Hugo Morvan

gardener
+ Follow
since Nov 04, 2017
Merit badge: bb list bbv list
Forum Moderator
Hugo Morvan currently moderates these forums:
Biography
I am a carpenter/mason/gardener etc, living in France, Morvan. Have small garden with about 200 different plantspecies a small natural pond, wild fish. Share a veggie plot/tree nurserie/mushroom grow operation with a local bio cattle ranger, it is being turned into a permaculture style bio diversity reserve. Seed saving and plant propagation are important factors.
Every year i learn to use more of my own produce, cooking it, potting it up. As well as medicinal herbs/balms. Try to be as self sufficient as financially possible without getting into debt. Spreading the perma culture life style and mind set, which is the only sustainable path forward on this potentially heaven of a planet we are currently ravaging with our short sighted and detached material world views which lead to depression, loneliness, illness, poverty and madness.
For More
France, Burgundy, parc naturel Morvan
Apples and Likes
Apples
Total received
In last 30 days
13
Forums and Threads

Recent posts by Hugo Morvan

In France they make little oakseed plant feeders, the birds come and hide them in the ground.
Article in French, but i guess most people got translation options.
birds help to plant oaks
19 hours ago

Member of the dineh tribe if i understand correctly selling squash and some of them squash bug resistance.

5 days ago
Very good tips.

But what if it's night  and  it attacks you and you need your sleep to keep a job. Things tend to look even darker at night. I have no partner so found out about humming. You can make that sound and follow it in your body. Feeling your body better already takes your mind of stuff and humming soothes. Moms hum, monks ohm.
Once you feel your body you might notice pain/ energy blockades. You can pitch your humm to remove that i found.
Sometimes i fall asleep like that.
Praying helps as well. Why worry if you can pray.

In the day/ morning  i do breathing work, my kind of meditation.
40 deep breathes to the feet and connect to earth, hold breath a minute.
40 deep breathes to the belly to open to feel what i feel, hold breath a minute.
40 deep breathes to open the heart, hold breath a minute
40 deep breathes to the head to be with the highest, hold breath a minute.

Just did that, coffee, time to see what the good people of the world have to say on the interwebs.

Site note:

I think having no control is a thing of life we have to accept, we get born, no control, we die, no control. In the mean time we get to vote, the jury is still out on that one. I think what humans do is, we try to asses what danger is there for our families and direct community and country/ humanity. And if the danger seems so big and complex we can't work out how to keep our loved ones safe we tend to obsess. But it's all for the sake of love.

I couldn't go out and just start digging holes randomly . It would have to be a pond/ swale. Or make them tree distance of each other and fill them  with compost.
6 days ago
AI is handy for little factoids , but monodimensional, it can't work out a plan, what permaculture is about basicly.
If squirrels are a problem , try an airprunebed, i made one last year because the rats started stealing too many nutty seeds and i have 25 young walnut trees in them now. If you plant them like that, the squirrels won't bother them. Maybe something else, i don't know what keeps them in check over there.
It might be worth looking into propagating trees if you have a lot of land and learn to graft. If you take apples as an example. Nurseries will sell you whatever is easy for them , not what's good for your soiltype or you have 20 appletrees that are all ready at the same time and perishable, while later you find out you wanted to have apples all year.
As well look at layers, do not plant high trees in front of small ones, shading them out in the future.
Make a plan, observe, learn.
Don't plant the known terrible invasives, but some people are really purist about things that are reasonably well behaved and produce food we need . Canadian Permies will know what they are.
How is the water situation? Droughts? Springs/water retention?

