Non-irrigated garden projects

General Discussions
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First off, id like to apologize if this is a repeat topic… I searched up “no water” along with “irrigation” and didnt quite get the answers i am looking for. Also, I only have a couple years of experience with gardening in general so I do find myself a little intimidated with technical terms and masses of information, finding myself in a state of analysis paralysis lol

So! I’d love to read anyone’s personal experiences with limiting irrigation over the years. Be it slowly tapering off water use or drastically reducing/eliminating it altogether! Obviously there are a lot of different factors involved ranging from environment, long term goals, plot layout, space availability, plant choices and more so I will start out by saying I have accepted that my seed adaptation projects may start off slow… any progress is good progress! Id still like to have a good harvest for food storage so i don’t want to reduce crop yields too drastically each year nor re-plan my plot to form rows “on contour” or exhaust my body digging up swales and such. My climate is rain, rain, rain for Spring, Autumn and Winter then dry throughout Summer. I’d like to have minimal input maximum output (wouldn’t we all? Lol) and 2025 was all about amending my clay soil and collecting mulch in preparation of a no-dig method. 2026 is about neglecting my garden in the most tough love way I can manage! I imagine it is a part of the process that most of us start to panic once we see our precious gardens wilt and I was wondering what the die off rates are or how long it takes for the plants to bounce back? What crops adjusted the fastest? What techniques did you incorporate to benefit/improve results from the lack of irrigation, if any? Did you space out plants differently? Any general recommendations?

Perhaps this was not the most constructive question and maybe even selfish but i like to have a hand to hold walking me through the big wondrous adventure that is adaptive gardening. Each growing season is so precious and valuable… we must utilize our time wisely! I look forward to learning new things and hope we all make great progress in the years to come.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and concerns! :smiley:

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This year, i didn’t provide any supplemental water to my squash, runner beans, sunflowers, kale and collards. I did a mass sowing, from seed i saved from previous years, and let natural selection sort things out.

Kale and collards did great, scarlet runner beans did well although they still didn’t produce well in the hottest part of the summer. But they survived until fall and then set seed. Squash did ok, mortality was high and production was low, but its early in the process so I was happy to get a couple buckets full of squash for minimal effort.

I think genetic diversity and a large quantity of seed are very useful in the mass selection phase.

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I grow zero input and have had the most success with okra, followed by beans.

I’ve also had melons, watermelons, squash, and corn grow well but have had more trouble from pest pressure with each of those.

If you need to maintain good yields I would slowly reduce watering each generation. Let things reach the point of wilting, allow the least drought tolerant individuals to be selected out, and eventually after a few generations you should be able to apply some serious pressure without sacrificing yields (relative to your starting population).

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I think the search term “dry farming" is what you’re looking for. It’s not nearly the challenge in my area as it is out west, but i still try to incorporate short season, drought tolerant seeds into my landraces just for the survivability of it all.

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Not sure if you’ve already seen her posts, but I know @Lauren has a been experimenting with totally dry-farmed plots next to low-irrigation plots. Which is a way to apply severe selection pressure and still get a yield from priority crops if you have the space. @JesseI applies a similar concept in his “survival breeding” plot, though I’m not sure how directly their experience will apply to your environment.

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I grew a dry garden in Colorado this year; average annual rainfall 15 inches; we count as a high desert. I only grew two crops, sunflowers and sorghum, and yield of both was low (though they are in the early stages of evaporation, and weed growth stole some of the water this year.)

I would recommend Steve Solomon’s book Gardening without Irrigation: you can read it online here: The Project Gutenberg E-text of Gardening Without Irrigation, by Steve Solomon

And I’ve read and experienced that while mulch is useful to keep irrigation water in the ground, it can be counterproductive if a climate is quite dry and one is depending on rainfall; in such a situation, a “moveable mulch” that can be pulled away to let water into the ground during the dry season but replaced to keep it there in the dry season might be worth trying. Steve’s book advocates surface cultivation, as dry farmers in the past did. Over a whole continent that might lead to a dust bowl, but for a small garden patch it should probably be manageable unless slopes are steep.

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Hi.

I’m trying no irrigating crops for five years now, with very bad results so far. Partly is because I can’t take care of the plants very often. Partly is because the weather keeps changing. Partly because my seeds weren’t adapted.
I can share with you what I’ve learned so far.

First, is that draugth is not when it doesn’t rain, but when rains aren’t enough for moistering the soil. Second, is that even when it isn’t draught time, there can be not enough rainfall for your current crops.

