vegetables are boring

- or at least not interesting enough to keep posting photos of them on a regular basis.
The subject of kitchen gardens and sustainable small-scale agriculture, however, is endlessly fascinating.

We have just emerged from an intense two week Plein Air art course run by Diane Olivier from San Francisco. Cooking and cleaning and caring for fourteen Californians. Our potager just came ‘on-stream’ as they arrived, and provided a part of what we cooked – purple and yellow French beans, sweet peas, yellow and green courgettes, lettuce and rocket and spinach, plus a few tomatoes and red onions. The cool wet spring held things back this year.

Running parallel to our small  ‘histoire de potager‘  is Charles and Isabelle’s move away from wine-making to vegetable farming. They have many hectares lying fallow now, having taken the grants for uprooting their vines. Many of these ‘parcelles’ of scattered vineyards are too stoney for anything apart from olives. But their favourite lands at Lazagal are valley-bottom, and are very fertile. What was lacking  was water – or rather, a serious means of  irrigation, since there is a large well right there by the Lazagal stream.

This is the solution he came up with :

It’s a 206 cc Bernard side-valve single cylinder petrol engine, from the 50’s, coupled to an equally elderly pump for emptying wine-vats. It starts with one pull – and at tickover speed will pump 50 gallons per minute.

He has around 150 tomato plants,  perhaps the same of potatoes, plus many peppers, cougettes and aubergines.  It’s all a month behind our stuff – but he sees it as a warm-up for next year when his involvement with the AMAP organisation will bring in some much-needed money.

An association for the preservation of a peasant agriculture ( AMAP) is, in France, a close partnership  between a group of consumers and a local farm, based on a system of weekly distribution of the products of the farm. It is a  contract, based on a financial commitment of the consumers, who pay in advance the totality of their consumption over a period defined by the type of production and the geographical place. This system thus works on the principle of the confidence(trust) and the responsibility of the consumer.

our Three Sisters garden

We have lost momentum in the communal potager at Sue’s.

The weather continues to be intermittently maussade with damp grey clouds blown in by the vent marin from the Med. Charles is too busy spraying the vines with copper sulfate against mildiou et oïdium, plus rigging up a 1950’s engine-and-pump contraption for irrigating his own grand potager, to plough our patch.

The big plan for Sue’s garden will have to be scrapped, and a smaller area worked instead. The plantlings are getting leggy. We have to do it by hand.

None of us fancy deep-digging a four-metre-square plot in temperatures of 26 C. Then it occurred to me that the Amerindian method called Three Sisters planting would suit exactly the plants I was raising – and that their  ‘hillock’ cultivation closely resembled the ‘ados’ method of this region.

There are many sources of info on 3 Sisters gardens on the web – but this came from an interesting discussion on the  women not dabbling in normal group-blog :

Corn benefits beans by providing a trellis.
Squash benefits both beans and corn by providing a way to cool the soil and reduce weeds.
The beans are the special key to this relationship … beans (a legume) draw nitrogen from the air and with the help of symbiotic bacteria (in the nodules) convert the nitrogen to a form that other plants (including the legume itself) can use.
Beans release sugars from their roots. The symbiotic bacteria like this sugar and by eating it become much more productive at nitrogen fixation. Eventually, the stored plant-friendy nitrogen is released in minute amounts to other plants and into the fuits of the plant as well as in the decaying material.
Another benefit of the 3 sisters is that it reduces the needed space. It essentially concentrates the growing area by combining complementary growing needs – thus we are able to produce more yield from a smaller space.

Whether planting a nitrogen-fixer with the non-nitro fixers has immediate benefit or not, is still debated in agronomy and plant physiological sciences. One researcher used a radioactive tracer to “follow” the nitrogen in a field of rye and clover (grass and legume, respectfully) and it found that 80% of the nitrogen being used by the rye came directly from the clover (this suggests there is immediate benefit and is why in many cultures the world over, legumes and other nitrogen-fixers have been planted with the non-nitro fixing plants (there are more examples beyond the 3 sisters and pasture).

Sweet corn developes an extraordinarily complex root-system, and needs 50 – 80 cms. depth. The soil was tilled only to 20 cm. – so I thought I’d dig the rest with just the one tool – a hoe (or azarda, or la trinque, or le cantonnier. Here’s how it went, yesterday and today :

The 3 Sisters are sweet corn, bean(or pea) and squash (or melon), and the plot was 4m. x 4m. So I thought – 3 rows of 3 ados. Corn needs wind to pollinate its neighbour, so I thought – stagger the rows. Squash needs space to ramble – so I should leave nearly a metre between each hillock and each row. It fitted perfectly.

