Une pépinière pour prendre soin de la Terre

PépiTerra in a few words : The PépiTerra project is the creation of a fruit-trees nursery of a new kind ! PépiTerra is a fruit-trees nursery to take of care of the Earth. Indeed, all decisions regarding the production process have been taken to minimize the ecological impact. Actually we rather want to have a positive impact ! Each tree that you will plant will help us reach that goal. PépiTerra it’s also a guarantee of quality. Having signed the Certifruit chart, we propose varieties for the amateur, with a good resistance against diseases and pests. This chart guarantees also the varietal purity and a 100% local and artisanal production. Background : With PépiTerra there is a retraining project but also a familial project. I’m an engineer in computer sciences and I have 9 years of experience in the industry sector, biomedical in particular. Five years ago started a passion for the life on earth and in particular for the flora. I followed trainings, read a lot and experimented in my garden and I discovered the vegetable garden, seeds production, biointensive agriculture, agoforestery, agroecology, permaculture… I came to realize that we need a dramatic change in the way we produce food and I want to be an actor of that change. The tree is somehow fascinating for me. With almost no care, he produces every year a gigantic amount of biomass and in the case of fruit trees, well food ! On top of this alimentation aspects, trees can play a key role to face the ecological situation we are facing: carbon captation, water retention, ecological niche for birds and insects… It’s an essential link in the ecosystems. It’s also why I chose to produce trees rather than fruits. In my vision of the agriculture of tomorrow, food production should not be 100% centralized in the hands of the agricultural world, but it should be partially decentralized in the hands of everyone to guarantee a bit of autonomy and resilience. This decentralization will also help to reabilitate our landscapes and gardens and to restore the ecosystems. Regarding the familial aspects, our long term view is to create a micro-farm where we could develop further our 3 activities : PépiTerra of course, YURTerra our ecological guest-house in yurt and Terra Line where singing bowls helps you relax and medidate. PépiTerra: a new kind of fruit tree nursery At PépiTerra our values dictate our choices. For instance we produce only fruit trees shoots. What are frui trees shoots ? It’s basically a one year old tree. The advantages of planting young trees as opposed to older trees are numerous : Much better rooting. A tree with a strong rooting will be more resistant to drought and to tearing due to wind. Often a better rooting results also in a better resistance against diseases and pets. The trauma linked to extraction will be far less important in the case of young trees (especially if you consider that older trees are often transplated every years). The consequence is that a proper growth will restart much faster on trees planted young. As we cultivate only young trees, big machinery is not necessary, and we need far less space. Young trees are also cheaper. Another important choice we have made is to sell only bare root trees. Here again there are a lot of advantages : The first one is that this means that our trees will always be planted at the right time. This is really important to guarantee a quick tree take off at spring. This will also limit the watering needed. Growing trees in container leads to smaller roots contained in a small volume while a tree needs big straight long roots to guarantee a good rooting in the soil. Last but not least, while buying bare root trees you can see the roots ! And as you have seen, the roots are as important as the branches. PépiTerra right now: Currently around 100 trees are growing at PépiTerra. They have been grafted during the spring 2021 and they are mostly apple trees. This experience was our “proof of concept”. The rootstocks have been funded with our own funds and the grafts have been collected in orchards of passionate people. Those trees are thus not Certifruit. These trees will be given as awards to our contributors. We will begin professional production in the spring 2022. During that season we expect to produce around 1500 trees (apple, pear, cherry and plum), only varieties from the Certifruit catalog will be produced. The whole “RGF-Gblx” line will be produced and a small amount of varieties from the “Trad-RGF” line. By 2025 we aim at producing 5000 trees/year. The counterparts Before diving into this whole new world, we experimented as an hobby in our garden. It’s the results of those experimentation that will be given as counterparts to the contributors. We are talking about ~70 young fruit-trees, but also some cuttings (raspberry, currant, blackcurrant…) and seeds for the vegetable garden.