Hugo Morvan

Here nettles just keep coming back up. It's a tractor pathway. Passes twice a year. I've given up fighting them, just eat them now. So i take the tops off as far as i can reach without getting stung and then scythed the rest down and raked it up to make a fermentation with to feed some other plant that need it. I plan to get the white clover seeds in the second pic and spread those over there so it can keep going longterm. I'm eating and scything another layer soon when i need veggies soon and hope to keep the system going like this. Don't see why not if it doesn't stop raining.

Now it looks like this. i found Aspen root stock, Eleagnus, Dogwood worked well, the Broom withered. I consider a succes even if only 5% takes. Aspen was 100% and Eleagnus 20%, Dogwood 10%, so hopefully over summer it will make the roots i want for autumn replacement and a fresh batch. It's mostly to try to get a syntemperate food hedge in place, and these will serve as chop and drop. Pure experimentation, pure fun.

It's going well despite the scorching summer heat wave that has arrived. Not sure i can keep up if it starts to need water. But so far so good.

Zut. Didn't see this post. I subscribed now. Thank you.

In summer purslane, now nettles, in winter lamb's lettuce, i got a Croatian landrace which gets a lot bigger than the local dwarf.

Tinder for gardeners, wasn't that WWOOF? Joke. Although i had a friend that used it that way.
Maybe people should just meet up more and get a real life vibe instead of scrolling for looks.

Great news. There is going to be a seed conference in Eastern Africa.
Here is the link.

EASTAFRICANSEEDCONFERENCE

I gave a tour this Sunday. A group of garden enthusiast/ seed savers came from an hour drives away to be inspired. That was the mission. They had totally different gardening skills levels amongst them. I ended up mostly chatting with the most experienced of them during a two hour stroll past differing trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals and groundcover set-ups. And then getting questions 'from the back', so stop and explain and then got talking to most experienced again. The  watering situation got highlighted. The evolution of appearing shade places got discussed, a biomass producing Silphy hedge in the annuals bit. The latest extension with food hedges, a bit syntropic/temperate agroforestry style. Etc,etc..
We quit when we'd been everywhere and lunched with the group outside under the pergola, everybody had brought something and we discussed this and that.
It was very relaxed this way, but in hindsight i think people gravitate to what they know, what they recognize in their own gardens and start chatting about how they see things. Then asked me to respond to that, so why and how got discussed. But the topics were mostly what they already know and i missed this opportunity to explain my wormcomposting system and the oxygenated compost tea making system that uses said compost and soil i take on walks.
This would have opened a pathway toward speaking of soil health and actively creating microbial and mycelial biodiversity in a deeper way.
A good thing i did was to put a paper down and have people write their names and emailadresses. So i can adress the compost and compost tea in writing. Opening the situation to dish out some plants/cuttings and seeds, spreading the garden love.
One lady said she got discouraged, but i'm happy she felt she could share this and think she might be helped with a more perennial gardening style
Al in all mission succeeded and ready for the next tour if the occasion arises.

Black currants maintenance, taking out a third of old branches leaves enough cuttings material for exchanges. Dwarf root stock produces fruit earlier. Going for late flowering trees helps a lot with climate chaos disappointments.  There is a cherry variety that stays yellow when ripe fooling birds into thinking it's not ripe yet (might be marketing). Figs need a south facing wall, but roots can be bad for foundation. Some apples hang around christmas time, that saves looking for storage place. How about adding a mulberry?

Suis Neerlandais d'origine. Translation i'm Dutch by origin. I live about 20 years in France in Burgundy in parc naturel Morvan. If i would tile and worry about dirtstains i would take light colored tiles for light indoors and very dark grey or black joints, but cementbased , cheaper than silicones and better for the environment.