I try to measure these things – but my plans with posts and strings don’t work. What does work is the simple large step that a person can make, and then grind the foot in the soil. That’s a metre. These heaps have to be a metre apart. Getting them centred and staggered was a problem. Until I lined each dig-point up, and then made a cross with the hoe. I hoed out to the diameter that I wanted, and then hacked hard to bring up the compacted earth.

The big hoe is good at this – it’s long and sharp and heavy. Large compacted slabs of soil can be levered up, and dragged to the perimeter. Keeping a steady shuffling motion, all four points of the original compass can be worked up.

So far – so good : this is defining the perimeter. Then one attacks the middle – with renewed force, because this is nearing sub-soil, and it’s getting stoney. I left all this dull soil in a central heap, and then flung in a large amount of semi-composted muck.

Muck is a term that I gratefully import from John Seymour’s Self-Sufficiency – it means anything you can throw at the plants. Some people are extemely persnickety about what you put on, or under, your preciousnesses. Muck is his general word for everything he offers his. As a non-expert (indeed, an anti-expert) I like the idea of generalised ‘muck’. It has an Old English sound to it. He seems to say – it really doesn’t matter. What you throw on your plants, what you do with your compost. Very liberating. Give them what you can, what you’ve got.

The great thing about the long-handled hoe is that you don’t tread the soil. And in this circular bed system, you can stay outside the perimeter all the time. Earth and compost can be drawn in, and worked (because the hoe can hook-up, where a spade cannot) and you can keep up a satisfying circular shuffling motion around your ados or raised heap.

I’m a light-weight, muscular man, of 59 years. And this is an emergency-digging situation. The big hoe was too much for Sue and for Mary – on their first try-out. But I feel that with a little training, they too could be hacking large chunks of sub-soil using the leveraging-power of the long heavy blade, and the long handle. I do think that technique and teaching can turn heavy-duty tilling into no-sweat gardening. Make that lo-sweat.

There’s no denying that swinging a big heavy hoe is tiring – but if the alternative is digging and wiggling with a spade and/or a fork English-style, with double-bent back . . . then sorry, I’m no fan. Make no mistake – this is peasant work. But in two short afternoons, Sue and I dug and planted all nine beds.

cooking compost and cicadas

If it seems that compost occupies my thoughts to a greater extent than say . . . yours – it’s because I’m looking after 10 bins at present. Five are our own, three are in our new shared kitchen-garden at Sue’s place, and the last two belong to the holiday house whose pool and garden I tend. Each one gets fed different stuff, cooks at different temperatures, takes different times to finish. And has different inhabitants . . .

These are cicada larvae (we think – I’ve put a few in a clear plastic container, and we’ll see what emerges . . . ). There are scores of them in our slow, cool, old compost bins. And when I mused aloud about their nutritional potential and how some cultures might drool over such a handfull, Mary (the unseen, unsung and Indespensible Gardener) suggested I entitle the photo :  ‘Grub’ . . .

There are few creatures that can survive a freshly-fuelled, well-mixed compost pile. For it to do its job of killing off mauvaises herbes and herbes persistantes, and wild seeds and pathogens – then temperatures of between 130 and 170 F. ( 57 – 77 C.) are needed. Higher than this and our friends the microbes take a vacation to cooler climes, or die in their trillions. Some concerned gardeners would rather not be part of such wholesale massacres, and only do long slow cool compost cooking. ‘A chacun, son goût’ – which actually means : I think they’re unscientific wimps. High combustion will indeed wipe out vast civilisations of microbes, as will washing your hands before eating, or boiling your kettle for a cup of tea.

Fortunately, this high-burn period of compost alchemy doesn’t last for ever, and new civilisations are soon happy to make the epic trek back to the centre of your personal Chernobyl, from the outer edges of your bin whence they fled when their own particular global warming got unbearable. Microbes, better than humans, can cope with these temporary discomforts. They are, after all, us. Just in a smaller, more adaptable form.

