# Non-irrigated garden projects **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussions\ **Tags:** water\ **Created:** [December 8, 2025, 7:03pm UTC](https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/t/non-irrigated-garden-projects/4430 "2025-12-08T19:03:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 77
**Author:** ![ThomasPicard](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/goingtoseed.discourse.group/thomaspicard/32/6491_2.png) [@ThomasPicard](https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/u/ThomasPicard)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 8:15am UTC](https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/t/non-irrigated-garden-projects/4430/77 "2025-12-18T08:15:22Z")
> [@UnicornEmily](#): > > I planted the squash and beans at the same time, because there is no advantage to me in planting squashes later. I mean, we have a long growing season, yes . . . but squashes will keeping fruiting until the end of the growing season, so the earlier I can plant them, the sooner I will get fruits and the more fruits I will get. _And,_ on top of that, if I plant them in April, there’s enough residual water in the soil from the last of the spring rains to germinate them. If I wait, I’ll have to water them a huge amount in order to get them to even germinate. So I don’t wanna plant squashes late. We would find a couple lines of thought in that AEA podcast with Joe Ailts about the measured and contextualized interest of sowing early. We could rephrase that for our GTS circles : to breed for cold soild emergence. [![](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/landracegardening/original/3X/d/e/def7e668b161b6833ab367fa88305706c230dd5b.jpeg "Episode 146: Building Biology with Cover Crops and Mycorrhizae with Joe Ailts") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnJc6VwsVFg) You’ll see that it’s with broadacre crops in North Western Wisconsin, in particular soy, beans and corn, but the guy is also a passionate pumpkin grower, so there’s a couple of interesting nuggets in there. A bit tangential but noteworthy. On the subject of sowing earlier to get higher yields and better drought resistance, I also just want link my first post on that : [Thomas cucurbits' garden summer 2025 (+ some solanaceae!) - #11 by ThomasPicard](https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/t/thomas-cucurbits-garden-summer-2025-some-solanaceae/3928/11) The idea came out looking at volunteers which TOLD me that the rule of thumb (in my local, western France) that “_you should never direct sow or transplant cucurbits before mid-May_” was 100% outdated, and that we would find leverage in sowing earlier : so to say **synchronizing our sowings with when the soil is really biologically active**. Before it runs dry, before earthworms go hiding. Again : I got a sandy soil, not holding water, so that’s relevant to this type of situation! You can see on pics that in June everything seemed already dry, so _before_ this year’s huge summer drought, with crazy high temps on top! I’ll just add to that post that after the summer season the very small volunteer watermelon seen on pic had vines nearly 2 times longer than all the - _culled and selected for early vigor_ - direct sown: 4meters in total vs. average 2.3meters. This was telling too, as the little original advance seemed to go exponentially afterwards… But of course we should take that with a grain of salt as it would need to be confirmed in a bigger experience, assessing crop development, yields, etc. Regarding Joe Aits and his sowing timings and temps I looked on [weatherspark.com](http://weatherspark.com) ([my personnal comparison](https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/43746~11602/Comparison-of-the-Average-Weather-in-Nontron-and-Barron)) and that confirmed that his “_end of April temps_” were quite similar to mine, probably ten days later. I recommend this website to make clever assesments of similarities and differences between our different climates. --- _[View the full topic](https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/t/non-irrigated-garden-projects/4430)._