In my city, draught season begins in May and ends in September. Some adapted plants can yield something in early summer, provided they grew well during spring, and the soil retains some moisture. These are dryland crops such as wheat, sunflower, sorghum, grapes, figs, etc. Wetland crops can be grown provided they are harvested before May. I’ve had success with chard, lettuce, ruccula, radishes, garlic, and some spices. Your mileage may vary on the adapted crops, depending on your local climate.

Some tips. A deep mulch is always useful, but it has to be really deep, like 20 cm thick. It brings slugs, and some crops aren’t slug resistant, but it improves the soil so much that I don’t care. Wind is important, specially dry winds. If you can shelter your plants against the winds, the better. If nothing else, protect them from the prominent dry winds (northern winds in my case). Even if you don’t irrigate, whenever you plant something, it needs deep irrigation for rooting. If you can’t provide mulch, you can till the surface for creating some isolation layer (but it needs tilling after each rain).

About spacing… I direct seeded some lettuces, in abundance. They grew like a forest, without gaps between plants. I cut the smallest of the plants whenever they were touching. They were the best lettuces I’ve ever grown. The last ones were really big and I let them go to seed.
If you want plants with more water requirements (in quantity, not frequency), you can have wider paths so you can collect more water into your beds. One way to do this is to have your beds equally spaced, and reduce the width of the bed (thus increasing the width of the path) when you want more water. But beware, this only works during the rainy season, in summer there’s nothing to work with.

And last, about sun exposure, don’t trust the package intructions. In my city, UV are really high in summer (10-11), so most crops are perfectly fine with 6 sun hours, most dislike more than 8 hours. If it can’t be avoided, then they may need some shade cloth. However, a tall open tree is more useful. Without irrigation, sunburn is more likely.

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Dry farming, yes. Lots of good ideas here https://dryfarming.org/

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Thank you for this topic. I’m in San Diego so have the whole year of growing. We save water whenever it rains and would like to water less and less. Thanks for the tips. I’m new to landrace gardening so learning a lot here.

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My experience has been that dry farming or dry gardening is very much based on your environment, but it’s always possible. Techniques just have to change.

I started dry gardening in almost straight sand under deep mulch. I maintained the mulch at a minimum of 4-6 inches. Woodchips worked best. Leaves broke down too fast. Seeds just came up right through the mulch, and I never had problems with water penetration.

Some plants I watered when they showed drought stress (tomatoes, squash), others I didn’t water at all (watermelons). In all cases I watered when the plant was put in the ground or the seed was planted.

Production was consistently lower, but in some cases not much lower. My environment was considered high desert, with about 10-12 inches of water per year, mostly in spring and fall.

I am currently growing in heavy clay, and again using deep mulch. Leaves tend to blow away, so I have used them mostly in the chicken coops.

Last year’s spring was very wet and the summer very dry. This year that was reversed.

I have two main garden areas, one of which will likely be transitioned to trees next year. After being tilled it worked well as a test garden to see what plants could survive with no water at all in heavy clay. Year 1 I got popcorn, dry beans, and maybe half a dozen tomato plants produced one or two fruits.

At this point the invasive perennial grasses have completely reclaimed it and nothing can compete. This year one small yellow pear tomato got a single fruit, and amaranth put out a few seed heads at less than a foot.

The main (woodchip) garden has consistently had the better success, but I’m still learning this new environment.

I grow without water, without fertilizers, without inputs of any kind. I still want to do a test garden separate from the main garden, but I obviously need to plan it better.

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Huzzah! I am glad that my question could benefit others beyond my own interests, as I am also new to landracing and want to soak up as much knowledge as I can contain! I am always a lil apprehensive, wondering if my concerns are too basic or obvious, but everyone in this community has been so helpful and resourceful. It is really encouraging and has me realizing that there is no reason to waver over my not-so “stupid” questions :blush:

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Oh wow, I appreciate you sharing your experience!

I can imagine it would be quite a challenge to try out dry gardening in sand. I have heavy clay that I have attempted to amend a bit this year with mulch, burying food scraps/fish carcasses from salmon season, horse manure etc. and I hauled LOTS of woodchips this year that I currently have breaking down in big piles to use as a deep mulch for next years plans.

What kind of perennial weeds do you deal with? My biggest struggle has been buttercups… they just swallow up everything with those spreaders. gonna attempt to utilize it as a chop and drop and accept I can only do so much about it or best case scenario that my crops will adaptive to the buttercup suffocation!

I find it encouraging to know that production isnt always too bad and I am wondering if my clay soil may be beneficial by holding in moisture longer. in comparison to sand.? Only time will tell heheh

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Thank you for sharing your progress and tips from your experience over the last few years!

