DROUGHT - how do we manage?

Drought has plagued all continents last and this year. Scandinavia is not even supposed to be bad, but my farm has had exactly two decent rains in the last 2,5  months. It is far from normal.

Dandelions, those hardy dears who can grow anywhere, even in a crack in asphalt - their leaves are turning red from stress!

I spend my days watering. Luckily my river has not dried up (yet). I have some of the thirstiest plants you can imagine: tomatoes, pumpkins, squash. Which I will have to reconsider in the future.

Direct seeded vegetables did not germinate. I was simply unable to keep their area moist in the scorching heat with no rain.

Many plants are stunted, succumbed to pests. My fruit trees and berry bushes have yellow leaves.

CO2 emissions broke a new record this year. Polar ice record low. Oceans record hot. This is exactly what was predicted: many current agricultural areas will become more arid and hot.

How would you adapt?

I'm sure you'll get more polished and comprehensive answers, but the thing that occurs to me as a response is this:

Perennials reach deeper for their water.  

Deep mulch holds water in.

Hugelmounds act as a sponge -- soaking up the snow as it melts and percolates downward, and giving later access to that water to questing roots.

Polycultures pass resources around to where they're needed.

so I have issues with Drought.

To most of the world, the word means "quite a bit less than normal rainfall".  Going by that definition, I wonder what is less than zero because that's our normal between May 1st and the middle of October.  Also, we don't have snowmelt on the island because of the lack of snow.  The rainfall we get during the winter is all we get so we work hard to save it either in rain gardens, rain barrels or by improving the landscape and soil health so it holds water longer.  

The resilient gardener is a great starting place to learn more about gardening for uncertain weather patterns, including drought.  Her climate is very like mine but with a touch more rain.  

Other places to look are Mediterranean gardening and agriculture as people have been living with drought for centuries so there's a lot to learn from these cultures about sustainable agriculture practices - aka, agriculture that can exist in one place for thousands of years, even during bad weather years and changes.  

that was us for the past few years. I grew things that weren't so water-critical and got very, very serious about saving water. Particularly repurposing water from showers, dishes, laundry, etc. Planting carefully, keeping in mind how I would be watering using buckets or laundry runoff or using a low-flow gravity drip (instead of a pressured hose with a sprinkler).
Serious mulching is also a great thing for keeping water in and plant stress down.

Mulch depends a lot on the location.  
If one has rain every month or is willing to irrigate, then mulch is a great helper.

Locally, mulch is a great way to kill plants.  In the winter, it drowns the roots.  After the first month or two without rain, the mulch prevents water from dew getting into the soil and the irrigation required is greatly increased because first we have to water the mulch, then we can water the soil.  It's amazing how much dew does to keep plants alive, but some plants are better at it than others.

For a lot of these techniques, it's good to try half with and half without, observe what works for the location, then make changes.


Making all the water work twice is a great way to keep the plants growing.  Moving our summer laundry to the garden has been a big help.  

https://rumble.com/v152cr3-wicking-beds-for-reliable-food-production-episode-3095-the-survival-podcast.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=2


I am a HUGE fan of wicking beds, and sub irrigated planters.

Drought happens ...

My area has periods of years of drought, I plant drought-resistant or drought-tolerant perennials.  

I know the value of using mulch, wood chips, and leaf mold.

The few times that we get spring rains, Mother Nature showers me with lots of wildflowers.

So I do what I can ...

I rely a lot on mulch. We often don't get any rain for two months in the summer, sometimes three. If we do get rain during that time, it's not even enough to wet the surface of the ground or wash the dust or ash off the plant leaves. We have no running water, so I don't water anything. Sometimes we do get a decent rain, and then I'm cursing the mulch for not letting any rain in. But the mulch does more good than harm for me.

I've settled on pansies, lamb's lettuce, and California poppies for living mulch. They spread themselves around aggressively, but they're easy to get rid of if I don't want them somewhere. The pansies and lamb's lettuce are some of my earliest edibles and make up the bulk of a lot of salads. So far, they seem to keep the ground cooler and moister without impacting the other crops around them.

Tomatoes and squash are actually my most reliably drought resistant plants. They weren't at the beginning, but after a few years of saving seeds from the most drought tolerant, I don't even think about them anymore when it's hot and dry. I know they'll be fine. I started by watering, but keeping my plants super water stressed - like squash plants flat on the ground stressed. I just kept an eye out for the ones that were less unhappy looking or that bounced back the best in the  evening and saved seeds from those ones.

