Hi all- Has anyone had success with limited or no irrigation in a drought area? Last season I tried planting a bunch of seeds in my unirrigated plot and absolutely zero came up. I’m having fun with tomatoes and greens in the small area I can irrigate but would love advice about low water situations - I could transplant but thinking then the plants for sure wouldn’t be adapted to very low water conditions. Thoughts/experiences? Thanks in advance!
Edit: Since there were so many helpful responses here (Thank you!!), I made a summary:
Drought-resistant Crops
What to Plant
General: varieties adapted to desert (silver and/or thicker leaves), cool-weather grains, legumes, succulents
Aloe vera
Amaranth
Apricots
Barleys
Biscuitroot
Burdock
Cacti -edible w/o spines
Chickpeas
Chokecherry
claytonia
Corn varieties (native/drought tolerant)
Cowpeas
Currents
Dates
Desert grapes
Echinacea
Hollyhocks
Lentils
Lily family w/edible bulbs and greens
Melons
Millets
Native weeds
Parsley (wild)
Peas
Plums
Potatoes (Purple Viking)
Rye
Service berry
Sorghum
Squashes
Teff
Tepary beans
Viola
Violet
Watermelons
Weeds (native) especially to kickstart soil biology
Wheats (pre-green revolution, dry farmed)
Wilder lettuces
Yellow dock
Zucchinis (if adapted for drought)
Techniques
Before planting:
Choose partial shade if hot temps w/long hours of sunlight
Add more organic material/hugelkultur
Dig out big rocks
Consider soil amendments
Consider planting some in irrigated space to propagate seed to later select for drought tolerance
waffle beds
Zia pits
swales
To germinate:
chit (sprout indoors a bit before planting out)your larger seeds indoors, and then direct sow them
Tiny seeds direct sow on top of soil, sprinkle soil + mulch and water every morning for a week or two
carrots /similar - use cardboard or wood planks over the row to keep moist, weighted down with soil or rocks and removed once sprouting
I live in a desert, and this is super important to me. All of my crops have been at least mildly selected for drought tolerance, and I plan to select them heavily for that this summer.
So far, here’s what I’ve discovered. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot more as I gain more experience.
Germination:
If you chit your seeds indoors, and then direct sow them, you don’t have to water them as much to get them to sprout outside. Because they’ve already started sprouting. That works well for me with most seeds. It’s great for cucurbits. It seems to work pretty well for legumes, as well.
That hasn’t worked at all for me with tiny seeds, like brassicas and carrots. It might be because they’re more delicate, and my clumsy fingers are likely to squash their teensy little root poking out when I plant them. I’m not sure. With tiny seeds, unfortunately, I seem to need to sow them lightly on top of the soil, sprinkle a little soil on top, sprinkle a little light mulch (grass clippings are good) on top, and then water every single morning for a week or two. I can do this with a watering can in a few minutes and leave the rest of the garden alone. It has to be in the morning. If it’s during the heat of the day, all the water will evaporate. If it’s in the evening or night, snails will move into the garden beds. Right around sunrise, plus or minus a few hours, is best.
If you’re lucky and can get the timing right, you may be able to avoid needing to do either of those things. Instead, check the weather forecast. When there are three (or more) days in a row of rain in the predictions, go out the day before and sow your seeds. I can’t do this in midsummer because we have virtually no rain in summer, but I can do that in late winter / early spring, so I’m planning to use a week of consistent rainfall to germinate all my cold season crops.
After they’ve germinated:
Mulch. Lots of mulch. Mulch for the win.
Look for varieties that are adapted to a desert climate. Some signs of drought tolerance include silver leaves (that’s a pigment similar to melanin in humans; it protects the leaves from sunscald in excessive harsh sunlight), thicker than usual leaves (water storage, as with succulents), and very deep tap roots. After reading about the silver leaves thing, I kept an eye out for that in my garden, and noticed that my squashes with silver patches on their leaves seemed to do better than my squashes with pure green leaves. I’ll probably look for silver-leaved varieties in the future.