I find it really helpful that you mentioned the specific depth for mulching, as I am always puzzled by such broad terms as “deep mulch” without giving exact measurements. I deal with an abundance of slugs in the rainy weather and it is frustrating watching them decimate my cabbage and leafy greens. Gonna plant alliums and nasturtiums as a border for my rows and see if that slows em down. beer traps also work great (I use yeast and sugar in water instead)

I am intrigued by your lettuce success, as I figured that would be one of the plants to suffer most. I seem to read conflicting information when it comes to plant spacing when it comes to dry farming but I prefer to plant dense to keep weeds at bay. I also have drought from around May/June to about September so I was debating planning out my crop rotation with frequency of precipitation.

Also, thank you so much for bring attention to the sunlight requirements on seed packs! I was observing my runner beans and squash suffer from the sunlight/heat and was curious about that, since my yard is shaded by giant walnut trees after 4/5pm during the summer time hours. Noted!

Hope next year brings greater success :smiley:

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ooh thanks for the book recommendation! That is really thorough, concise and well put together… certainly going to come back to it next spring for ideas and techniques. I like that Steve finishes it off with water efficiency crops at the end, that’s going in my notebook!

I think my woodchips will be a good example of moveable mulch with a good ol trusty rake. My climate is pretty humid so I imagine the morning dew will be very beneficial.

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I have not seen her posts so I appreciate you leading me in the right direction, I’ll take a looksee!

Update: these posts were inspirational to me! I am so pumped for next spring! Thanks again for recommending both. So encouraging and very applicable to my thoughts and plans. eheheh

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ahh yes, I wasn’t too sure if it was still consider dry farming because I was confusing myself looking at different articles and wondering if it only applicable to specific techniques/spacing/crops.. if that makes sense..? Im not going to adjust my gardening habits too drastically, just make em a wee bit thirsty. Short season, drought tolerant seeds are definitely great for everyone to include into their landraces! I found dry farm seeds for tomatoes and zucchini from my favourite Etsy shop that I am thrilled about. Going to plant em on the outskirts of my garden plot that gets the least amount of attention.

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Glad you are having good success with okra! I just planted some for the first time this year, saved all the seeds to see how well-adjusted they are to my environment next summer.

I am big on the three sisters guild so it is encouraging to know your squash and corn did well and I will certainly keep pest pressure in mind. I am going to attempt melons next year in between my fruit trees so I am curious if the roots will reach deeper for water if I skip em while watering my still-establishing trees.

I too was thinking of tapering off water usage each generation to avoid poor yields and wasn’t sure how far to push it with wilting so your opinion and suggestions are reassuring, thanks again!

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Awesome that you had favourable results, that is great!!

One of my goals this year was to focus on saving lots of seed so I will try out some mass sowing with my wack loads of kale and radish seeds. Good thing squash produce lots of seed per fruit, gonna see if I can get myself a couple buckets full next season :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree about genetic diversity and seed quantity during mass selection. Next year will be an improvement, that’s for sure!

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Everything i plant directly in the ground does pretty good through our 60 to 90 day dry spells in the summer. My 12 inch raised beds dry out and I’m constantly running the hose to em. Thinking about cutting them into 6 inch beds so the roots can get to the natural capillary moisture or doing away with raised beds completely.

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There are lot of ways to conserve and maximize the use of water and as the weather has changed over the last forty years or so I have come to appreciate the importance of them even though I still resent the ever-increasing need. It didn’t use to be necessary here, to worry about every drop of water, plant the seeds, pull some weeds and the garden just grew.

My adaptation has been to grow more on the edges of what used to be prime growing season and I’m still doing that along mulching and other things. Taking advantage of the soil moisture accumulated over winter in early spring and waiting for cooler and damper weather in fall. July, August and September have become to some degree an off-season because if I’m not out there watering practically every day, nothing much grows.

I did a bit of an experiment this year that provided some pretty good evidence of what I already knew. I planted a new to me heirloom green bean called Fowler. I planted seeds in early May, and they came up and looked great, but by the end of May it stopped raining and got hot. I did not water them at all and by mid-June the plants had pretty much died. I ended up with five or six stunted pods and about fifteen seeds. No, those fifteen seeds do not represent a genetic advantage to growing without water, they just got the luck of the draw on the last little bit of it left in the soil. I panted those seeds in the middle of the hottest driest part of the season in a partially shaded area and put an inch of water on them once or twice a week. They shrugged off bugs and disease and made lots of beans and kept making more until frost took them out.

It had little to do with the seeds or genetics. Plants need water, that’s all there is to it, you are not going to select, breed or landrace a way around that. It defies logic, it defies nature, it just isn’t going to happen.

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