Vigorous root structures that go deep/wide and find water isn’t a genetic trait?
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Are you trying adaptation gardening? Then do no kill the slugs!! You want your pests to be the control variable. In fact, the point is to develop slug resistant crops, and you cannot do that if you remove the slugs yourself. Seed a huge diversity of your crops instead. Like, if you are trying lettuce, seed 10 to 15 different varieties if you have the space, or just 3, adding one new variety every year if you haven’t the space, and see what survives.
Spacing is tricky only if you try to follow the guides literally. You know that, if your plants need more water than what they get by the rain, you have to increase spacing, but on the other hand, if you grow your plants very close together, they create a protective layer that holds moisture inside. So, how do you make sense of this? Planting closer or sparse? The solution is easy, but you have to stop to think like an industrial farmer.
First point: if you need more water for your plants, you don’t have to increase the spacing between plants, you have to increase the water catchment surface. I use my pathways as water catchment areas. In water catchment areas you don’t plant anything. I’m using mulch over these areas just because I have plenty now, but it’s perfectly well if you mulch with rocks, gravel, or just remove weeds with a hoe. I use water catchment areas because I am growing plants that require more water than what they get by the rains, in other words, they are not adapted plants. If they were, they could be grown in a field, instead of beds.
Second point: in your garden bed, you do not want any empty space. Let it become a mini jungle and it will keep moisture inside. The width of the bed may be anything between 60 and 120 cm, so you can reach everywhere with your arms. Don’t raise your beds, unless your climate is cold and moist (or you need the extra comfort).
My fast recipe for keeping ‘the jungle’ is the following: Is a plant tangled to any other plant? Is it touching another plant of the same family? In any of those cases, cut the one with the least chance of survival (weaker, sick, withered, or just smaller). This is a living mulch, and it is way better than any of the other mulches, but if you can’t have the spot full of plants for some reason, then use any kind of mulch. This is tons better than taking care of weeds.
Oh, this method is suited for domestic gardening, I don’t think it works well for farmers.
Side note: My beds are like this: row of tall weeds for wind protection + 60cm mulched pathway + 120cm garden bed + 60cm mulched pathway + row of tall weeds, and repeat.
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If you need a wind break try Peach trees. Best wild growing varieties like we have here peche de vigne.. I’ve planted many, grown from seeds without irrigating. F2 was very diverse. They form an open wind block with a hedge of sages and rosemary growing in front. It takes the edge off these fohn like summer winds.
If you have a jungle like Abraham says try also to get some deeprooted plants in there. Like parsnip, salsify/ comfrey/ yacon, they’ll sweat out humidity and create a more pleasant environment for less deep rooting crops. After going to seed and dying they leave lovely decaying roots in the soil, humus plugs full of worms.
I didn’t water last summer at all and got quite a good harvest, but i was very lucky with well spaced showers when needed, like every two weeks. But i guess most crops have already been adapted to drought somewhat, because i’ve never watered much only to save dying plants.
Swiss chard and andives are very drought resistant, might not taste like much exciting, but Swiss Chard selfseeds where i am.
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I’m not a dry gardening purist. I have had people tell me it’s only dry gardening if you get less than 20 inches of water per year, that you MUST use dust mulch, that it’s not dry gardening if…if…if…
Nonsense. Dry gardening is environment specific. My main criteria is that I’m working toward 0 cullinary water use. Everything else is negotiable.
Some people have slugs or other insects under heavy mulch. Some might benefit from dust mulch, or rock mulch. Some have so much water they must use raised beds. Others use zai pits to catch the little moisture they get.
It’s all about your environment and how you can adjust things to make the most of your space.
I learned to garden in sand. It’s easy for me, because that’s what I grew up with. Sand has advantages that clay doesn’t have, and vice versa.
There are hundreds of different techniques that can be used, and they don’t all fit in every situation.
Yes, plants need water. But the water hungry watermelon we grow in our gardens is basically identical to the one dry farmed in the wadis in the midde east. Some plants thrive under low water conditions, or can be encouraged in that direction.
That adaptation to our specific environments is the whole point of landrace gardening.
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Front yard was 100% grass, a few small shrubs, and one large tree starting to rub against the roof during windy storms. Backyard was 100% grass. Irrigation was sprinkler system with multiple stations and computer timer controller.
