So, I can't keep this thing a secret anymore...
Pascal Poot is the creator of a Tomato Conservatory unlike any other, in a region of France where the ground is rocky and the climate is arid. He now grows over 400 varieties of tomatoes, each one with a DNA so strong, the plants do not need to be watered.
Pascal has found a way to let his tomatoes (and other veggetables) fend for themselves. While he doesn't water them, fertilize them or privide any maintenance, every sqare meter yields up to 25kg (55 lbs per sqare yard)!
...And they are so delicious!
I've only had one variety, grown from seed by my ant and my father and you know what, they were the most juiciest and tasty tomatoes I can remember ever eating!
Ask me what my favorite food is, if you want!
There isn't a lot of info on Pascal Poot's method in English, but if you look deep enough you'll find enough to make your own decision on it.
Mr Poot, says that with a little know how and patience we can educate plants to be more or less self sufficient. Ok so it may take a lot of patience, but after just a couple harvests, you will start seeing a difference between store baught seeds and your increasingly more resistant seeds you harvest year after year.
Please note that this method is for in ground cultivation.
In essence, the method is pretty simple, germinate your seeds as you normaly would, transplant into the ground, walk away and come back when it is time to harvest. Easy, right?
The most difficult part of it is un-learning our watering habits, or holding ourselves back from fertelizing, watering and tending to them, as we're all used to doing.
Teaching plants the art of resistance:
According to Pascal, all you have to do is harvest the survivors. When a plant resists to pests or disease, it sends that resistance into the DNA of it's seeds. As for water and food (other than the sun), the strongest of plants will send roots searching deap for what it needs and in turn pass on the knowledge into the DNA of it's seeds.
By harvesting seeds from the survivors, every year, they become more resistant to the elements.
The result:
Juicy tomatoes full of vitamins and minerals that take less effort to grow...
In permaculture the words imitate nature always come up. It is part of it's core principle realy. Here, Pascal Poot was once struck by the idea that forests are amongst some of the most abundant system on our planet while not being maintained by humans. Everything grows without our help, and so he imitated the forest, he goes as far as not even supporting his tomato plants with stakes!
I would love to hear your feedback on this one but most of all I want you to try the Pascal Poot method and see where it leads us. I will be trying it for sure this year and will report back from No Man's Land later this season about it.
Here is The Seed Shop again for those of you who may decide to skip the transformation period of regular seeds to airloom seeds...
After all, a dream will remain a dream, if you do not start doing anything.
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