Hugo Morvan

The breeding projects are very important, they mean i get seeds send to me, i have to overseed and start culling for some characterists. Like if they don't want to stand upright on their own, but sprawl on the floor, if the pistol is not out in the flower, but sits inside like with normal flowers, taste things like that.
The more people join, the faster progress will go. the faster progress has gone, the easier the breeding program will become, the more people will join, the more scanning for favorite characteristics will happen.
It would be good to get the people of the projects into contact if they are not already.

I've been on a roadtrip all across magnificent Spain. Going from nature reserve to permaculture project spreading the idea of Adaptation Gardening and sharing seeds.
I knew there where a lot of plastic greenhouses in Andalusia, but i was truly shocked by the scale of it. One of the more modern ones was from Bayer. We drove into it because there was an application for campervans which said there was a source of water that we needed to fill up. It was superdepressing, containers poisons laying around and it looked shabby as hell.  We decided against taking water there.
It's mostly crops that need a lot of heat, like aubergines and bell peppers i saw they grow.
I don't want to be un-thankful or something , i'm lucky to be alive in a time where there's such abundance, but it's so unsustainable and you see black people on electric stepbikes completely covered in bandanas, apparently they're superlow paid illegal immigrants that slave away in 50 degree celcius =122 F that live in shanty town conditions.

I'm taking part in a breeding project to grow late blight resistant tomatos. Another thing we try to achieve is upright standing without support, low input, no cides and tomatos that grow high off the ground and all that in temperate climate. It is a lot to wish for, but we have to try, because if accepting this is the alternative?

People should not see everything as a problem. If it's invasive chop and drop it. Ecologists have this tendency to see everything that is not super rare as a problem. Sure we must protect rare plants, keep some areas full of them in reserves. But why hate so much on plants that finally do well because they're well adapted or fix nitrogen or can live in cracks without being moddy codle to death, is beyond me. If they don't like it, chop it down and leave it to rot, build soil.
Prickly shrubs like sloe berry have been known as the oakmothers, wild life nor cattle came and ate oaks when they grew snugly were in a sloe grove. But in UK they go out by the hundreds with volunteers to kill the oakmothers every year. On the other hand they collect money for rewilding.
The black locust is such a problem to them where i live, but the farmers use them as fenceposts and they're one of the best firewoods out there.
The ecologists in Europe have decided it's the best to burn wood in incinerators for the environment. So we chop down USA forests and drag it over the ocean to make green energy.
Sure they do good things as well, but they're not critical of themselves. And i'm not saying, go out there and deliberately plant everything which is really invasive, one should always try to be conscious, but it's not a group of people that i consider to be right about things all the time.

Adaptation gardening as it's called now has helped more than anything to improve my gardening. The seed sharing communities are amazing. Free seeds for postage costs, and seeds that mostly work with low inputs. And having so much success with it permitted me to save lots of seeds to send to others. I started a european telegram group about it and send gardeners seeds, we talk a lot about permaculture techniques as well. I see it as another arrow on the permaculturists bow.

Sure Nina, i've send you PM. Blake, yes, it's an international organization and seed exchanges like that do happen, so we can introduce these special traits into our crops. It could be that this Swedish crop you're looking for got already traced down and collected by another grower/member in USA or wherever. We've got people looking for tomatoes and mais from Peru, but also for crops from India or North Korea, people write to seed banks and stuff to get special seeds. It connects all these differing places for the sake of local gardeners that can really use this free community help.

Seed exchange is free inside EU, i'm part of a people's breeders collective which exchanges lots of seeds all over Europe, and befriended a lady growing melons and corn and lots of out of place crops in northern Sweden. It's not always necessary to use heirlooms, although they're a good base line to create one's own landrace adapted to short season and cold climate it can be necessary to insert some seed bank germplasm.

I guess I would compost it by throwing it in a dark dry corner and cover it so it won't get light and won't root.
Then when it's all brown I'd dump it in a wet spot and dump other plant material on top of it.

Try different varieties of lettuce Not every crop is suited for indoor lights.
Or grow them in sun light.

I'm touring Spain this winter. In mountainous areas there seems to be less of a problem with water. Only place I know on the coast with mountains is Denia region.
Permaculture minded people seem focused on subtropical forestry. I visited a seed exchange for heirlooms in Chelva and had brought seeds from the European landrace group GoingtoSeed. Members from Mallorca and Croatia trying to adapt crops to drought conditions , but it's hard. Maybe it would be better to grow annuals inlate  autumn/winter/spring?
Good luck Sami, keep us posted.

I have creeping comfrey. It's quite controllable I find. Mowing edges where it wants to move in. Plant some shrubs will block it. Trees shade it out as well.
Bamboo is tall itself and will need animal help. That can be expensive considering they need fencing in.