Coping with Climate: Drought

Heat, drought, smoke, and flooding all affect your garden directly, and while we can't change or prevent these calamities, we can mitigate their effects.

Here are some specific things you can do, problems you can watch for, and varieties you can choose to help your garden heal and thrive.

What can you do right now? 

1. Thin your plants so that each one has all the water from a larger area.
2. Control weeds.
3. Dry soils are hard on the microorganisms that create fertility. Use compost tea, indigenous microorganisms, lactic acid bacteria, fermented plants, bokashi, diluted raw milk, and other sources of active probiotics to keep your soil alive and thriving.
4. Don't keep watering beds that aren't productive. Cut down unproductive plants, pile on a lot of mulch (anything from lawn clippings to weeds or even shredded newspaper will feed microorganisms in the soil), wet it all down if you can, and cover with cardboard or some other water-retaining cover. It will kill weeds, compost in place, and feed the soil.
5. Use mulch on your plants. Straw, dead leaves, grass clippings, pulled weeds, chipped branches, whatever.
6. Be alert for gophers and voles. A plant that looks water-stressed when others don't is probably missing some of its roots. Some people put large amounts of hot pepper powder in gopher holes, some people trap them, some use noisemakers in the soil. One way or another, they need to be dealt with. A patch of sunchokes sometimes works as a decoy--they love them.
7. Remember water sources besides the garden hose. Keep a bucket in the kitchen and bath to save the water that is coming to temperature for showers, dishes, drinking, etc.
8. Water in the early morning or at night to minimize evaporation.
9. Use drip irrigation.
10. Plant cover crops this fall. They will help water sink into the soil rather than running off, reduce the need for weeding/tillage, and add absorbent carbon to the soil in the form of roots and root exudates. When cut in spring, they are mulch ready to use with no hauling.
11. If you don't have water or rain for cover crops, mulch heavily. Wood chips or fallen leaves are great winter mulches, that build important mycelium in the soil. Heavy plastic (reusable) silage tarps are becoming a common alternative to tillage in large gardens and farms. The idea is to kill weeds without either herbicides or disturbing the soil. If you use plastic, figure out a way for water to run off the tarps into the soil, in places all over the garden.
12. Plant a winter garden, and become familiar with it's possibilities. Traditional agriculture in the Mediterranean took place mostly in winter, because that's when there was water. In the American West, winter crops will become increasingly important. Peas,  brassicas like broccoli cabbage and kale, spinach, fava beans, turnips, wheat, and other winter crops can fill the pantry when tomatoes and corn cannot.

What to be aware of for next year:

1. Shift more of your attention and space to fall, winter, and spring crops. Plant early in spring, using row covers if necessary, and plan a fall-planted garden for winter food.
2. Cover the soil. This winter, use cover crops or mulch to prevent weeds and keep soil alive. Don't allow bare soil, summer or winter. Pull the mulch aside in spring to help the soil warm and to facilitate planting.
3. Plan your plantings with ease of weeding and mulching as a priority. If you can hoe the weeds rather than pulling them, you are more likely to do it. If you can dump mulch between rows rather than around individual plants, you are more likely to find the time. Rows take space but save time. Just make sure the ground between them is not bare or weedy.
4. Organic matter like compost or worm castings will absorb water and hold it in the soil so it doesn't drain away or evaporate and is available to plant roots. Plan on working in plenty as soon as the soil can be worked. (Unless you are using No-Till methods, in which case, apply compost on top of the soil, covered with straw or leaves to prevent nutrient loss.)
5. Mulch prevents heat and wind from evaporating water out of the soil, and creates a biologically active zone between soil and mulch where microorganisms have everything they need--oxygen, food, and water. This creates fertility that plant roots can access easily.
6. Consider buried carbon. The hugelkultur method actually buries chunks of wood--old logs, branches, and rotten lumber--in the soil under the plants, as a reservoir of absorbent organic matter to release water throughout the season and nourish earthworms which provide fertility.  Traditional Native American agriculture in the Southwest uses the wood and organic debris left by rain-swollen river waters to store moisture in the soil during the growing season. Both of these methods bury sodden materials at the beginning of the planting season to be a water source later. Think about them in early spring, before you lay out your plantings. I've even heard of people digging deep holes, filling them with junk mail, then covering with dirt and planting a tree. Paper will soak up and hold a lot of water.
7. Minimize soil disturbance. When you till or plow or fork over a bed, the turned-up soil quickly loses moisture to the air. Organic matter is lost and mycelial networks destroyed--both of which could be helping the soil retain water. If you use cover crops or mulch all winter, you won't need to till to remove weeds. You can use rakes and hoes instead of rototillers, plows, and shovels.
8. Plant smaller amounts of crops you use fresh. Save large plantings for food you will store. How much zucchini will you really use? Sow a few green beans at a time, and use the rest of the space for dry beans for winter. Plant lettuce few and often.
9. Early varieties may give you a storable harvest quickly. Then you stop watering or replace them with something else. This can minimize the area you have to water.

Recommended crops and varieties:

• In general, look for crops that have a deep taproot, and leaves that are either waxy, fuzzy, or small, to minimize transpiration. Plants from dry regions of the world are often a good bet.
• Chard has both a taproot and waxy leaves; plus it is shade-tolerant, allowing you to site it out of drying sun.
• Beets are quite tolerant. Parsnips, turnips, and other roots can do well if planted early, while cool soil enables them to build a big root system. Most can be planted a month before last frost. Carrots are hard to sprout when the soil is dry; best to soak the seed first.
  
• Dark Star Zucchini was bred for dry farming. Most other squashes need a lot of water.
• Mustard greens, especially Green Wave.  Glossy Asian greens like Mizuna and Tatsoi.
• Turnip greens are a drought-tolerant alternative to more refined and delicate brassicas
• Okra
• Fennel
• Quinoa
• Pole beans in general are vigorous and can dig deeper than bush beans. Keep the ground well mulched around them. Rattlesnake and Yard-long Beans are particularly drought-tolerant.
• Bush-Beef Black Beans are tolerant of heat, drought, and salts.
• Collards are more drought-and-heat-tolerant than other brassicas. Champion and Cascade Glaze are particularly good. Kale prefers more water and less heat, but is much more tolerant than other brassicas like Cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, Cabbage, or Broccoli .
• Arugula is tap-rooted and quite drought-tolerant.
• Peppers, especially hot peppers, don't need much water, but their root system is small, so they need it often, and need mulch.
• Tomatoes, especially Cherokee Purple and Italian Heirloom. Tomatoes' fuzzy leaves minimize water loss.They need more water while getting established and flowering, less while ripening fruit. Cutting down on water improves flavor, but lessens yield and size.
• Cucumbers, especially Beit Alpha or Lemon
• Melons, especially early watermelons
• Purslane
• Sorghum
• The Corns we carry are more drought-resistant than most, especially Cascade Ruby-Gold, Magic Manna, and Tuxana.
• Spinach is reputed to use little water, but it must have cool or even cold conditions.
• Asparagus, Artichoke, Dandelion Greens, Sorrel, Blood Sorrel, and perennial Arugula are drought-tolerant perennials.
• Perennial herbs like Sage, Thyme, Rosemary, Chives, Fennel, and Savory are the most drought-tolerant. Dill is moderate. Mint, parsley, and basil need more water.
• Celery likes a lot of water. Onions need moisture to start with, but can cope with dry conditions later while bulbing up. Front Range and Mill Creek are good bets for hot dry areas.