Backyard now is 100% woodchips over thick clay soil. Front yard converted to 90% woodchips with 10% grass at the very front sidewalk area and also across the sidewalk on the street facing strip of heavy clay soil. Tree was cut down and replaced with new small tree that won’t get bigger than 15-20 feet and most of the front is shrubs of some sort mixed with perennials, bulb annuals and seed annuals. One side of house is unfortunately covered almost completely and mostly sun blocked by the neighbors Vitex / Chaste tree. It’s a weedy super seed dropping plant that is the cause of constant weeding tree seedlings out of the woodchips and made that area mostly unusable.
Irrigation never used since woodchips installed. It’s been so many years the 12 inches of woodchips is getting a bit bare in a few areas and down to a few inches in others. It really needs a refresh but I’ve been unavailable due to work schedule to do much in the garden. Which is a good sign the woodchips work and the plants take care of themselves.
I’ve thrown everything at it and most everything did good. The only thing not as good would be first generation grows of corn which have been bred on massive agricultural inputs of fertilizers, water and insecticides. Weather is conducive to lots of plants including cucurbits but that entire family is ungrowable because the weather is also favorable to the pests of cucurbits which explode each spring and summer into numbers most gardeners won’t see. But I’ve even used agriculture grade pesticides up to and including neonicitinoids and they couldn’t save the plants from the pests so I don’t fault the woodchips method.
Everything takes care of itself pretty much has led to zero input STUN gardening method. The basil self seeds and forms a Forrest of Basil the next year. Watermelons come back from previous years and grow to completion with no inputs just go out and pick them when they are ready. I have asparagus, fruit trees, onions such as dividing and perennial still going.
The only limit might be for a few plant types and the extreme heat of summer. Plants wilt in the day but spring back at night. Watermelons are watery and not sweet in peak summer but at end of season when it gets cold are much sweeter. Strawberry isn’t good as it just gets burnt to dry toast in summers but thrives in the spring or fall borders to the summer.
I’ll eventually have my work situation change so that I have time once again to go out and start managing the gardens again but if not for what I converted it to it would be a different situation I would be in today. It’s been nice for years to have the water bill be bringing but house use and not massive spikes in summer or to feed such a massive grass lawn be charged in the bills.
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I actually take it a step even farther, with spacing. I have noticed that if I thin at all, everything dies. Having a carpet of thick living leaves seems to really help everything growing there. So if I get, say, 100 radish seedlings in one square foot, I leave them alone, and the environment will gradually thin out the weakest, and the strong ones will be stronger for having had that living mulch around them during their most vulnerable period.
It seems to work even better when I make it a polyculture with many species at many heights, so I highly recommend that.
Also, if you have the means to mulch with wood (or bury it as hugelkultur), make sure to innoculate all the wood with mycorrhizal edible fungi! 
Wine cap mushrooms and oyster mushrooms have become a delight for me; they fruit all through late fall, right when there’s not much else left to harvest (except brassica leaves, which are available in abundance ), and they’re delicious, and they help plants grow better.
I irrigate most of my garden in summer, but I do it only with rainwater saved from our rainy season (which is winter). But I do have an area I never water. I used to, and then decided it was too inconvenient to haul water there, so I named it “Dry Island” and haven’t watered it since. Let me tell you, it’s hard to keep anything alive there . . . my best crops in that area have been winter perennial bulbs (like tulips and garlic) and super drought tolerant local edible weeds, such as magentaspreen, prostate knotweed, and mullein. Oh, and hollyhocks . . . they can grow anywhere. 
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ahh yes, the slugs. I do appreciate a reminder about the slugs. In the beginning of the season I had laid out slug traps once but when I discovered adaptive gardening, I stopped entirely. It just kinda escaped my mind in my last message as my brain still automatically thinks of them as pests… my bad! Altogether I have indeed stepped back and watched them munch away at my cabbage plants from 20 down to 3, so if those survive through the wet winter then I hopefully have cabbage seeds to save next year!
