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GARDENING WITHOUT IRRIGATION
GARDENING WITHOUT IRRIGATION STEVE SOLOMON I'm from Michigan. I moved to Lorane Oregon in April 1978 and
homesteaded on 5 acres in what I thought at the time was a cool
showery green valley of liquid sunshine and rainbows. I intended to
put in a big garden and grow as much of my own food as possible.
Two months later in June just as my garden began needing water my
so-called 15-gallon-per-minute well began to falter yielding less
and less with each passing week. By August it delivered about 3
gallons per minute. Fortunately I wasn't faced with a completely
dry well or one that had shrunk to below 1 gallon per minute as I
soon discovered many of my neighbors were cursed with. Three gallons
per minute won't supply a fan nozzle or even a common impulse
sprinkler but I could still sustain my big raised-bed garden by
watering all night five or six nights a week with a single 2-1/2
gallon-per-minute sprinkler that I moved from place to place.
I had repeatedly read that gardening in raised beds was the most
productive vegetable growing method required the least work and
was the most water-efficient system ever known. So without adequate
irrigation I would have concluded that food self-sufficiency on my
homestead was not possible. In late September of that first year I
could still run that single sprinkler. What a relief not to have
invested every last cent in land that couldn't feed us.
For many succeeding years at Lorane I raised lots of organically
grown food on densely planted raised beds but the realities of
being a country gardener continued to remind me of how tenuous my
irrigation supply actually was. We country folks have to be
self-reliant: I am my own sanitation department I maintain my own
800-foot-long driveway the septic system puts me in the sewage
business. A long long response time to my 911 call means I'm my own
self-defense force. And I'm my own water department.
Without regular and heavy watering during high summer dense stands
of vegetables become stunted in a matter of days. Pump failure has
brought my raised-bed garden close to that several times. Before my
frantic efforts got the water flowing again I could feel the
stressed-out garden screaming like a hungry baby.
As I came to understand our climate I began to wonder about
_complete_ food self-sufficiency. How did the early pioneers
irrigate their vegetables? There probably aren't more than a
thousand homestead sites in the entire martitime Northwest with
gravity water. Hand pumping into hand-carried buckets is impractical
and extremely tedious. Wind-powered pumps are expensive and have
severe limits.
The combination of dependably rainless summers the realities of
self-sufficient living and my homestead's poor well turned out to
be an opportunity. For I continued wondering about gardens and
water and discovered a method for growing a lush productive
vegetable garden on deep soil with little or no irrigation in a
climate that reliably provides 8 to 12 virtually dry weeks every
summer.
Gardening with Less Irrigation
Being a garden writer I was on the receiving end of quite a bit of
local lore. I had heard of someone growing unirrigated carrots on
sandy soil in southern Oregon by sowing early and spacing the roots
1 foot apart in rows 4 feet apart. The carrots were reputed to grow
to enormous sizes and the overall yield in pounds per square foot
occupied by the crop was not as low as one might think. I read that
Native Americans in the Southwest grew remarkable desert gardens
with little or no water. And that Native South Americans in the
highlands of Peru and Bolivia grow food crops in a land with 8 to 12
inches of rainfall. So I had to wonder what our own pioneers did.
In 1987 we moved 50 miles south to a much better homestead with
more acreage and an abundant well. Ironically only then did I grow
my first summertime vegetable without irrigation. Being a low-key
survivalist at heart I was working at growing my own seeds. The
main danger to attaining good germination is in repeatedly
moistening developing seed. So in early March 1988 I moved six
winter-surviving savoy cabbage plants far beyond the irrigated soil
of my raised-bed vegetable garden. I transplanted them 4 feet apart
because blooming brassicas make huge sprays of flower stalks. I did
not plan to water these plants at all since cabbage seed forms
during May and dries down during June as the soil naturally dries
out.
That is just what happened. Except that one plant did something a
little unusual though not unheard of. Instead of completely going
into bloom and then dying after setting a massive load of seed this
plant also threw a vegetative bud that grew a whole new cabbage
among the seed stalks.
With increasing excitement I watched this head grow steadily larger
through the hottest and driest summer I had ever experienced.
Realizing I was witnessing revelation I gave the plant absolutely
no water though I did hoe out the weeds around it after I cut the
seed stalks. I harvested the unexpected lesson at the end of
September. The cabbage weighed in at 6 or 7 pounds and was sweet and
tender.
Up to that time all my gardening had been on thoroughly and
uniformly watered raised beds. Now I saw that elbow room might be
the key to gardening with little or no irrigating so I began
looking for more information about dry gardening and soil/water
physics. In spring 1989 I tilled four widely separated unirrigated
experimental rows in which I tested an assortment of vegetable
species spaced far apart in the row. Out of curiosity I decided to
use absolutely no water at all not even to sprinkle the seeds to
get them germinating.
I sowed a bit of kale savoy cabbage Purple Sprouting broccoli
carrots beets parsnips parsley endive dry beans potatoes
French sorrel and a couple of field cornstalks. I also tested one
compactbush (determinate) and one sprawling (indeterminate) tomato
plant. Many of these vegetables grew surprisingly well. I ate
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