Size matters. The size that humans are, and the discovery/necessity of fire are intimately linked. If humans had evolved smaller – say mouse size – their need for fire would have resulted in tiny, precarious bonfires of straw and twigs – easily blown away or blown out by the the slightest wind. Humans upped to the size of mastodons would have had enough bulk to keep warm – without fire. The need/invention of fire was a result of our finely-balanced/pure-chance size : not big enough to provide our own heat, but smart enough to make heat for our skinny little bodies . . .

Well, so it is with compost heaps. There’s an optimum size, and the only sure way of cooling your heap is to reduce its bulk. Three foot cubic will get it cooking – two foot will cool it. The previous post showed me turning a cooling pile, and adding water (and of course air). The temperature dropped through the floor. For a day.

I went back there today with our room thermometer, which was showing a comfortable 27 C. as I walked across the village. Flip open the pile, and just a few inches under, the mercury shot off the scale : heading towards 77 C. and total genocide. There are months to go – and several turnings – before this lot ever gets near a plant. Going by my previous piles, each bin should be a writhing mass of slithery creatures, partying in a sweet-scented, crumbly black heap.

When the war is over, and the thermo-nuclear event has passed, in will come the creepies, and the crawlies, and our friends – the worms.

Now for the academic cavalry, courtesy of Google, and Washington State University :

“In aerobic composting proper temperature is important. Heat is released in the process. Since composting material has relatively good insulation properties, a composting mass large enough (3’ x 3’ or 3 x 3 metres ) will retain the heat of the exthermo-biological reaction and high temperatures will develop.

High temperatures are essential for destruction of pathogenic organisms and undesirable weed seeds. Also, decomposition is more rapid in the thermophilic temperature range. The optimum temperature range is 135° -160° Fahrenheit. Since few thermophilic organisms actively carry on decomposition above 160° F, it is undesirable to have temperatures above this for extended periods.

Eggs of parasites, cysts and flies have survived in compost stacks for days when the temperature in the interior of the stack is around 135° F. Since a higher temperature can be readily maintained during a large part of the active composting period, all the material should be subjected to a temperature of at least 150° F for safety.

Sometimes compost operators avoid prolonged high temperatures because the nitrogen loss is greater at high temperatures because ammonia vaporizes, which takes place when the C:N ratio is low. But there are other ways of minimizing nitrogen loss than operating at a lower temperature. The advantages of destroying pathogenic organisms and weed seeds, controlling flies, and providing better decomposition outweigh any small nitrogen loss due to high temperatures.

A drop in temperature in the compost pile before material is stabilized can mean that the pile is becoming anaerobic and should be aerated. High temperatures do not persist when the pile becomes anaerobic. The temperature curve for different parts of the pile varies somewhat with the size of the pile, the ambient (surrounding) temperature, the moisture content, the degree of aeration, and the character of the composting material. To maintain high temperatures during decomposition, compost must be aerobic. The size of the compost pile or windrow may be increased to provide higher temperatures in cold weather or decreased to keep the temperatures from becoming too high in warm weather. Experience shows that turning to release the heat of compost piles, which have become so hot (170°-180° F.) that bacterial activity is inhibited, is not very effective. When the material is actively decomposing, the temperature, which falls slightly during turning, will return to the previous level in two or three hours. Also, it is impossible to bring about any significant drop in temperature by watering the material without water logging the mass.

Variations in moisture content between 30% and 75% have little effect on the maximum temperature in the interior of the pile. The initial temperature rises a little more rapidly when the moisture content is 30% to 50% than when it is 70%. Studies show an important and significant correlation between the moisture content and the temperature distribution within the pile. When moisture content is high, temperatures near the surface will be higher, and the high temperature zone will extend nearer to the surface than when the moisture content is low. For example, in experiments at University of California during mild weather when the air temperature fluctuated between 50° and 80° Fahrenheit, the zone of maximum temperature in a pile with a moisture content of 61% extended to within about one inch of the surface while the maximum temperature zone in a pile containing 40% moisture began 6 inches below the surface.

Deeper piles caused higher temperatures and better temperature distribution, and subject more material to a high temperature at any one time. Hence, the actual mass of the material evolving heat is important in providing adequately high temperatures.”

There. Science is so satisfying. Not as much fun as faeries at the bottom of your garden – but in the end, more fascinating.

marking time with compost

We’re waiting on Charles and his tractor to plough le grand potager at Sue’s. I’ve boxes and trays of plantlings that need to go in – watermelons and pumpkins, peas and beans, and 25 sweet corn. But with her L-shaped plot, there’s no point in starting a bed or two as the tractor will not be able to navigate around them effectively. And I do want this serious kitchen-garden prepared properly from the outset. It’s sunny and sheltered and has the potential to be our main provider of food.