The spacing is where I was so confused, as I like to broadcast my seeds and sow em nice and thick so they do not have too much weed competition, thus when I had read about wider spacing it did not appeal to me and my personal methods. I like the idea of using pathways as water catchment areas! I have been debating burying a bunch of logs beneath my already woodchipped path, kind of like a hugelkultur concept, so they soak up all the rainwater during spring and release it in the dry summer. The only drawback to me is that I was planning on burying all my food scraps in my paths as a compost in spot instead of having a separate heap elsewhere, but I will see if I can still tuck em in there with the logs in place as well… just gotta make sure the tasty scraps are deep enough so I avoid attracting the critters!
I totally agree with avoiding empty space.. that is in fact precisely how I garden and often refer to my space as a jungle anyway haha! I have my garden rows in ground and designed it like a keyhole garden but in the shape of a comb (empty space between comb teeth = my pathways) if that makes sense visually? I have each bed roughly 90-120cm wide with 45-60cm working space inbetween. Crowded? yes. But I aim to maximize my space, even if I have to tiptoe around. Seems like we both do!
If I am understanding correctly, when you say to cut one of the plants that is touching/tangled with another, would that include the example of beans? I threw a bunch of bean seeds in ground, put up a teepee trellis and watched em tangle up altogether as they climbed and covered. Thrived pretty good! Never considered whether or not I could overcrowd beans. I do get easily confused so my apologies if that seems silly of me to ask and perhaps i need a better example explained to me using other plants as the variable. I do plan on using more living mulch such as ground cover edible crops like strawberries, creeping thyme, sweet potatoes, coriander, various vining plants etc.
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love your mention of the snugged up cosy radish seedlings! I also have a thriving radish patch that my eyes are drawn to as everything else is being covered up in mulch. I pretty much sow everything with polyculture/intercropping/companion planting in mind. Dump a bunch of seeds together in a bowl and sprinkle em around to see what comes up! Though I plan on being a lil more organized with my first attempt with my three sisters guild next year… see if I have the patience to be meticulous with my “spacing.”
I love that you mention the edible fungi, as I recently ordered a block of wine cape mycelium and inoculated an undisturbed shady patch of woodchips back in September. It has already grown pretty strong webbing so I think I want to take some chunks and spread em around elsewhere right away and see how my first flush turns out! Can you use that exact same method for oyster mushrooms?! For some reason I thought oyster was usually grown indoors but if I can, oh I most certainly will! Mushrooms thrive in our rainforest coastal environment so I want to take full advantage, especially while my shroomy foraging skills are novice; morels, chanterelles, boletes and shaggy manes are pretty straightforward but anything beyond that I ain’t gamblin with… yet! Sauteed brassica leaves and mushrooms sounds like a wonderful autumn time delight, perhaps with some foraged walnuts and dried cherries sprinkled on top. YUM!
Dry Island, eh? I like that. Think I’ll start comin up with some nicknames too, sounds entertaining heh. That is pretty much how I plan on laying out my plots, with everything furthest away getting the least amount of water. Mullein, lambsquarters and hollyhocks are fantastic! Also got lots of mallow, self-heal, plantains, chickweed, purslane, burdock, woodsorrel and of course the lovely good ol trusty dandelion too! Now if only creeping buttercup was edible… but alas I gotta remind myself that it is useful by testing my patience 
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OOOooohh! I never get tired of reading about other peoples success with woodchips, glad it has helped transformed your yard space! I have a lot of highhopes with my own garden transforming through the use of woodchips, especially with my clay soil… and I wonder how long mine will last before they break down and I gotta replenish. Free woodchips and a free workout hahaha
I am going to try out grain and sweet corn for the first time next year and I am so conflicted as to how I want to go abouts with it. I have a few varieties with only 10 seeds each so I am apprehensive with stickin em straight in the ground. Although I know transplanting corn isnt great and goes against adaptation gardening, I want to have my best germination rates in the first season so I can accumulate a decent amount of seed to start experimenting with.
A forest of basil sound amazing, I still have yet to get any basil thriving as the slugs chew it away to nothing overnight. I do plan on growing an abundance of curcubit varieties, along with everything else you mentioned as well so this is encouraging. I didnt consider that plants may bounce back in the evening after wilting in the daytime heat, so I will keep that in mind and see how mine react in my environment. I love the thought of sweet late season watermelon!
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Love how you put that. “If if if” is total nonsense, agreed!