Of course I'm working on building up the organic material in my soil (mostly silty sand in the spots I've set up gardens) and planting more perennials, but saving my own seeds has been the biggest, most immediate help for me.

Here's an example. Last year, I purchased seeds for a naked seeded pumpkin and performed my usual torture on them (by which I mean planted them in my garden 😁). I got a few squash and saved seeds. This year I planted a couple of the purchased seeds from last year and a whole bunch of the saved seeds. I took a picture of one of the plants grown from purchased seed. It's small and has really wilted in the sun. The plants from saved seeds are all much bigger plants. Some of them are pretty wilty, but none quite as bad as the plant I took a picture of. Some of the plants from saved seed, like the two in my other picture, are doing great and barely wilting. Those two squash have even been in full sun longer than the wilty one, since its bed gets some shade in the morning. These garden beds were all built at the same time out of the same materials. So you can see how just one year of seed saving makes a huge difference!

Drought will have a different meaning to different forum users. For me 6 months WITHOUT a single drop of rain is just a dry season. If on top of that I will get less than 400 mm o rain in winter then I call it drought.
My squashes and pumpkin are almost completely wilted during the day - way more than on the photos above. In the evening they come back to normal again.

Easy to see that the grass that gets a bit of shade through the day is less stressed.  I’m planting trees throughout my pasture, aiming for the perfect amount of shade that enhances grass growth without suppressing it.

I’ve also seen shade cloth over what are traditionally viewed as full sun vegetables.  Haven’t tried it, but wouldn’t discount it, either.

I'm curious about those like (more recently) us on the northern Plains of the US who typically have good snow amounts in winter and watch much of it disappear during the spring thaw.  We just finished several weeks of drought, but were rescued by several inches of rain and that new weather pattern seems to be in place possibly for a few more weeks.  But the drought period was disturbing enough to begin to envision some sunken tanks for water collection during the spring thaw and augmentation from roof run-off after that.  Seems like that would work on some level for many places that experience spring run-off or monsoon type events...maybe?

Kaarina Kreus wrote:

Dandelions, those hardy dears who can grow anywhere, even in a crack in asphalt - their leaves are turning red from stress!

...

How would you adapt?

I'd ask for some dandelion seeds from family or friends further south

Mulch helps keep water already in the soil from evaporating, but humates IN the soil help it sequester water and nutrient.   Humates are naturally occurring in rotted vegetation, so a well made compost is good, or that mulch once it has broken down completely and mixed into the soil.  Soil needs fungal dominant and bacterial dominant material as well as the humate and then it is optimal for holding water and nutrient.   Best to water deeply once a week so water percolates down, and your plants have to reach for it.  Watering too often, like every day, means the superficial roots grow and as water evaporates they just die.  Stresses the plant a lot more.   After you water, dig a spot down to 8 inches and see how far the water went.  Wait about 30 minutes after you water to allow it to penetrate the soil.   When you have the water flowing or the sprinkler on, I know it seems like a lot, but sometimes it isn’t.  Keep good notes about what fares best and you will gradually plant more of those plants if this type weather is continual.   Research to find out what plants are best in that climate.   Also keep your mineral levels at optimal and the plant will be more resilient, kind of the way electrolytes work in the human body.  

John Weiland wrote: typically have good snow amounts in winter and watch much of it disappear during the spring thaw.

This is why I build hugels - wide, flat-topped ones that can absorb lots of water. I live on an old riverbed - and not the lazy, meandering type that deposits lovely stuff. We've got sand and rock. I figure burying wood is the fastest way to get organic material into my soil to hold on to all the snowmelt. After five or six years of heavy mulching, I'm starting to see more water retention in my in-ground beds, too.

After 2,5 months with only two rainy days, we are now deluged. Must start thinking about Noah's ark. Torrential rain every day. I live in an area, where the polar vortex used to be. Now it is meandering up and down. Running a farm in erratically swinging weather is real hard. I must count about half of the crop lost every year.

Maybe land-race for short, fast maturing crops? A friend gave me seeds for a cabbage that matures in 60 days. The head is quite loose, so I don't think it's a "winter storage cabbage" but it's good for salad.

