For those who lost gardens in the drought

[Homesteader]

I have seen lots of you all who lose your gardens entirely due to drought. I have wondered lately what your water situation is that makes it so you can't water?

I understand of course many of you rely on rain, no rain, dead plants. But being a desert dweller, we get maybe 4" of rain a year and often half of that comes in one flooding storm.

So we irrigate, all the time. I was just curious, do you not do that because you are on city water and it's too pricey, or just that you weren't expecting this drought and don't have hoses, etc?

Just curious!

[Chief Cook]

Our big well finally went dry. Now all we can do is dig an even deeper well. Right now we don't have the $$$$$$ for a project of that depth. Maybe soon. We are in a large boat with lots of people that are running out of water. Some of them don't even know it yet. (sigh) Heard that we are in a weather cycle and that this much drought is nothing new. That might be, but it doesn't make it hurt any less.

[Maura]

We have a deep well and will not run out of water. However, many homes built before 1980 or there abouts often have shallow wells. These wells are not in a deep aquifer but use ground water. If there isn't enough rain the well goes dry.

[manfred]

I watered my tomato plants often but the temperature was just too hot for the fruit to set and too hot for the plants to thrive.

[Danaus29]

No electricity at the one property. No electricity, no water.
At the house I ended up having to buy a sprinkler and soaker hose, items I have not needed in all my gardening experience here. The heat alone was too much for many crops no matter how well they were watered. The brambles did wonderfully with no extra water but got eaten by birds and raccoons.
My successes were garlic and cucumbers. Mulch helped a lot.
I did worry about the well running dry, even though one neighbor thought it was worth his well running dry just to keep his grass green.

[Texasgirl72]

I also think that after an extended period w/ no rain, no amount of watering gives a good cost to production ratio using coop water. I only have a garden for personal use and didn't even attempt one last year. If I were staying here, I'd probably do my tomatoes in partial shade or at least have them shaded from the afternoon sun. But the area I amended initially is full sun.

[cnichols]

My situation was like Manfred's. We watered and it kept the plants alive, but by the time the temperatures dropped, it was already too late. It was just too hot for the plants to thrive and produce fruit/veggies.

[calliemoonbeam]

All of the above, lol. I usually collect rainwater, but there hasn't been enough to collect to speak of for the past 2-1/2 years. My well went dry in mid summer, something that has never happened here, according to the previous owners of 60+ years. I live on top of a hill of almost pure bedrock covered with clay, and drilling a deeper well is not feasible any time in the foreseeable future. Then I spent over $300 in just one month using the rural district water, which I also have available at my place, and still wasn't able to keep the plants from dying.

I felt like my whole life revolved around watering. We had over 90 days straight of 100+ temps, sometimes as high as 120, without a drop of rain. This is in a place that usually has lots of rain and regular high humidity, with regular spring and fall flooding bad enough to cause major problems.

I also had a lot of plants not setting fruit because when the heat is that high for that long without respite plants will flower but not set. The blooms just dried out and fell off. Out of a dozen tomato plants, I got FOUR "edible" tomatoes. I use the quotes because, even though they were beefsteaks which are usually big enough for one slice to cover a sandwich, they were not much bigger than golf balls, light red instead of their usual deep dark color and had hardly any flavor, and what they did have was not great, kind of washed out and bitter.

Last year I didn't even try to plant a garden, but fellow Okies talked about being overrun by cicadas and grasshoppers. Then there were also more predators who invaded what gardens did grow because their natural habitat was so sparse due to the weather. I don't expect this year to be any better in any of those respects. We have had NO winter to speak of, no snow or even ice (for which we're famous, lol) and no rain. Our lakes are severely low, and even the barges traveling the Arkansas have had to lighten their loads so they don't bottom out in the river.

It's a combination of a lot of things, and they're predicting this cycle could last at least 10 years, possibly even becoming worse than the dust bowl days of the 1930s. I've been researching alternative gardening methods from heavy mulching to shade cloths with misting systems to earlier and later plantings (but then run the risk of freezing) to greenhouses, etc. The funny thing is, the big worry with greenhouses is usually heating, but we may have to learn how to alternate between heating and cooling them as the situation calls for and be ready for either one.

Any or all of the alternatives come with problems of their own, as well as increased costs to get that fruit or vegetable from seed to table. Sorry this is so long, but as you can see there's a lot to cover and a lot of things to consider, study and decide on, but we are definitely going to have to change the way we've always gardened here if we hope to continue producing food in our individual gardens, and with the world situation the way it is this is more important now than ever.

[whiterock]

Originally Posted by Texasgirl72

I also think that after an extended period w/ no rain, no amount of watering gives a good cost to production ratio using coop water. I only have a garden for personal use and didn't even attempt one last year. If I were staying here, I'd probably do my tomatoes in partial shade or at least have them shaded from the afternoon sun. But the area I amended initially is full sun.

This is my situation also. I can keep tomatoes and peppers alive but production falters. Later in the year, with cooler weather, production will come back.