As you said, dry gardening is environment specific. I feel pretty blessed with the environment that I have, as it it the only one I have gardening experience with and is the exact opposite of the climate I grew up with. Makes it easy to focus on the advantages
Landracing gardening is truly fascinating and an observation game full of trials and errors, that is for certain!
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If I could plant any more fruit trees I would but for now I have had to step back, my front yard orchard to be is packed! Though I will keep that in mind as I do have two one year old peach trees grown from seed that I have no idea where to put and currently sit in 15gal pots. Don’t want em sitting in a shady area and I dont know where the seeds originally come from to know whether or not they would be adapted okay to lack of sunlight. Your peaches lined with sage and rosemary sounds lovely, fragrant and a peaceful way to keep the wind at bay. I purchased all of my fruit trees prior to discovering landrace/adaptive gardening so unfortunately they are mostly grafted but I plan on taking seeds from said trees and attempting to germinate them anyway. Could swap em out over the years or plant them elsewhere somehow someway…
I am glad you mention salsify and comfrey, as I do have comfrey right now and salsify seeds ready to be planted next spring! Not sure if yacon would do well where I live but I have actually never even considered growing parsnip as I’ve only eaten it once or twice, though that might change if it is such a beneficial root to grow! I wonder if skirret would function similarily 
Excellent that your harvest was good this year and that ya get some showers here and there! How many years have you been adapting your seeds?
Right when I think I have enough crop variety, I am intrigued by more. Endive would be quite pleasant but I still can’t bring myself to enjoy swiss chard all that much beyond juicing it with other veg. I know in a dire situation I would be grateful for it but I much prefer beet greens, kale or spinach over chard. BUT i will most certainly remember that because selfseeding is an excellent trait regardless of whether or not it is favourable in flavour, thank you!
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Skirret is a perennial. It’s difficult for me to get going. Some people are more lucky, depends on location i think. Swiss chard is very nice in an omelet as a filling, for the rest i don’t use it much either. Prefer red mountain spinach me, but it’s good to have something that will grow continuously without care.
i think i’ve started adaptation gardening some five years ago and just added varieties slowly. I never had great miraculous breakthroughs so far, but i simply love being able to grow so many more crops through the seed exchanges. i could have bought seeds as well, but it would have cost thousands.
I’m more a permaculturist than a plant breeder and see adaptation gardening as one of my best arrows on my permaculture bow, because it’s really saving a lot of soil amendment labor. Although it still helps to add some compost here and there to increase yields.
I think being on clay is very different to me. I saw @marcela_v her clay soil garden and it was very impressive. 3 days work no watering and 500 kilo produce. Clay can be very good as well it seems.
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I described how I do thinning. Emily is such a pro that I trust her entirely. I did this with lettuces, I was eating smaller lettuces for a while, then medium sized lettuces, and the last ones were big enough for gifting without feeling embarrassed.
As for beans, I don’t know. Do you want them to stay small or grow bigger? Then thin them a little more. (but not that much that you lose the coverage).
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I arrange my garden areas like combs, too! The long row is against the fence, because there’s a barrier there anyway, so why leave any gaps? (Especially since my chain link fence makes a nice trellis.) All the other garden rows are the “teeth” of the comb.
There are some exceptions, though. Sometimes I notice I keep wanting to treat something like a pathway, even if it isn’t one, so I do the sensible thing and move the perennials in the way of that desired pathway while they’re dormant in winter, so that it can be a pathway for real. 
So my orchard wound up laid out more like this:
____________________________________________
trees all along the fence here
| and (path all along here)
| more (path) | trees | (path) | trees |
| trees (path) | trees | (path) | trees |
| along (path) | trees | (path) | trees |
| this (path all along here)
| fence (row of rain tanks along here)
An L-shape along the fence, with two rectangular beds in the middle. I originally intended to have comb-like teeth, but I kept wanting to walk around like it was an L-shape, so I wound up deciding to go with what my feet clearly wanted to do.
I really like using pathways as a deep, rich bed of wood chips. I plant my trees only a few feet apart, and I figure the pathways are where their roots can really spread out. (They’re also welcome to grow down deeper, which is what I want them to do for drought tolerance purposes, hint hint hint . . .)
I always grow my peas super crowded together. They get all tangled up, which means they mostly support each other. As long as I put a few fava beans and/or poles in with the peas, the peas can use those as a strong support, and they can get most of the rest of their support from each other. Peas definitely prefer being crowded close together, in my climate. They protect each other from our fierce sun.
