Severe drought in Spain

Hola Permies!

I'm feeling sad.  I've been away from home for a week (we live on the East Coast of Spain), and I've just looked around the garden.  So much has died in just that one week.

While I was away there were temperatures up to nearly 40°c.  Our village, and the surrounding ones, had severe drought restrictions put in place, and yesterday a fire broke out nearby, (now controlled thankfully) but the helicopters were dipping into our water reserve with their huge buckets to put out the fire.

I'm trying to grow a food forest.  My fruit trees should be getting taller and throwing shade to allow things below to grow in comfort.  I mulch thickly all the time.  I have a rainwater deposit but it's almost empty as we've had no rain.  I've built a kitchen greywater system, but it's also dried out (tomatoes, mint, lavender, curry plant, ginger, all dead or nearly dead) because we're only allowed minimal water use (if there is any water coming out of the tap at all!)

I'm at a loss.  I'm trying to build soil/mulch/succession planting/native plants/drought tolerant plants etc  etc... but when it's this extreme, I really don't know what to do.

Words of support and wisdom would be gratefully received!

Helen

I share your pain...

September 2023



October 2023



Please share my hope!

July 2024

Thank you!!!

That does help!

I'm currently digging deep to find where my resilience is hiding...  that's why this community is awesome, sometimes we need reminding that how it is today, is only a snapshot.  Tomorrow will be different.

I hope you have an abundant day!

Helen

Hey Helen.
We have had 3 years of drought here in the south. This spring it finally rained sufficiently. What a marvelous landscape sprang to life…
I’m crossing my fingers for you guys in the east that this autumn you’ll get some rainfall, I know how much you need it.
Best of luck and best wishes.

Helen, I think we all have wondered how we would make it with long and dry seasons.  I will keep you in my heart and send you good thoughts.

As with many things, One Day At A Time!  You can and will make it to better days!


Peace

Hey Benjamin,

Thank you for that, I really hope it will be our turn soon!  That was a lovely mental image to keep hold of, with the landscape responding to being given water.  I'll hold onto that!

Buena suerte!

Helen

Hi Deane,

That was absolutely why I posted... this already feels easier knowing that there are very many of us permies, facing the same challenges and still keeping going.  I don't feel so alone.  Thank you for your thoughts and hope!

Peace

I am sorry that you lost a lot of plants while you were away.

In the past I have had to be away from home for funerals, weddings, etc.

Ollas can be very helpful to protect you plants so if planing to be gone for a long time use big ollas.

Another trick is to place buckets of water with rope to your plants.  This will wick the water to the plants.

Here is a thread that I did that has several suggestion for how to get water to plants in a drought situation:

https://permies.com/t/138768/Water-Plants-Trees-Drought-Conditions

Hi, Helen.
I'm in Malaga. I won't post pictures of our garden since I don't want to bring you to tears. Even fig trees are falling.

Instead, I will talk about what is thriving with no irrigation at all.

* Carobs.
* Olive trees (but few olives this year)
* Moringa oleifera
* Plecthrantus barbatus (boldo brasilheiro). This one seems to take humidity from the air. It suffers on dry air days.
* Plumbs (prunus domestica). Just one of them, the one with more mulch.
* Vitis vinifera. They had their grapes in early summer.
* Ziziphus jujuba. The one with good mulching is faring better.
* Rhamnus alaternus. Good for under-canopy shade.

We are used to amazing wildflowers here in Central Texas even without much rain, but this year it's been a very late start and many plants did not flower at all, which means some of our beehives are not thriving as they usually do by this time. Our best hives still have plenty left from fall.

Our pond that we have seen get up to 1/4 acre in size will be dry within a week. We are taking this time to get it dredged, re-compacted, and if possible made deeper and narrower to reduce evaporation (the heavy equipment guys will see how deep the bedrock is there which is the limiting factor). The lush growth that surrounds the dryness growing on years-worth of silt - some will remain and some we will use to enrich our gardens higher up. Also, there are is one very interesting plant growing there in the drained but still moist area called Lady's Thumb - it is edible and produces great flowers - so another positive about this experience.

The great thing about permaculture is having redundancy so that sometimes your favorite plants that need more "fill in the blank" won't do well or won't make it, but other things will.

Another thing for us is the dry times sometimes balance out the plants that grow a bit out of control and give us time to reassess and decide what to plant, enhance, or redo.

That thread "How to get water..." is wonderful, thanks for posting that!

Abraham, wonderful list you provided!

Hang in there! The rain will come and you'll be better prepared to hold onto it!

An encouraging story of earth repair and climate adaptation from dry southern Spain - tapping into a global network and working at the community landscape scale toward long term resilience!