Hugo Morvan

Hi Anji, welcome to Permies. I am trying some tobacco plants as well this year. I managed to only grow it some years ago but i was too late for French season the plants flowered but never developed viable seeds. I'm a bit earlier with an indoor start up, waiting for last frost date to plant out. The last grow i had no interest, i just hung the leaves to dry on the attic and saved them, no curing or what. I had come across them on one of my attic cleaning moments right when a friend told me he had no money to buy cigarettes and was having trouble, smoking all the buds in ashtray phase had passed. He was happy when i brought him the leaves, but quite agitated it wasn't like what he was used to. After a couple of weeks he'd smoked it and asked for more, he had got used to it and had taken a liking to the pure natural strain. But i gave up smoking years ago so my interest waned.
Last year at a landrace congress a pipe smoker gave me his landrace tobacco seed. He says it's good for cigarette smoking as well, which i don't doubt seen my experience with how quickly people turn to liking a natural option.
And a friend has obtained seeds from a country north of us, which will like our warmer climate. I'm mixing all in.
With the coming price rise in food because of the oil based industrial agriculture complex i foresee that i have a good bartering material at hand if needed.It's very strange people do not do more of their own tobacco growing with prices in Europe due to tax regulations approaching a dollar a gram. They will drive to another country and gather for all their friends and family to save a few pennies, but growing they do not think of it.
I have also done a ritual that did involve sniffing tobacco water through the nose, a very strong high nicotine one. That's very mind boggling and clearing the sinusses.

Nancy got me thinking about covercropping with peas, my neighboring cattle ranger ordered me some. It's so amazing the prices we gardeners pay in retail. I would have had a pound, half a kilo for that money, he gave me 14 kilo or 28 pound. That aside, i wanted to do more with Parsnip for a while. I just cannot get Daikon to grow in my context while Parsnip literally overtook the grasses last year in a spot. I have that strain for some years and add new genetics at every opportunity i get, so it's slowly becoming a landrace. Sunflower is one from Peru that i grew in the greenhouse last year. I got it at a seed conference from Peruvians and it turned out that the flower closed in on itself. Might discourage some of the birds. The fennel i just have a lot of and the Silphy is an American perennial sunflower, grown here for cattle feed.
So there is quite some diversity in this mix, i hope for nitrogen fixing by the peas and that the deeper rooting plants will mine nutrients and after dying leave a decaying plug which worms get to feast on.
I have surrounded the small plot with bigger comfrey to keep the grass somewhat from entering. I planted a foot apart a bigger clump, a smaller one,m a bigger one etc. Hope it will close nicely next spring, so that even if it turns out to be a failure i can try again.
I'm a bit late, because nowadays we have these mini dry spells in spring in France just when crops seem to need most water. Luckily i got a bit and i soaked the seeds over the weekend. And covered the raked in mix with some old straw the farmer had laying about. Not too much, so the seeds get a chance to sprout, but it will take a shot at shading the soil i soaked before putting the straw down. Winds will have less of an easy time with drying it out completely.
The reason i do these kind of experiments is that i try to activate the soils in a way differently than grasses and their companion plants do. I'd like to prepare the soils for something of a landrace of pumpkins or butternuts or some no input cucumbers or maybe a winter rye. The inputs of cattle dung is going down since the cattle farmer seems to be selling quite a bit on his way to retiring. I'd like to find a way of getting these poor granite soils into a bit more productive land than just for cows. Moving towards a food forest/ syntropic hedge situation maybe partnering up with chicken raising or whatever i am dreaming about achieving one day...
I'm lucky to be able to experiment like this without being attached to a university or something, because i can doi exactly what i think i need to do and no bureaucratic strings attached.

The first picture are the spontaneous ones that popped up in grass, they're bigger than the  second ones are the deliberate ones.

Makes you wonder if we're overthinking the whole soil prep thing sometimes.

That got me thinking. I have put a plastic tarp down and the grass must have pretty much died back there. Now i saw a guy on the youtube with a microscope who said that is a bad habit, because it kills the soil life. Especially when it's dry over summer.
So i'll use these seeds to go and put it full of parsnip. It's a bit late, so i'm soaking them and will overseed like crazy.