But in the meantime, there’s always compost to attend to. After two weeks, the initial combustion has cooled to a hand-bearable 30 C. and the bulk has reduced by a third. Time to turn it all and re-stack it, with the dry outer stuff put in the middle, and the damp ashy material around the outer edge – then a spray of water every five forkfulls. The three bins become two, and eventually one. More space for fresh manure!

I like the work – it’s cookery and alchemy and a visit to the bank, all in one.

This is Big Bin No.1 which has been cooking slowly all winter – today I’m barrowing it the 5 minutes walk acoss the village to Sue’s kitchen-garden.

If I keep up this rate of compost-production, the volume of soil will increase dramatically and it might be sensible to move to a raised-bed system now. It’s not something I’ve done before, and it costs money and time. But I’m not entirely convinced of its benefits. Here in the Midi a kind of raised-bed/ridged plantation is commonplace : the ridge is le billon and the trough or path is le sillon. As I write this, I’m checking the internet for spellings and info – and it’s apparent that there’s lots of experience on this in French, and in the French-speaking colonies. A regional term for it is ‘cultivation en ados’ where ados means a ridge or hump (remember: a dosser is someone who’d rather lie on his back, than do work . . . ).

This is particularly relevant to us, since we too have long periods of drought with intermittent flooding. And as I write I’m becoming more convinced that wood-planked raised beds are alien to this kind of clay terrain, and this climate.

Big scythe and small tractor

This is where it starts. The scythe I bought months ago gets a taste of the whetstone and goes to work for the first time in decades. I was amazed at how efficient it was – sweeping aside the sheeves of grass into a heap in a way that a strimmer could not manage. Rythmic and moorish exercise – not noisy and back-acheing mayhem.

First things first : the grass and weeds have to go somewhere – so I’ve put together three bins from pallets I’d scavenged over the winter from building sites. With all the rain there’s several heaps that won’t all fit in. When I fetch in the horse manure next week I’ll mix it all up together, bin what I can and cover the rest with a tarp. It should all be ready come autumn, when a month of double-digging will see it all in the ground.

This is Sunday May 10, and most of the scything is done. I need to clear the back strip and straighten up the drive-way, but the dead trees are a nuisance – by law all bonfires are banned from April through to October.

Charles, our ‘petit vigneron’ and best French friend, spontaneously offered to help with the clearance.

The narrow little vine-tractor is handy in confined spaces; here he’s giving the ground a passe or two with the rotavator, to a depth of 5 centimetres. He has to change the kit on the back next week to do some harrowing in his vines – and will return to break up the next 20 centimetres.

As Raphael remarks on his blog Un Potager en Languedoc, tout stagne during this wet and cold spring. Early plantings of seedlings remain ’stagnant’ in the cool soil – so we’re hopeful our late start won’t matter.

The area now looks huge, and daunting – but with the three of us: me Mary and Sue, and Charles! – and a not too-ambitious first year plan, it should come good.

With two gardens to manage, plus our summer ArtHoliday courses, there won’t be the time to sit and blog. But I feel more confident now that we might be able to feed ourselves – whatever else happens in the world.

A new big garden – and a new small blog

It’s been a month since the last post, and a lot has happened. A lot of rain has also fallen, making this one of the coolest and wettest springs on record.

Our potager is nearly filled now : 3 variétés anciennes de tomates, peppers and aubergines, calabrese broccoli and red cabbage, purple and yellow and green beans, peas, purple potatoes and red-skinned too, purple endives and spinach, rocket and various lettuces, artichokes and sweet corn, yellow and green courgettes, onions and shallots.

The  elaborate irrigation system lies idle as the rain sweeps in – we wage a brutal war each day against snails and slugs and weeds. French neighbours have been eating  cargolade, a simple catalan grilled snail dish. We have stupidly been throwing away kilos of the creatures . . .

The list above might seem satisfactory and sufficient – but the actual size of the plot is not big, and not everything will succeed. And there’s not room for a good supply of winter and spring staples.