I have tried growing beans with squashes, and doooooooon’t . . . those huge squash leaves shade the beans out completely. But you can grow beans with watermelons or melons, because their leaves are much smaller and don’t get as high. In theory, it should also be possible to grow beans with sunflowers or sunchokes and have the beans use them as a trellis; I haven’t tried that yet, but I want to.
Here’s how I propagated my oyster mushrooms: I bought an oyster mushroom grow kit, completely ignored the instructions, and just dumped the whole brick of oyster mushroom spawn into my soil with a whole lot of wood. A year and a half later, in November, I found this:
Which was closely followed by two more clumps the same size.
The patch fruited last year, too, but I only got one little clump, and I was disappointed. I was like, “Is that it? Please tell me I’ll get more than that itsy bitty little tiny clump the box said I would get. They’re supposed to be perennial, aren’t they?”
Well, it seems that they are, and they were super productive this year! I can’t wait to see what they’ll do next year.
As for wine cap mushrooms, I put spawn of those everywhere else, and I’ve been seeing little bitty wine cap mushrooms fruiting all over my garden all through November and December. They’re not big (and they’re not red, either — the caps are brown!), but I think that’s because it’s their first year. I’m getting loads of them, and they have a nice beefy flavor.
I also get glittercap mushrooms all over the place. They came in with the wood chips. I was originally grumpy because I didn’t want mushroom weeds, but then I learned they were edible, so I ate them, and YUMMY! They have the same flavor as button mushrooms, only slightly stronger and more mushroomy. Very tasty, and I now joyfully eat them whenever they pop out. I don’t spread them deliberately as much as the other two because they aren’t mycorrhizal, just saprophytic, but they’re still good for the soil and tasty, so I don’t mind if they spread.
I also get some kind of cup mushroom volunteering, which is not edible (the three species it most closely resembles are all inedible), so I pull those out and throw them in the trash whenever I see them. I’m sure it’s saprophytic and therefore good for the soil, but I already have edible fungal species to fill the same niche, so it’s just a weed competing with them.
What’s neat is that, the more I work to spread those wine caps and oysters through my garden, the more of those I see, and the fewer of the weed cup mushroom I see. My efforts to cultivate the mushrooms I want are succeeding!
Next, I really want to try two mycorrhizal-only species that are supposed to be hard to cultivate in gardens, but my suspicion is that people who say that aren’t willing to plant pine, beach, or oak trees. I don’t have either of the latter, but my next-door neighbor has a pine tree right next to my property line, so my plan is to innoculate the soil around it with chanterelles and king boletes and see if I can get both to survive and fruit for me. I figure they will make my neighbor’s pine tree healthier, which makes it a win-win, so why not use that tree to grow me something I want to eat? (Along with the blueberries I’ve nestled underneath it, I mean. Pine trees acidify soil, blueberries don’t like my alkaline soil, and so I looked at that pine tree right next to my fence and went, “Well, my blueberries will live underneath you, then!”)
I don’t have morels, but I know someone in my neighborhood who has them. She told me, “People say these are hard to cultivate, but they pop up all over my garden. They just showed up in a load of wood chips, and I’ve had them ever since!” I’m thrilled for her. 
Skirret’s not as deep-rooted as parsnip, and it’s not at all drought tolerant. However, it loves full shade and it doesn’t mind super wet soil (in fact, its sibling in the same genus is an aquatic plant), so it would be great for a boggy low spot in full shade where you couldn’t plant fruit trees.
Personally, I don’t grow parsnip because I don’t like the taste, and the idea of growing something with phototoxic sap gives me serious pause. (Have I mentioned how intense my climate’s UV is?) If you want something else that could fill a similar niche, you might try hollyhocks. They have really deep, thick, edible roots that are crisp and taste like carrots. Those roots are mucilaginous (which means slimy), so they’re not quite as pleasant as carrots to eat raw, but they still are nice to eat raw, and they’re awesome in soups. They’re evergreen, every part of the plant is edible, they’re perennial, and they also seem to be impervious to drought. Their drought tolerance in one of my favorite things about them.