Look for species that originated in a desert climate. Squashes, melons, and watermelons have done extremely well for me.
If you have hot temperatures and long hours of sunlight, try partial shade for your crops, even if they say they need full sun. That will allow for less transpiration (evaporation of water from the plants’ leaves). “Full sun” tends to mean six to eight hours of sunlight a day.
Add more organic material to the soil. It stores moisture. Give hugelkultur a try. It seems to help me a lot. It’s pretty easy – I just gather up sticks and twigs every so often, dig a hole in one of my garden beds, and bury them.
If you have a lot of big rocks in your soil, you probably want to dig those out so that the plants’ roots can reach further down. They need to be able to reach further down in order to be drought tolerant.
If you want to, you could buy permanent soil amendments like activated charcoal or water crystals. I don’t like to buy things, so I bury the fluff from my children’s wet diapers in my garden beds, providing my plants with free fertilizer (urine), compost (paper), and water crystals.
Always direct sow cucurbits. They have a tap root that will stay intact only if they’re direct sown. This year, all the ones I transplanted died. Most of the ones I direct sowed did great. This was not a coincidence.
Finally, never give up! If your first attempt doesn’t work, try something new, and if that doesn’t work, try something new, etc. etc. etc. I keep on hearing stories about gardeners being unable to grow a particular species, until all of a sudden something lived long enough for them to save seeds, and they had a workable landrace going forward. The first generation is often the hardest. Once you get seeds on your land, your chances of being able to grow those seeds next year are high.
My irrigation system doesn’t become active for 10 weeks after I start sowing my garden. I like to plant the day before a rainy spell is expected. By the time the storm passes, the plants will have germinated.
Wow, thank you so much Emily for sharing your detailed experience! I’ve thought about hugelkultur for years, but it always seemed harder than your making it sound. I also have thought about planting when there is some rain, which there is right now. So even though it’s early I’ll give it a shot, as sadly soon there will likely be no rain. Given my schedule was trying every day is almost impossible but maybe I can try chitting as well. Thanks again!!
Yep, hugelkultur can be super easy! Whenever you have a bunch of twigs and sticks, just dig a hole in a new spot and bury them. If you make it a lackadasical system, it’ll always be something you can do whenever feel like it, no deadlines, no pressure, no stress. I like things like that!
I hope that planting right before rain will work well for you! I’m delighted to hear it’s worked for Joseph. It seems like it should work, since that’s how nature does things. I often see seeds I had sown months before and thought were dead suddenly pop up after a big rainstorm. I figure if I work with my climate, rather than against it, I’m more likely to garden successfully.
Emily is one of the folks I would have pointed you to
Drought tolerance and/or dry farming is a big interest for lots of folks - - including me, but not too say that we don’t have dry spells, but often we’re dealing with issues arising from the opposite problem.
We had a Lauren over on the other forum who was very interested in this issue. Not sure she’s jumped over yet. I would imagine the South Dakotans would also share your interest but I can’t remember both their names off the top of my head. Think @John_Thomas is one.
I still like to follow these discussions because water is so precious. I have done the whole water every day until germination thing but have found it doesn’t seem to be necessary for most of my contexts, and have also had good luck with planting before or during rain.
Thanks Joseph - I think I can try that right now for winter crops as we are having some real rain for the first time in a long time. Likely by the Spring there will be no rain at all again, sadly.
Thanks Ryder, so true in some areas too little rain, in others too much! Appreciate that you are mindful of the resource, out here there are constant reminders of how precious water is.
@Cynthia I’m not from dry climate, but do get extented dry spells occasionally. I think many crops should work if you have right varieties and get them going. I have had couple drought years in a row and melon and watermelons do well without/with very little watering. I think you will always need to provide some moisture, possibly also sowing deeper if your soil is at all good for that. @UnicornEmily There is a trick for seeds like carrots. They need constant moisture for quite a long time and for that you can use plank or cardboard (with soil as weight) etc. to keep it moist. Just need to check it often and remove once they start sprouting. Only tried once, but it worked well even with very little rain after sowing. I think it was also faster and germination more even.
