Vegetables adapted to Normandy and climatic hazards thanks to the Beaumesnil conservatory

Nearly 500 varieties are grown each year in the conservatory vegetable garden which adjoins the Château de Beaumesnil in Eure. Among them, around twenty ancient Norman species, recovered over the years by the Montviette Nature association. Sweet melon from Honfleur, bean from Pont-Audemer, pumpkin from Alençon, cabbage or chicory from Louviers... The association is carrying out bibliographic research to determine the origins of the varieties and continues its quest to find those still missing.

“It is estimated that there are more than a hundred ancestral varieties in Normandy,” explains Margaux Villebrun, animation and conservatory vegetable garden project manager at the Beaumesnil vegetable garden. The agronomist coordinates this old varieties project, organizes participatory gardening workshops and programs with amateur gardeners to teach them how to manage crops until new seeds are harvested. For her, these varieties have advantages, provided that we start growing them again.

Better acclimatization

“Old varieties were adapted to our Normandy environments fifty years ago and are reputed to be less productive than the varieties currently found on the market which are often of so-called F1 varieties, non-reproducible and which were cultivated in the south from France. » With climatic hazards, increasingly stressed plants must both acclimatize to a soil and climate different from that in which they were grown, but can also be more sensitive to diseases, episodes of cold, high humidity or drought.

“While those that have been grown locally, if we continue to plant them and select the best plants from one year to the next, in ten years we will have vegetables that will be totally adapted, on a micro-local scale. , in our midst,” continues Margaux.

Since February, the Beaumesnil vegetable garden, through its association 1 001 Légumes, has been offering packets of seeds of around twenty Norman varieties and several dozen common varieties that have grown locally. Thanks to the help of Luc Devaux, a seed craftsman who cut his teeth at the Sainte-Marthe farm, whose organic seeds are well known to amateur gardeners, the association can thus encourage the Normans to cultivate local species again.

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