Swales and water storage up slope from the garden?

Biochar? It's supposed to help the soil store water and microbes.

We certainly need to be planning for erratic weather, if that's not an oxymoron!

Jay Angler wrote:
We certainly need to be planning for erratic weather, if that's not an oxymoron!

I agree.
The idea of landracing is to adapt plants to your specific surroundings. What do you do when the raging climate crisis throws you errant unusual weather year after another?

What are my landrace conditions? If one year is chilly and wet, the next ones bring Sahara -like heat&drought. Shall I tryto create a landrace capable of tolerating extremes in both directions? That would surely make me a millionare, but let's keep our feet on the ground.

The last years have been remarkable in one thing: we no longer seem to have good old dull "average" weather. It seems we are constantly battered by an excess of something. Which, actually, is exactly what was predicted if we keep on polluting Gaia.

Jay Angler wrote:
Swales and water storage up slope from the garden?
Biochar? It's supposed to help the soil store water

Jay dear, we do think the same way. My gardens are full of biochar ( and landraced by my personal urewa 😄).


IMy farm has lots of swales. This is Scandinavia: lots of snow, which melts quickly in April. Everything is wet and flooding during snowmelt. I built dams to my swales to keep the meltwater from running int the river - and me pumping that same water to my gardens later on!!

I got a formal  legislative complaint from a neighbor who has the right to direct his meltwaters through mt property. Local agroffice ordered me to take the dam down.

I know this is petty, but I am a bit happy, that the fields of the guy who complained about my excessive water - they are only weakly sprouting 7 weeks after sowing!! Because of drought. 🙄

Kaarina Kreus wrote:
The idea of landracing is to adapt plants to your specific surroundings. What do you do when the raging climate crisis throws you errant unusual weather year after another?

What are my landrace conditions? If one year is chilly and wet, the next ones bring Sahara -like heat&drought. Shall I tryto create a landrace capable of tolerating extremes in both directions? That would surely make me a millionare, but let's keep our feet on the ground

I don't think that's so far fetched. The idea of landraces is to have a lot of genetic diversity - not every seed will have the same characteristics. So save seeds from the best performers in the wet years, the cold years, the dry years, the years when some bug ate most of your crop, etc. Keep seeds for multiple years, so if all your drought tolerant seed dies out in a really wet year, you still have seed saved from two and three and maybe five years ago that still has those genetics mixed in.

I have a wide sandy boulevard in direct sunlight most of the day.  I tried for 35 years without any success to grow lawn here.  No amount of watering or choice of grass type made any difference.  It had to be a cold-hardy grass for 4 foot deep frost in the winter and also survive summer heat waves.  It had to endure sometimes very wet spring or fall seasons and 4 week long hot droughts.  When I retired, I decided to solve the problem by looking to weeds as my solution.

First I tried white clover, said to be drought resistant.  It certainly outperformed grass; took longer to die but was just as dead!  Then I stumbled on bird's foot trefoil.  It really was drought tolerant and had beautiful yellow flowers as a bonus.  Creeping buttercups followed, then autumn hawkbit, chicory with blue flowers, yarrow with dark pink flowers, hedge bindweed with 30 foot roots and huge pink morning glory flowers, several kinds of daisies, chamomile, knapweed, yellow clover, red clover, alfalfa, Indian strawberries, cinquefoil, violets, and a lot of vetch and so on.  All beautiful but still stuff died if I didn't water when the drought came early before enough foliage had grown to shade the ground.

It became clear early on that just picking drought resistant plants was not enough - I was going to have to change the ground from sand to soil.  Even before I started with the weeds I had started mulching all my leaves from 3 large maple trees on to this boulevard every fall.  Rather than just raking them onto the road and letting the city take them.  But the soil was improving only very little.  Then I read an article that said:  "whatever amount of organic material you think you might need to change sand into soil; well, you need 100 times that amount!"  That was a game changer in my efforts.  I started collecting all the neighbor's leaves off the road with my mulching lawnmower and saving them in huge plastic bags to use all through the following spring and summer.  I started composting all the leaves falling on a 10 car parking lot next door and adding that compost to my boulevard.  I figured 1 inch of compost was maybe equivalent to 5 inches of mulched leaves.  In the spring when everyone else was raking their lawns clean, I was adding a layer of shredded leaves every couple of weeks or as fast as they disappeared.  I have a lot of hedges and all the trimmings were mixed with leaves and strewn on the boulevard.  When my maples dropped their keys I scooped up as many as I easily could and, yup, on to the boulevard they went.  Later, the row of elms across the street shed an enormous quantity of elm keys/seeds.  I shovelled them every day for a week and a half off the road and on to my boulevard.  