Here’s a video view of it, a few weeks ago, in between the waves of rain:

There’s still a lot of lawn left – but that must stay, along with the pool, if our ArtHoliday.com business is to continue. Painting groups sit out in the shade of the trees and draw; yoga groups do their moves there. Without ArtHoliday we are sunk. And I’ve been fighting to get our website back up in the first pages of Google so that we stand a chance of surviving the ‘downturn’ a while longer. It’s working: we’re now on pages 1, 2, or 3 for most of the relevant search-strings. Now we need the bookings . . . The new small blog relates to our ArtHoliday activities and is more of a ‘window on our world’  – brief reports on the changing season and wildlife, a glimpse of village life and events. It’s intended to illustrate our little corner of Languedoc for the benefit of those thinking of coming here for one of our walking tours or mosaic courses,or painting weeks or yoga. Some groups and people return each summer- and for them it’s a way of staying in touch with a place they’ve become fond of. It’s at www.artholidayfrance.wordpress.com

But in the meantime, between cloudbursts and hoeing and search-engine-optimizing voodoo, I’ve started on a new potager that is three times bigger, on some disused ground belonging to our best English friends here in the village, Sue Bradford and Steve Broadhead.

It was once a productive plot, now portioned off to some neighbours who have just cleared their patch. The rest of the garden remaining to Sue (a keen reader of George Monbiot, and PeakOil-aware), and now us together, is pretty unappetizing as a garden project.

The next post shows how far we’ve got in two weeks.

Getting a handle on it

The handle or shaft length on a hoe is crucial for efficiency and comfort. Short handles may feel more familiar but they mean more bending over, and more strain on the back. Greg Baka of  Easy Digging is a strong advocate of the long handle and all his hoe handles are shipped 59″ long as he believes the correct ergonomic length should be between armpit and shoulder. It was on his site that I found the link to the report below, on the hoe in Africa.

Others - like  Simon Drummond of Get Digging who imports azadas himself and Kate McEvoy of Realseeds think shorter is better – 36″ to 47″. They are however united in their enthusiasm for the hoe. I discovered the advantages of the long handle, on spades and forks, in Ireland – but the grub hoe/azada/essade was largely unknown there. Here in le Languedoc the Robinia tree grows like weeds and provides me with strong slim and unrottable shafts from its straightish branches.

Andy Graham of  HoboTraveller filmed two girls in Kpalime, Togo, West Africa using the short hoe  here [also in Video Library, right]

The hand hoe is probably the most important tool for women farmers in Africa, but also one that causes them considerable problems.

IFAD [International Fund for Agricultural Development], FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] and the Government of Japan conducted a study of the agricultural implements used by women farmers in Africa. It found that, for a number of both cultural and economic reasons, most men and women farmers used primarily hand tools. The hand hoe is the tool most used in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Both men and women use it. In some areas, such as in the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso and parts of Uganda, it is virtually the only tool used by poorer women farmers.

But its traditional design creates problems for users. The study found some variations in the design and manufacture of hoes. Except in Senegal, the hoe is invariably of the traditional ‘chop-down-and-pull’ type, and with a short handle. The way the hoe’s blade fits to the handle varies from country to country. There hoes with a tang fitting, socket fitting or eye-ring fitting. The hoe with the eye-ring fitting is usually the industrially manufactured version, whereas those with the other two types of fittings are made by local blacksmiths. These are cheaper but more likely to need to be replaced annually because of their poor quality. Even these cost about USD 1.75, which is expensive for the poorer farmers, such as those in central Burkina Faso. Hoes with socket fittings are generally sold without handles, which the farmer or a specialized craftsman in the village can make from local wood.

The women in the study focus groups noted that of all their tasks on the land, weeding with a hand-hoe was the hardest and most time consuming job, causing both fatigue and backache. A major reason for this are traditional hoes’ short handles, which necessitates women’s bending over almost double to use them. Only in Senegal, where inter-row cultivation with animal traction is usually practised and long-handled push-pull hoes are in use, was weeding seen as less difficult. The short-handled hoe is effective and provides considerable control, but with some tasks and easier soil situations, a lighter, long-handled hoe would work perfectly well and be far easier for women to use. The hand hoe is therefore a tool that has room for improvement.  Given the obvious drawbacks for women users of the traditional model hoe – problematic handle length and weight – it is surprising that the hoe’s design has proven so resistant to change.

