Can you grow cultivated trees in Central Washington w/o Irrigation??

Is it possible to grow fruits, nuts, veggies, and/or grains in central Washington without supplemental irrigation?? I know you can get some established with irrigation, or you can plant native seeds, but has anyone had success actually planting trees/shrubs in this type of climate without the need for supplemental irrigation? Is the idea of a dry food forest possible? How many years after making swales and cover cropping would it take?? Would it all need to be next to a pond or a creek? Or is it even possible?? Or should I just set up drip irrigation to establish things for a couple years before removing the irrigation?? Should I sew cultivated plant seeds and see what can survive?? Should I try it all!?? Probably….

Asking for opinions, insights, and experienced wisdom.

Thanks!

Sean,

It's surely possible, but it all depends on your conditions and species and cultivar selection.
From my experience with drier and hotter conditions only olive and pistachio trees can survive no irrigation.
Native plants are very tricky - in my case all of them failed, because they are native to an area with higher elevation than mine and fit to typical oak savanna and my land is grass savanna.

My experience is that if you can get them established the first 2 0r 3 years then maybe ....

Average annual precip in wenatchee is 9 inches per year.

Sepp grew gardens on hugelkultur in the deserts of spain where the annual precip was less than 4 inches per year.

I think that if you had a huge hugelkultur, with a heavy mulch, and the tree was planted low on the hugelkultur, and you babied the tree for the first three years, the ....   yes.

Thanks for the responses y’all. I’m a little west and uphill from Wenatchee so we get about 20ish inches and more snow. But nonetheless it seems like irrigation for at least a few years with most things will be essential. I shall experiment….

Hello Sean!

I live in the high prairie of central WA.  

I have nectarine, pear, apple and butternut.  They are fruiting with minimal care.

We planted them clustered close around the house and barns, with all the gutters and shed roofs draining to trees.  
I did water them in the summers the first few years.   Now they get along on their own.


My neighbor grows an annual garden in fresh prairie soil and no irrigation.  
He uses very wide spacing between plants, polyculture and deep furrows.  


In some ways it is a hard place out here.  You have to protect your plantings from animals and weather.  

If you look the old farms they are often in a bit of a glen.  

You can make this for yourself with hugel beds and ponds.

This movie gives excellent instruction on being fully self-sufficient in water in our temperate, arid climate.


https://permies.com/wiki/52912/World-Domination-Gardening-movie-set

Site prep and establishment phase care are both pretty key I think. To really dial it in you should get a clear understanding of what's going on in your soil profile at least a few feet below grade. This dictates how water will move and what you may need to do to retain more through summer. In sunny exposed locations you may be better off building up significant berms to place trees on the north side of a slope that will catch less sun intensity. Plenty of mulch of course. There are nifty self-watering drip bucket irrigation rigs you can make or buy, some that even wrap around the seedling for extra protection through first couple seasons.