The same article also said that as much foliage as possible above ground and as much root growth as possible below ground was also important.  So now I have a 3 foot high jungle of wildflowers and rapidly improving soil.  And amazingly, when I part the foliage and look at the ground, it is wet and the grass is green and lush down there.....

Ray

Ray, just brilliant! Thank you ❤️. You are a really good writer. This reads like good prose!

Kaarina Kreus wrote:

What are my landrace conditions? If one year is chilly and wet, the next ones bring Sahara -like heat&drought. Shall I tryto create a landrace capable of tolerating extremes in both directions? That would surely make me a millionare, but let's keep our feet on the ground.

Similar to what Jan said, I would think that if you save seed from what survives (or ideally anything that thrives) the flood, those seeds may not do all that well in a drought year, but maybe you hedge your bets the next year by planting some of that and some seed from other sources.

Hopefully some of the freshly source seed does well in the hotter drier year.

Continue on like that and gradually you are working towards that insurmountable task you just set before yourself- building up a genetically diverse stock of seed prepared to grow and produce regardless of what the weather may bring.

I have read in several different places, that traditionally, when farmers mostly saved their own seed, there would be genetic diversity in that seed, so if there was a bad year from one problem, they might have a poor harvest, but they wouldn't loose everything, for the reasons John and Jan of stated.

Then governments and big business decided it was important to "improve the yield", but that action has costs of decreased genetic diversity and crops less capable of tolerating extremes. You get more farmers loosing it *all* rather than loosing most of it, but we've got "better" good year total harvest. The question in my mind is whether the "good" years make up for the "bust" years - maybe so in the past, but with less consistent weather the last 5 years and likely going forward, we need more farmers landracing than ever! And more of them planting polycultures. And more of them diversifying!

r ranson wrote:Mulch depends a lot on the location.  

As always, the best advice is to observe your land. Thank you for returning me to my roots. ❤️

Just a quikie
Scythe optimal scenario:
        cut - spread to dry - put up in haystacks
Scythe worst case scenario:
         cut - spread to dry - put up in haystacks

Kaarina Kreus wrote:
What are my landrace conditions? If one year is chilly and wet, the next ones bring Sahara -like heat&drought. Shall I tryto create a landrace capable of tolerating extremes in both directions? That would surely make me a millionare, but let's keep our feet on the ground.

I think that is exactly what you do, sort of.  The landrace stage is where you want to keep the crop when the weather is erratic. The landrace part is that you have lots and lots of different genes in the crops so that it can throw a variety of characteristics and it can tolerate a variety of different climates. Then next step is to start selecting for characteristics appropriate to your climate and needs. If you want to have maximum survivability in a variety of weird conditions, just don't select as much or at all and keep it at the landrace stage as much as possible, adding back in new genetics as often as you can.  I'm no expert, but fortunately Joseph Lofthouse, who is, has been around Permies quite a lot...and this is my attempt to paraphrase some of the talks he's given that he posts -  https://permies.com/t/520/57161/Photos-Joseph-Lofthouse-Garden

We are suffering similar issues here in Michigan, where it's typically fairly humid and rainfall is in decent amounts. I usually have no problem growing things like tomatoes and squash, but not this year. The lack of rain is compounded with smoke from the Canadian wildfires, so my peppers haven't grown at all. Everything except herbs is at least a month behind.

This has me rethinking my ideas for next year. Moving some of the garden towards where the laundry hose lets out. Placing my soaker hoses beneath the mulch. Adding little rock piles scattered throughout the garden, to collect the dew that does accumulate. Growing things that are not as thirsty. Focusing hardcore on perennials, as those are the plants that seem to be doing the best (yarrow, strawberries, established fruit trees and shrubs). Also, ground covers seem to be more important than ever. The sweet alyssum and thyme are doing just fine, and the soil beneath them stays much cooler and retains water better.