Different ethnic groups seem to be fiercely attached to the handle lengths to which they are accustomed. For instance, in the study area in Zambia, migration brought together ethnic groups from different parts of the country and with differing hoe handle lengths. While these groups have lived and worked together for many years in harmony, each group has retained its own accustomed hoe handle length. Attempts to introduce long-handled hoes, such as those by a German-financed project in Zimbabwe, have apparently been unsuccessful (at the time of the research). Lighter Chinese hoes have been imported into the countries of eastern and southern Africa, but farmers there seem to be unaware of these lighter hoes and buy whatever hoes are sold locally.

Choices in local markets are limited. The push-pull hoe in Senegal (similar to the Dutch hoe used in Europe) is an exception to the rule. It has a long handle and a farmer can use it while in an upright position. This hoe was introduced in Senegal in the mid-thirties. In central Senegal, it has now displaced the traditional hoe for weeding purposes. The study notes that as members of the French army the Senegalese were great travelers, and are therefore probably more open to the world and more innovative. Also, the light soils in Senegal make the push-pull hoe easier to use than in some neighbouring countries. What are the factors that have made the hand hoe so resistant to design change and innovation?

* There is a widespread belief (except in Senegal) that weeding is performed properly only when the worker is bent double and armed with a short-handled hoe. People who use hoes with long handles (the Langi tribe in Uganda and the Fulani in Burkina Faso, who are mainly nomadic herders; prisoners; or workers on commercial farms) are considered to be lazy and incompetent. In fact, the study found that length of the handle is very linked to culture, tradition and ethnic identity.

* Manufacturers of tools were found to undertake no market research, and are seemingly unaware of the changes that have taken place in African farming (e.g., women are now doing by far the most work on the land).

* Men are usually the ones who buy the tools, including hoes, even though their wives are more likely to be the tools’ users. The study found that even if they acknowledge that the women need lighter or differently designed hoes, the men still choose the traditional ‘male’ model of hoe when making the actual purchase.

* Women and men are often unaware of some of the hoe alternatives on the market or those alternatives are not available in many local markets. When women are shown the lighter models, they are usually interested in owning them. The study found that women farmers repeatedly complained about the hoe and said that they wanted a lighter one for weeding.

But handle length is another issue: Women seem to feel that a longer handle is inappropriate for them, even though it would be more comfortable for them to use. They are anxious to have improvements made in their hoes, but primarily in quality and durability, rather than in the hoe’s design. Some women (for instance, in Burkina Faso) did say that they would like longer handles for their hoes, but their husbands would not allow them.

Adapted from: IFAD/FAO/Government of Japan. 1998. Agricultural Implements Used by Women Farmers in Africa. Rome.

The new diggers

The struggle to build a durable irrigation scheme for the kitchen-garden has been brought to a temporary halt . . . by rain. It’s the first we’ve had for many weeks, and should last  for several days it seems. It’s gentle and penetrative, fortunately – rather than violent and productive of floods and red clay mud-slides.

It means I can return to some websites and blogs I’ve book-marked recently, and grow a few ideas, indoors.

They all seem to centre around a pivotal idea propounded a year or two back  by Jeffrey J. Brown,  an independent petroleum geologist who posts regularly as westexas on TheOilDrum.com.  His ELP Plan in the face of Peak Oil and resource depletion: Economize; Localize & Produce :
Economize
By reducing  expenses now, while you can do it voluntarily, you will at least be better prepared for whatever the future may bring. A key way to Economize is to Localize.
Localize
Try to reduce the distance between work and home to as close to zero as possible and live in smaller, much more energy efficient housing, preferably close to mass transit lines.
Integrate yourself into your local community. Get to know your neighbors. Become involved in local government, etc.
Support local food producers, perhaps via Community Supported Agriculture, and support local manufacturing and businesses.

Produce
Produce  practical and useful items that serve to enhance the first two ideas. Grow as much food as possible. Mend, repair and recycle.

In this context it was interesting to find a fellow-blogger in the region,  posting about the CapitalGrowth initiative in London, in his own admirable blog  Un Jardin Potager en Languedoc .

His subtitle describes it well : Un cahier de semis en ligne pour me simplifier la vie mais aussi des observations sur l’horticulture dans un milieu méditerranéen, un témoignage sur la culture de légumes dans un jardin du Midi qui est, à sa façon, partagé, multi-générationel, semi-bio et même un peu politique …

One of Raphael’s brothers-in-law is involved with this new London scheme. Launched at the beginning of November 2008, the Capital Growth campaign is aiming to create 2,012 new food growing spaces in London by 2012.

