Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway | Page 4

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