The gardeners of Saint-Just-Marais are annoyed by this rainy weather, which is pushing some of them to stop cultivating their waterlogged plot.
“If this continues, I’ll end up planting watercress or rice.”. If François Desauty, member of the Saint-Just-des-Marais Family Gardens office, keeps a sense of humor, his reflection says a lot about the dismay of green fingers in the sector. The cause is this confusing weather where heavy and omnipresent rain sometimes alternates with very hot and heavy sun. “The worst was Wednesday morning, it rained for half an hour, it was horrible. I removed about 200 litres from my tank when I arrived. When I was about to leave, the tank came back full, I have a surface area of 27 m2, that’s between 16 and 18 litres per m2.”.
Henri Sebire, one of the oldest members of the association, also in the office, goes even further.“Me personally, I’ve been here for 45 years, and I’ve never had so much water!” And this uncertain weather continues to deteriorate the quality of the soil, either too wet or dried out in a few hours.“In the event of extreme heat, the stagnant water will dry the earth and crack it”adds his neighbor, Manuel Do Santos.
The president of this association with 315 members, Claude Bouchez, even speaks of a year“catastrophic”.«Out of 320 plots, I counted about 150 that are no longer cultivated. The members started and then gave up.”he describes. The water tables are full, as soon as it rains a little, it rises. And we have several gardens that are right in the water, especially towards the bottom of the site.”he adds.
In these particularly wet conditions, the spring plantings have yielded almost nothing. Already, 2024 will not be a good vintage.“Nothing took. The potatoes are rotten, we also had mildew, the onions, we pull them up at the end of June, now they are green»disgruntled coward Jean-Michel Demenautis.“The beans have been out for three weeks, but they are very small”complete François Desauty. “Usually, the beans that we plant on St. George’s Day, April 23, we eat them at the Jeanne-Hachette celebrations, but here, they haven’t even come out”Manuel Dos Santos joins him.
The problem for these gardeners is that unless they change the weather, they can’t do anything, or at worst, they can “move” from a place with such a bucolic setting. “In theory, we could raise the gardens, but there are drinking water catchment points in the area and the City would not take the risk of bringing back soil that could be polluted.», underlines Claude Bouchez. For Henri Sebire, river cleaning could be a solution “but we no longer have the right for ecological reasons»he regrets, while better cleaning of the nozzles is also mentioned. “It was done”the president continues. “But only at the entrance and exit and not in the center», replies Henri Sebire. In the meantime, some have decided to make a clean sweep of spring crops.«I’m going to wait a fortnight, I’m going to turn everything over and I’m going to replant carrots, salads… and we’ll see what happens.”concludes Jean-Michel Demenautis, whose plot was waterlogged this Friday.
In short
No more products against slugs while it’s an invasion
Is Beauvais in short supply of products to eliminate slugs? For gardeners in Saint-Just des Marais, it is obvious. “We don’t find it anywhere and everyone wants it”they regret that these shellless gastropods swarm and attack the roots of all plants in wet weather.
Bins for gardeners and for plot waste
“The bins are made for the waste generated by gardeners while maintaining their plots and not for waste brought in from outside.”. A useful reminder from the president who also asks members to respect the colors of the bins dedicated to incinerable waste or not.
Gardeners participate in the 40th anniversary of the Bergerette workshops
During the 40th anniversary of the Bergerette workshops, which will be held next weekend, the gardeners will organize guided tours of the site, particularly on Saturdays from 2 p.m. On Sunday, July 7, the tour of the family gardens will also take place from 2 p.m. with Michel Méline from Corrélation et surprises artistiques.