Raphael  adds [my translation] :

On this subject [the 'greening' of London], we can speak about it because we are really miraculously lucky people: as newcomers to Montpellier, without the possibility of coming up with the price demanded by estate-agents for “leisure activity land ” and even less to have a house with its own garden in the city, we managed to find – thanks to flyers posted in  letterboxes around the city – somebody keen to help our kitchen-garden project and prepared to share land.
Without this miracle, we would have had to wait to qualify for one of the  few allotments of  Montpellier – or go into debt if we had managed to find something affordable at a real estate agency.

So – Come on : a small change in mentality, fellow citizens and elected officials! A weekend vegetable garden  for everyone! (for all those that want one, of course . . . )

Raphael is a  consultant Ingénieur en Géomatique whose potager is now up from 70 sq. m. to 240 sq.m. His approach is rigorous  :  we both are concerned by questions of water and irrigation – but he has researched the needs of various plants, and the variables in the soil’s ability to retain moisture.  But his anxieties about water remain : our region experiences long hot summers and the prevailing wind, La Tramontane [or Le Cers, as it's known in our corner of Languedoc]  is strong and very drying. Most of the old and therefore successful potagers have tall thick wind-breaks to help combat the desiccation.

Nevertheless his results are impressive – and his photos are good too.

Here are some of mine – taken around our village recently. Every little village has such potagers – and while many are falling into disuse as an older generation retires, some are getting a new lease of life.

This walled garden at the edge of the village was started a few years ago by two middle-aged Moroccan vineyard workers. The pigeonnier is for the present, unoccupied.

Fava beans and artichokes have over-wintered well.

This plot has just been prepared by tractor – it was disused for years. There are two deep wells side-by-side that need cleaning out. And there’s a heavy old pump-engine in a hut that may require more than just a cleaning.

Below is the municipal allotment outside Lezignan,our nearby market town. It was once part of a grand domaine.

Below is the second half of the allotment. It’s mid-morning and all the men are of retirement age. Right next door is a riding school with stables – what luck!

You say patatas – I say potatoes

My seed spuds are on the chitting-tray, but it’s cold and the sprouts are a long way off, and my hands are numb so I’ve come indoors to google.

patate – it can mean an idiot [invective] or a punch,  or a million old French francs, or the graphic representation of Cantor’s Set Theory.

être dans les patates – to be wrong or mistaken [Québécois colloquialism]
avoir la patate – to be in good form [French colloquialism]
en avoir gros sur la patate – to be very upset about something [French, with mayonnaise on top]
faire patate -  to screw up [Québécois]

We’re going to plant these Vitelotes again this year : they are the original Quechua spuds that came over in the 16th. century and while they don’t grow big, they are massively filling and taste like chestnuts : dense and floury at the same time. They stay purple too – unlike those treacherous purple beans . . .

While preparing the lazy-bed for these multi-denominated objects I have passed through all the above stages :- some of the time I’m enraged at the folly of our leaders, and the waste of people’s hard work and savings – then I revert to being in good form, because the work is satisfying and it’s going well. Then I want to wallop someone – a politician, an economist – for their wanton squandering of my efforts and of the future of my children.

And if the graphical representation of Set Theory resembles a potato – then I realise that this is probably the point that the Whizz Kids of econo-mathematics probably got away from the rest of us – and the regulators who likewise couldn’t keep up either.

So – if I don’t want to be une patate, and would much rather avoir la patate – then I’better get on with preparing the potato-bed.

The good thing about planting spuds is that they are ideal for new ground. Little by little the lawn is giving way to the kitchen-garden – and the lazy-bed is the best crop to help break up this much-compacted area. We are unusual in this region of the hot south to have such a thing as a lush green lawn. It has been a welcome area of cool green for the Northerners who come to visit, and who don’t want to toast themselves silly in the bronzing sun. The big old trees have permitted this rare luxury, giving shade and thus requiring less watering.

We face a future where our ArtHoliday.com business will go slowly [or maybe rapidly] downhill, and we will be left with no painters and no mosaic-makers and no yoga groups and no walkers. We will have no need for the lawn. But transitions are not clear-cut. The ArtHoliday business continues, limping from crisis to crisis – and it may be difficult to tell when – if ever – the project that brought us here ten years ago and took so much of our time and all our money, is finished for ever.