I think cool weather grains and legumes that can be planted in sync with your natural wet season are the best to perform on unirrigated land and minimal moisture. You mention you already have oats growing. Did you plant them or are they wild? I’m guessing rainy weather starts around early Dec. for you and ends Feb/March? It can be surprising how much harvest you can get from grains and legumes and they’re not that difficult to thresh. Following the last month of your wet season I would play around with growing tepary beans, millet, teff, cowpeas, and sorghum unirrigated. There is also several 60ish-day corn varieties that are adapted to short seasons with minimal rain. I also tend to find things like wilder lettuces and burdock tend to be drought tolerant.
Prickly wild lettuce, burdock, yellow dock, and amaranth all grow wild in my neighborhood. They’re all edible, and obviously they must be able to grow without irrigation. Purslane grows wild here, too, but mostly only in irrigated spaces, such as lawns and garden beds. It’s a pity it’s not more drought tolerant, because purslane is delicious.
Tepary beans are super duper drought tolerant. I’m planning to plant lots of those next year. I’m planning to do a dry farmed three sisters bed with tepary beans, sorghum, and zucchinis that are used to being dry farmed in Utah. Lauren sent me those seeds. (Thanks, Lauren!)
Echinecea is super drought tolerant. It’s a valuable medicinal herb, and a pretty flower.
Have you tried hollyhocks? There’s a thread talking about them here.
I’m going to be planting banana yuccas in spring. They grow edible fruit. It’s supposed to taste delicious!
There is a trick for seeds like carrots. They need constant moisture for quite a long time and for that you can use plank or cardboard (with soil as weight) etc. to keep it moist.
CARDBOARD! Genius!
I’ve seen someone recommend a plank of wood, and I thought, “Too big a nuisance to find something big enough. Too heavy to lift. Seems like a bother.” But CARDBOARD! That I can do easily!
@Cynthia No, just use it as cover over row that you have sown. Just needs some soil or rocks as weight for the wind. @UnicornEmily I think I would prefer plank of wood if i had them lying around and my plot wouldn’t be far were I live, but cardboard is easy to carry substitute.
Being far from in like desert circumstances, we’ve had three of the toughest dryspells in thirty years last four yeard. I’ve made an observation i’d like to share.
I grow dutch white clover as a cover crop and quite some month into the dry season at sunrise it has collected dew. Seemingly from nowhere. But it’s really good at it!
Later it dies back until rain returns. But it does a fairly good job of blocking direct wind from air drying the soil deep down.
If things get really dry dry i dump straw or something on top. It grows back through it when rain returns.
I’m not sure if you have some succulent plants without horrible spikes that could fulfill this role but it might be worth the experiment
@Lowell_McCampbell these are great ideas! The oats are wild, and there is also a lot of wild fennel, the bulbs are tiny bit the stalks, shoots and seeds we eat regularly. The rainy season here used to be Nov-Feb, the last few years we’ve had badly any rain (until now, this year it is raining and it looks like we’ll get a least a week more). I love the idea of corn, legumes and grains - am going to find some seeds right now!
@UnicornEmily oh I love hollyhock and echinacea, these are great ideas! And Amaranth I grew a lot in the East, didn’t know it was drought tolerant but that plant is amazing!
Oh! In addition to the excellent things that have already been said, I would recommend ooey-gooey and/or native-to-your-area crops, to the extent that they make sense for you. This overlaps significantly with Emily’s desert region list, but it’s another angle to come at the problem space from.
These would be things like aloe vera, cacti (of which there are a number of edible varieties), desert grapes, squash, dates, and even pre-green revolution wheat which has historically been dry-farmed in arid regions (without launching into a tirade about its many problems, post-green revolution wheat requires generous irrigation and fertilizer). Paradoxically to a novitiate like me, many of these plants with a rich, gooey, or watery nature do very well in the desert.
On the native plants angle you might find it useful to learn more about the traditional foodways of first nations peoples in your area (if you aren’t already).