I love carrots, but I’m finding that I prefer skirret because the flavor is milder and sweeter (and otherwise exactly the same) and they’re perennial, so I don’t have to choose between eating the roots and getting the seeds. Skirret also cooks into softness very quickly, whereas carrots take forever to cook. So . . . I happily put carrots into my cover crop mixes, and I intend to invite them into my edible meadow once I get that up and running, and I would love to have them become a feral population that volunteers, but I no longer feel the need to put them into my garden beds as a main crop. I feel like I already have another option I like better for taste, and I already have another option I like better for ecological niche (and that one is feral and self-sows and survives like a weed — yay, hollyhocks! ).
Salsify is delicious. It’s a weed in my climate that I actively cultivate and encourage to grow more often. I only get 10 or so plants every year, and I want a lot more of them. I mostly get yellow-flowered ones, but I prefer the purple-flowered ones (for no reason other than that the color looks prettier to me), so I sow seeds of both, but I always sow more seeds of the ones with purple flowers. Sadly, I still get the yellow-flowered ones almost all of the time, so perhaps they’re better adapted to my climate. 
Aww, thanks for your kind words, @AbrahamPalma! I am definitely not a pro — I wish! — but I love research, and I love experimenting, and my climate is very harsh, so . . . maybe my experiences are helpful to people in a lot of different climates? I hope so!
It’s worth remembering that my climate has loads of very harsh sun and almost no water in summer, and very mild daytime temperatures and a reasonable amount of water in winter. These days, I often look at advice for climates like, say, England or Canada and think, “What if I try the exact opposite?” Sometimes it turns out to be just the ticket. (Other times I discover that advice was given for a reason! ) So in a climate that’s the opposite of mine — say, very little sun and so much water that fungal diseases become a serious issue — thinning and/or leaving much wider gaps may be a valuable strategy. I haven’t ever gardened in a climate like that, so I don’t know.
Oh! Speaking of thinning! (Well, it’s tangentially related.) A lot of people recommend pruning off little volunteer side branches at the bottom of your fruit trees’ trunks to improve ventilation. Don’t — or at least, don’t if your climate has harsh sun and/or not very much water. Those little leafy bits around the bottom part of the trunk will help protect the trunk from sunburn. My obediently obeying the advice and pruning those off was how I lost my first two fruit trees to severe sunburn damage.
Beans have been so much of a struggle for me. I’ve tried so many things, and I’ve had so many failures. My hope is that, once I figure out how to get them to grow well in my harsh climate with my lackadaisical watering, I will finally have a reliable protein staple?
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I don’t know how well my situation compares to others. I’m maybe not in a dry climate per se, but it’s still not as wet as you might expect from “the land of the thousand lakes”. Definetely less rain than some of the coastal areas of Europe and around the world. Problem is that it’s not evenly distriputed, maybe even less in recent years. It seem like most years there is some need for drought tolerance. Even this year when after being flooded it took few weeks of record hot to take out all moisture. And it’s not only compination of scarcity of water and heat, it’s our soil also is, based on maps, some of the most poor in the Europe. So there is usually 20-30cm layer of clayish soil on top of what might be compressed clay left behind from the ice age. So when the water is out, it’s out. Even the wild weeds start to wilt.
My main plot I do water when necessary depending on the species and goals for them. I have been intensionally lazy with some and just otherwise lazy with others. Last year it did come as a little surprise how fast it all went and would have probably watered little earlier if I wasn’t too scared about over watering. What I water is really only squashes, sweet potato, cucumbers and corn (with squashes, otherwise could leave without). Peppers and eggplants some if there is really a need, but try not to other than after transplanting (if I have transplanted) or direct seeded to speed up early growth (my season is little too short to direct sow). Tomatoes, melons, watermelons, tomatillo, ground cherries, beans etc more drought tolerant go without other than when sowing or transplanting. Melons and watermelons I might give little if there isn’t any rain in the first weeks, not because they would need, but again because my season is so short and I don’t want unnecessarily loose any time.
Survivor plot I have been testing without any (other than sowing and occasional “saving the best attempt”) watering. You can read more about my thread about the plot(s), but short summary for these two years seems to be that it might be better if there aren’t too many added problems on top of the water. Namely weeds and lack of nutriens. We’ll see if my theory is right and they will do any better with those two problems taken care off.