 I have heard that you can get problems with inbreeding with parsnip - but I think that is when you select too few roots to make your population. If you've got good mix of genes to start with, and let lots go to flower, then it shouldn't be a problem I think.

I have had them for at least 5 years and have added new varieties at every turn, every seed exchange or private exchange i've added genetics. I mean i didn't start out like some people do buying 10 differing varieties and cross that, but i'm slowly landracing toward something which is very prolific. I've heard that's what i'm selectingfor unknowingly at first , because if you want like the biggest parsnips, you have to dig them all up select the biggest/sweetest or roundest or longest or whatever one desires and replant the selected ones to let them go to seed. But since i just let them be i'm selecting the best seeders/most agressive growers. Not many crops i know withstand grass and shade it out. So i'm excited about the prospect of using it as a soilbuilding cover crop or mulchprovider like comfrey, but comfrey stays for years on end, i've nort seen one die.
I'll send a picture later if i remember.

I do not know if they're trying to tell you something but mine did that last year. I left them to grow, they're big now and might flower. I like it because as mentioned above they are great soilbuilders. When left going to seed , the root dies back and this is great for worms and it leaves a plug to turn into airy soil. They're starting to behave kind of wild my grex. I haven't tried last year, but this year they're all over the place, i want to try and use them as mulch. Just wack em with a hoe or hand scythe. The ones making it ,i take it, have a stronger genetic pattern, i'll let them seed and keep building this wild variety of parsnip.

I do believe prices might double, (bad enough) but i do not understand where the 10 fold is coming from. But if so, rice and beans are going to be popular as well as wild foraging and stealing from people's gardens.
I am doing my bit by planting more potatos. Good plan to move some sunchokes. I have planted some tobacco early, i thought if prices are going to go up, people won't have money for tobacco but be stressed and want to smoke even more. Barter material.
I believe and see most capable people are already giving it their best and cannot do much more than they are doing already. Adding more crisis talk in an overly alarmed society will not change a lot i think.
I checked a bit on youtube and saw AI slob about growing gardens..People generally overestimate what they can achieve, growing a garden full of food with no previous experience... They come across 100% sure they will have super gardens, better than those socalled gardeners, because they're winners. But they'll learn trying. And then in disappointment look for guidance. People's focus will shift to food growing as insecurity strikes and prices rise. And as chemical inputs will become too costly for many, attention will automatically shift to how to do local and biological, maybe even work with nature, not against it. Permaculture movement can and should flourish. I would also like to point out to people here that seed saving has never been more important. Plant some extra, and let the biggest plants provide seeds, share extra seeds of this year with friends willing to really grow.(in doubt do not share, but keep them for later)
But back on topic if the price of food goes up tenfold, anything can happen and none are good.

Hi Nosherwan. Great to hear of your plans. In permaculture nothing is standard, every situation is unique, but the fun thing is that you can tell us about what the problems are and then we'll help you along as best as we can. The people at Permies are a nice bunch.
If i think of Pakistan i think it's going to be dry, but i could totally be mistaken. That's why it starts a bit with you sending some pictures or describing your local situation and then we can together think of solutions that are more or less workable for you.

Swallows and bats eat their weight in mosquito's. Encourage them to come by making a pond which will attract a lot of mosquito's. Sounds counter productive. But before i had a pond i had a net on my bed. Now i have swallows and bats and sleep with the windows open in summer.

Please keep in mind that if your tree doesn't flower it will put it's energy into growing bigger and higher, so future crops will be more bountiful. It's an exponential grow game and nothing out of the ordinary. Fully comprehending your feeling though, I looked at my plum tree that had popped up from imported compost, for five years before it flowered and gave the best tasting plums i ever had. Green gauge it turned out. Breeds true to seeds and suckers! Damn i threatened it to cut it down the year it finally flowered and would have as well. Now i got 30 of it's clones growing and we've grafted 4 differing varieties on one of them a few weeks back. Patience is a virtue.

This is not thyme. Thyme is a small shrub and there is a creeping form which is less woody, but flowers are purple and it's leaves are in both cases small oval hard-ish and a bit fat and clearly smell of thyme. Purple flowers early summer. If i had to guess what you photographed is in the Gallium family, but thats' a big family of 300 species. So i can't help you find out if it's medicinal or useful in any way. Sorry.