sacred white sage.
on left an unidentified sage, it was written ‘we sage on’ the packet. The leaves could look like S. dorrii or
munzii, if someone have idea
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Hi Stephane, when did you sow? Was it direct sowing? For how many plants? Your soil type is very different for mine but I got clear indications that in my place watermelon can sprout spontaneously in the soil around the end of april-1st of may, which would help a lot with stress tolerance with a well established root system when the sun hits hard.
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Hi Thomas, the watermelon seeds have been sown directly at the beginning of May and germinated around the 15 May. Maybe 75 seeds sown and approximately 25 plants now, for only 1 plant with 1 fruits.
I think that the reason for this failure is the high temperatures above 30°c in mid-June on very small plants whose roots had remained on the surface with a still cold soil.
I must continue with your competition seeds on earlier sowing , no problem if I lose a lot of plants from the beginning. I hope that I can get myself good melon and watermelon seeds again when we are all together in Croatia. I need stumps with solid roots that are not afraid of the cold and go down quickly.
However, yesterday on a well creation site… the earth was just dry like dust without water up to 2m50…the trees are dying so for the vegetables the environment becomes very hostile 
… we must therefore implore men to become reasonable about the water resource and ensure that a virtuous and fertile cycle is revived with the help of the spirits of nature.
All these issues are a godsend … we must support plants in solving climate problems by themselves. We just be simple guides and seeds passer for this chaotic transition period.
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You probably need more seeds. This year with the coolest soil I’ve sown watermelons and melons I got probably around 2-3% germination and 5% on melons by one month. I have had better germination on warmer years, but last year I also had similar natural culling in the first cool period. If you like to push limits I can send you some seeds to trial. Melons I have plenty from last 2 years and looks like I will get some from this year as well. Even if you want to sow thousands that can be arranged. Watermelons I don’t have as much, but enough for a few hundred from those that produced last year. @ThomasPicard also has some from from the best watermelon last year. There should be plenty of seeds and some more genetic diversity after being grown mixed with others.
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you must join us in November in Croatia with a suitcase filled with your best seeds! 
the big lesson for 2026:
- sow earlier in the spring
- sowing more seeds
- sow with even more genetic diversity
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Not this time, but I do have seeds to send within EU to whoever wants them. Last year I was little too keen in saving some seeds and I would really need get rid of some excess before it starts to cumulate. “Luckily” this year has been a little challenging, but even that doesn’t seem to stop me from getting quite a bit extra on some.
Sounds like a plan. It looks like around your area too may has about same average as june here. It also looks that there is quite a bit year to year variance. I have learned from past few years that it can be quite easy for melons and watermelons here and some years very challenging early in the season. You are fortunate that you have a long season that anything that can even barely survive early season can take advantage of. When do you generally have last frost there?
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in order to understand when water is the limiting factor for plants, it is necessary to look at the ombroclimatic diagram.
This is the one from the nearest climatic station at 20km but I am in a micro climate that takes much less rain because of a river that crosses the village and diverts summer storms.
The climate is quite variable here. One year (as 2024 1062mm of rain) we can have 0 month without water stress.
Or a normal situation with half June,July and August with hydric stress (line of temperature who passes above the precipitation line).
Or a dry year like this year (or 2022 and 593mm of rain) with 4 month of hydric stress. Today we are on an even drier basis than 2022 and with hotter temperatures >35 -40°c with a record at 41.7°c 2 days ago ! THis year we have 60 mm in June, 41 mm in July and for the moment 1mm in August
For the frost, the situation is also very irregular, sometimes the last temperature <0°c is on May 15 or like this year at the end of March.And the first frost can come on 30 october or 1 december. So we can have 4,5 or 9 month without freeze.
These large irregularities (like sometimes falls of 20°C in a few hours) are new for us and clearly accelerating with climate change. This is the main difficulty in planning the garden.
How we can adapt genetic plant at very variable condition ?
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That’s a great question! In any case I believe it’s gonna be more labor intensive, but here are 2 or 3 lines of thought:
- First sow earlier - or transplant earlier - select on cold temp germination - or transplantation -, as discussed earlier. Risking a freeze, but you still can resow: you can say that you didn’t put all your eggs in the same basket in terms of sowing dates. Expected outcome: bigger plants and root systems and more established collaborations with micro-organisms for nutrients and water access (in exchange of carbohydrates, see GTS James White course on “how microbes help local adaptation”) when and if the sun starts hitting hard. And there’s zero trade off if not.
- Second coat your seeds, or water your transplant in trays, with microbiology rich compounds, helping in season to access nutrients and water, but also capable interannually of becoming endophytes. In the US there is maybe a quintessential product for that called “Biocoat Gold” constituted essentially of microorganisms able to develop ONLY in presence of living roots. To be differentiated from Johnson Su compost, other composts, oxygenated compost tea and other stuff which are more boosters with zero ability to multiply in the presence of a living root.
- In any case continuously build your soil organic matter: in clay soil it’s gonna help structure it, make energy flow better and helps drain when needed, in sandy soil it’s gonna mainly retain more water, so to say later in season. That’s not selection in itself it’s more giving the plants more favorable conditions…
- Then you can always “help” the plants in season with oxygenated compost tea and that kind of foliar you can do it yourself easily, but you’ll have to remember that your selection will by then be relative to those boosters. But if the environmental pressure seems too hard why not: we’ll always prefer having a harvest than none, right?
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the problem I was raising with this question is whether I strongly orient my adaptation gardening towards drought conditions… every 4/5 years when an abnormally wet year arrives I would be unsuitable.
But as Jessel says, it can be sown over longer periods in several times… outside of the optimum to partially circumvent the problem.
I wanted to continue with a lazy gardening style without inputs or modify my soil… the vegetables will have to evolve otherwise, it’s their death warrant
My agronomy teachers when I was still a student always said: ‘you can never modify a soil, you must adapt your cultures ! ’ They therefore had the strength of adaptive gardening anchored in their brains without knowing it
more direct sowing is going to be done to simplify my schedule…This year the most beautiful tomatoes plant are those that sprout wildly alone and early. I will guide my grex on this criterion.
another thing I noticed in 2025 and the great importance of the sowing depth. On our collective field of Painted Mountain corn, we worked with 3 methods on the day of sowing:
1/ with the profesional manual seed drill seed at 2 cm depth : germination 10% survival rate 0%
2/ seed in the groove of a pickaxe at a depth of 4 cm: germination 60% survival rate 50%
3/ hole made with a seed iron bar to a depth of 6 cm: germination 90% survival rate 90%
the least enterated seeds were in soil already dry and since there was no rain after the few plants that germinated died of thirst.
For the deeper layers, the soil still had a low humidity sufficient for germination, then the roots descended at the same time as the residual moisture / dryness that was descending into the deeper layers.
can be guide the grex towards seeds that germinate as deeply as possible…
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I tried with squash pollen for the first time this year, its very cumbersome and I really appreciate the bees and all that they do. Ill most likely abandoned the project as I run out of time. Hoping pollen saving works out for you, its very interesting.
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Another hypothesis brought by a reflection from a neighboring seed farmer, certain bean varieties like ‘Coco rose de la meuse’ have the particularity of crossing with all the others and never being stable. Maybe my dwarf variety is part of this type of beans very free sexually
Interesting! I have grown this variety a few years ago. I need to check next year if they do that here as well. You a very beautiful garden Stephane! Thank you for all the pictures!
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