Texasgirl72, sounds to me like we are neighbors, probably within 30 miles of each other.
Ed

[Texasgirl72]

OOF. I agree w/ Callie on all of that, especially the grasshoppers. Yep, whiterock, I'm in Navarro Co. I think you're in Ellis? I did manage to get a lot of okra out of the garden the year I tried but as much as I love okra, I can't eat it exclusively. Things come up great but fry by mid June. I only stepped up 1/2 a zone coming here from FW but what a difference it made. Plus, there is the aforementioned drought which affected my last FW garden 3 yrs ago.

[whiterock]

yes ma'am, I'm in Ellis, but more like 50 miles now that I saw Corsicana listed on another post, lol. Good luck to you on that deal, BTW.
Ed

[rambler]

To relate it to big farming, many areas around Illinois the cornfields got enough water to grow, but the heat got to the corn and it did not pollinate, so the corn was standing there in fall, no ears on it.

Just the weather setup, even with some moisture, the weather was all wrong.

Irrigating a crop all summer takes tremendous about of water, as many of the folks say, their wells just aren't set up to handle it. Even a small garden, it takes a lot of water, a 5 gallon bucket isn't going to do much when the dry is all summer long.

Paul

[Texasgirl72]

It seems that a lot of people on here are in my general area or at least have the same weather patterns. Have any of you tried the PVC pipe buried next to each plant method? Obviously, I'm talking about small scale gardens, not farms. Not that it would save us from the heat but I do wonder if the types of plants that aren't as affected by heat would do better with that method.

[belladulcinea]

It was the heat more than the drought here. This year I plan on using the bottle watering plus thicker mulch and see if that doesn't help. I am also going to go ahead and get a water collection system going anyway. What I did keep going I hand watered a gallon in the morning and in the evening. We got enough heirloom tomatoes for freezing but it was too darned hot for canning so ate or froze them.

Several of the older ladies at church suggested I put up white sheets over the garden during the heat of the day so I will be doing that. They remember doing that during the depression, they lived where I do now so I trust them to know what they are talking about. When we first joined the church we would go over and sit outside in the garden, they were still covering their tomatoes then. Most of them gardened until they just couldn't anymore.

[calliemoonbeam]

Originally Posted by Texasgirl72

It seems that a lot of people on here are in my general area or at least have the same weather patterns. Have any of you tried the PVC pipe buried next to each plant method? Obviously, I'm talking about small scale gardens, not farms. Not that it would save us from the heat but I do wonder if the types of plants that aren't as affected by heat would do better with that method.

I tried the PVC thing on that last garden that burned up, lol. I had discovered it during the winter and was really excited about not having to water so much...and then the drought hit. I think it would be a great idea in normal gardening situations or maybe if I'd made them deeper or something, but I'm still not sure it would help with setting the fruit.

Someone (can't remember who now) tried it that same year on their garden in another location, and it seemed to work very well for them. They had pictures of huge leafy plants, made me envious.

[katheh]

I don't irrigate with our city well water because it's too expensive. Also, it's full of fluoride and dissolved prescription meds and industrial waste residue. We also have radium in our city well water.

I irrigate with stored water I collect from our roof gutters.

[Texasgirl72]

I could store a lot of rain water (steep pitched roofs) but need to finish painting first in order to put up gutters, etc. in order to do so. Here, we normally get gully washers when it rains so with enough storage, I am certain I could store enough for a garden to feed the 2 of us and possibly 2 more, particularly if I use partial shade. I drink the coop water and haven't expired yet but it comes from a lake. I'm sure it has plenty of nasties in it though. The sheet idea is a good one and my mom's been trying to get me to do that, too. I think plants like rain water a lot more than treated water. My first few gardens were insanely prolific when we got lots of rain. No amount of city water seemed to be enough for the plants.

[sidepasser]

In Ga. when it got too hot I put up shade cloth for the tomatoes and that helped tremendously during the heat of the day. They got enough shade plus the deep mulch and water that they made fruit. I don't know if you can do that where you are, but giving the plants a bit of shade seems to help.

I also planted some crops in the semi shade of a large tree and that helped, they didn't get full sun and still made. That was my cantaloupes and some bell peppers.

Maybe y'all can try some of those ideas on part of your garden and see if it helps. Also I watered using drip irrigation which saves a bunch of water and only puts the water where it is needed, if you cover the drip irrigation hose with mulch, it helps to keep the water near the roots. Just make sure you don't overwater as it will rot the plants if you do.

[nostawmama]

Another problem is that in the desert you pick crops that have less of a water requirement and are heat tolerant. If you are used to cooler, wetter weather and you choose that type of crop- well, then they die in the dry and the heat!

[FarmboyBill]

its been a learning curve for me to plant earlier and earlier. Im not going to farm this year, Other than Sudan Grass on 12 acres. Im selling my seed corn. IF I was planting corn, Id have it in by the end of Feb to the first 2 weeks of march. Id rather get it froze off right off, than as rambler said, have it hang around 4 months and still have nothing.