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Absolutely. I had one fig tree suffer from sunburn too!
We need to read our climate very well: I’m in semi-arid hot mediterranean, which means that spring is very humid, and that quite a few plants may suffer fungal diseases without a pruning. Bay and lemon trees are very susceptible. But it also means that in summer the sun is a killer, and even heat tolerant plants like fig trees can get sunburn without a proper canopy. I pruned a fig tree too late and it couldn’t get its canopy before May… I had to cut half the tree afterwards.
So here, a correct pruning is like this: a canopy that shades all the major branches, but branches must be spaced enough so that air can run through. When a tree needs to be dwarfed (we want to be able to reach those figs!), the pruning should be done in winter so it can develop a new canopy before summer.
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Are you talking about common beans, bush or pole types?
They were a staple of mine for decades but in the last fifteen to twenty years they have become more difficult. They simply don’t like the combination of very hot, intense sun, lack of water. They do well only if watered frequently and it helps to have them in some shade. Tall trees to the west southwest is best but not something that can be easily installed.
Cowpeas do better but they also need watered if it’s hot and doesn’t rain for weeks. Those Lima beans I sent you were the only things that produced anything worthwhile in the non-watered part of my garden this year. They are also overall, the most productive strain of Lima beans I’ve ever seen. Peanuts produced maybe 10% of those in the watered part, sweet potatoes produced almost nothing, except a few seeds. Onions and garlic died back and went dormant but came alive again in the fall. Some brassica family things did that too, that surprised me because I thought they were just dead. Some potatoes that yielded nothing apparently had made a little tuber or two and they also came up in fall but got frozen soon after.
An across-the-board technique I’ve been practicing is to look for and select for fast maturity within any species. That’s why I like heirlooms and F1 hybrids, the catalog descriptions generally have a guess of days to maturity. If a species for example ranges from 55 days to 85 days DTM, I choose just those in the lowest range.
I’ve selected my field corn, which is a mix of many varieties to go from planting to full dry down in less than 100 days. I’ve tried to select it for drought tolerance as well but like I mentioned earlier, nothing really grows without water. Planted early and irrigated it makes three or four ears per stalk. Planted later or not irrigated it makes one, maybe.
I think you mentioned thicket beans earlier. Too bad, I could have included some of them in the package I sent you. No big loss I don’t think, the volume of beans they make is very low, even if you have lots of them. Plus, they shatter easily and almost explosively tossing beans all over the place. You reach for a pod, and three or four others close to it fly apart, you almost need safety glasses. I’ve heard people complain they can be invasive and they do come up all over the place, but it isn’t really much trouble to weed them out. The fantasy that they might cross with runner or lima beans hasn’t thus far come to be.
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Sheeeeesh, thick beans . . .
I’ve been casually interested in thicket beans for a few years, so I decided to finally put in some diligent research on them a few days ago, and I was underwhelmed about what I learned. It looks like the seeds are small, the plant doesn’t make very many of them, the pods usually shatter, and the seeds often taste bitter. So I mostly lost interest after that. Learning that the pods shatter that easily (and a little bit dangerously!) on top of all that makes me a bit exasperated with the species. It seemed so promising at first glance, but I don’t think it is worth my time to try growing them.
I hope your lima beans will do well for me, and the ones that I sent you will do well for you! Those definitely look promising. Hurray for drought tolerant lima beans! (The ones I sent you also seem to be frost-tolerant for me, by the way. Frosts in spring that killed my cowpeas and common beans that year, the limas just shrugged off. I love ’em for that!)
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O wow, if that’s the case maybe they can be planted really early and mature a nice harvest before the worst of the heat and dryness arrives.
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I planted them around on April 10th, since our average last frost date is April 15th, and there were no frosts in the next two weeks of forecast. And indeed, there were no frosts those two weeks — and then we got a surprise snow in May. I couldn’t believe it! 
It was just a light snow, and it melted within a few hours, but it was definitely a half inch of snow that clung to everything. Good grief. 
As a result of that snow, all the seedlings of my tomatoes, squashes, common beans, and cowpeas died. But four of the fifty lima bean seedlings kept on chugging and seemed unfazed. Then they proved to be drought tolerant enough to survive the summer and produce lots of beans! I really hope it was genetic and not just luck, because if so, they will be very promising for both of us.
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