Great to have you here.
1 week ago
Update. I broke the machine. I tried to fix it but couldn't do it. The motor burned, i think it was the dust that did it.
Martin, yeah it's a problem to get it to flour. I'm not there yet and might not ever get there, i will need community.
I can imagine using it to feed chickens. I like eggs more than i like bread, personally.
But the thing is, it's just great to experiment and try things. Get to talk to people. my neighbor said they used to get into an empty room and hit the stalks on the floor or wall. Another friend has a lot of wheat and maize and a solar set up with machines and separates it from chaff and seeds and grinds it to flour. He said he'd help. But it's too far away for the tiny bit i grow. I'd spend a day and 25 euro on diesel to have enough flour to make 2 breads. It would be fun though, but it's not serious.
Hi Chance. I recognize how you feel about well behaved 'invasives' and call them immigrants, good call. I guess most people are very static in their world view. Even if nothing wants to grow  where we are and a plant arrives that does, we don't want it. On top of it we tend to obsess over them.
Hop on board the Serendipity Seed Train of Going To Seed if they let you. It's a box of seeds people send through US and you can add and take what you feel like as long as it's diverse varieties. So don't mix in tomatoes and peppers.
1 week ago
My neighbor has a salad he gave me. i've seen his whole garden patch covered in seedlings. Last year he called me to check out what it had done, he had it growing in bare gravel on the other side of the building of the patch. Not a few, something like 20 small plants. Just appeared like that, no sowing.
I've grown this one a few years and managed to cross it with a Moroccan/Italian type of lettuce one which easily crosses we've noticed in the breeders collective.
I'm still growing that type and might ask my neighbor if you want something "pure" , i could send you Nancy.
We're all looking for this self seeding kind of lettuce, so it would also help if you look for it and mix it what already is showing some weedy potential. It's seeds are hard blackish bigger instead of those flimsy white papery flimsy ones i see quite often.
3 weeks ago
I need just a second, to be "gone", like a little computer restart. Relax body, no thoughts of here, no thoughts....  dream flow and "gone".
Put the alarm at 15 minutes mostly, sometimes shorter. Can do it in my van nodding off or on grass.
Powernap. It's a world of difference after that lasts all through the rest of day.

I can drag myself through the day if clients have no time for it.. but then i drink even more coffee and life gets stressy instead of productive. Nowadays i notice if i don't put the alarm it can take half an hour to an hour so it slowly becomes a midday sleep.
3 weeks ago
I'm a propagator. If i buy a plant i must find a way to propagate it for 'free' before i buy more of the same if i like them. I have a passive propagation system to the north of oak trees which you probably do not have, cuttings survived the worst drought and highest temps this summer without watering, because of shades and windblocked by other trees and shrubs. Microclimates are essential even if it takes invasive species to establish microclimates. The north of a house can be a great propagation starter place too, because of monitoring.
I would check what grows in nature establish those and then use them to establish store bought plants. Chop and drop and shading are essential features. Create windblocks with the most drought hardy trees east-west. Create food hedges north-south that provide shade for each other while growing up.
I know i'm in France and what we call drought is a wet year to you, but principles remain true.
Good luck, hope this helps.
4 weeks ago
Industrial scale agriculture is unsustainable, causing top soil microbiome loss leading to erosion leading to drought, it is the main driver of bio diversity loss, it is subsidized by an oil driven system  on top of that, the  industrial scale agriculture outputs are inferior products laced with pesticides, fungicides killing people's gut microbiomes.
Luckily for humanity,people are looking at alternatives. Plenty of examples of food forests that have been built in places where everybody said it was impossible to grow anything. But it took financial investment, effort and years to create , and very determined, knowledgeable and financially free kind of person to obtain these self-sustaining systems. They deserve grand scale copying in similar climate.. Willie Smits, Sepp Holzer, Geoff Lawton spring to mind,but people less known created these systems as well, just going out every day and planting trees, building forests, building soils, attracting rain.. Better wonder why they are not celebrated as heros of life in our dominant culture?
Google simply looks through the lense of financial investment and judges land based on if returns are better invested elsewhere for quicker returns and higher profit margins. But that's not what sustains life, that sustains buying power and real life power, but that is a scorched earth tactic, not viable long term. It's a discouraging answer by an algorithm developed by the powers that be designed to always discourage and kill fantasy and curiosity where at every corner. AI systems are psychopathic, use them for their encyclopedic fast knowledge, but check and don't trust them on fundamentals.
4 weeks ago