So in the meantime we continue, as so many people must be : just continuing – because that’s all we know what to do. We continue and we up-date our site and we look forward to a different future. The lawn may shrink but in its place I am growing things that may have an equal or greater appeal: the garden – I am determined – must remain formal. As long as there are visitors who come to work at their art, who come to contemplate French gardening, who rate our vegetarian cooking, and who might want to see how a family can manage on a reduced diet  – of art and gardening, hard work and friendship.

Water

Every week around Wednesday on The Oil Drum.com the editors invite a guest to propose a topic that addresses some practical aspect of the Peak Oil situation. This week it was a guest post from Sharon Astyk (TOD reader jewishfarmer). She is the author of one current book : ‘Depletion and Abundance: Life On the New Home Front.’ and two forthcoming books.
Her essay this week was about the issues involved in adapting to the Long Emergency – it’s about adjusting to a different type of ‘city’ and lifestyle than we are currently used to.

Mary and I have tried to get our friends to take a look at what TheOilDrum.com and TheAutomaticEarth.blogspot.com have to say about our present predicament – but they don’t, and they won’t, and that is that.

One of the central points in her essay, picked up by several commenters – and of particular interest to me this winter – is the key role that water-supply will play.

Here’s a taste of the discussion:-

jewishfarmer on The Oil Drum February 4, 2009
My own feeling is that where we may end up may well come down mostly to water in the next few decades. Soil yes, but water first and foremost.

Ron Broberg on February 6, 2009
As I survey my 1/3 acre domain, it becomes quickly apparent that water is my limiting factor (Colorado Front Range).
I was telling this to my wife a couple of weeks ago when, literally the next day, a water main burst and we are on boiled water for the rest of the week.

KingPing on February 6, 2009
I guess, as I survey my small “suburban” lot I have the exact same concern–water.

Will Stewart on February 5, 2009
Richard Seager, et al, Model Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America, Science 25 May 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5828, pp. 1181 – 1184 DOI: 10.1126/science.1139601
“there is a broad consensus among climate models that this region will dry in the 21st century and that the transition to a more arid climate should already be under way. If these models are correct, the levels of aridity of the recent multiyear drought or the Dust Bowl and the 1950s droughts will become the new climatology of the American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades.”

wrighttracks on February 5, 2009
Future water availability was mentioned and truly this will be an issue. It is already an issue. All areas with large populations and anticipated water problems are suspect as being viable.

nelsone on February 5, 2009
It’s all about the water, isn’t it? Food shortages can be dealt with by slow, steady shipments of nonperishables, but how much water can you tanker in to Atlanta or LA?

Richie Gunn on February 6, 2009
Rainwater in the Southeast is the new liquid gold and it should be treasured so. We all should collect rainwater from our roof tops at the least.

Here in the Languedoc region of SW France, water has always been a major factor in rural life. There is either a drought – or a deluge. The last major flood, in 1999, killed 21 people in our immediate area. Hosepipe restrictions are a regular factor each summer. Higher up in the Corbières Hills a friend lost her vigorous little stream for several months: her isolated small-holding depended on a temporary [and illegal] pit being excavated in the stream-bed.

There is water in this valley – fed by the snow melt from the Pyrenees and a myriad of other tributaries. Little is taken out for industry – there is none. But each village is experiencing a decades-long North-South drift, and this region is expanding where others are shrinking. The water-demands of bulk wine and little suburban developments is taking its toll.

Our village, with its new station in 1856, was set to be a new market-town mid-way between Narbonne and Carcassonne. But while each big house had its own wells [we have two], and the ‘ordinary villagers’  had a constantly running fountain/horse-troughs/public pumps – this was the limit of our village’s water supply. The market town was built 7 km. away in the valley bottom. Where the floods of  ‘99 hit hardest.

Our huge house has just survived the most violent wind since ‘99 – Tempête Claus – with roof intact and two trees down; quite minor. The water table [ la nappe phréatique ] is high again for the first time in years, and my fears for our kitchen-garden abate a little. The house well holds ten cubic meters of sweet water and the ‘grand bassin’ holds another seven. The swimming pool contains 80 cubic metres – but when the Economic Collapse occurs we won’t  be worrying about our ArtHoliday guests objecting to pondweed and oxygenators. The Black Swan still circles our little corner.

This is the skeleton of the water pump on our workshop barn. The other photos show the remains of wind-driven well-pumps in villages around.