sb country n news-dry farming

SB COUNTRY N NEWS-DRY FARMING

we have lived here now for nine months
we have gotten about 2 inches of rain
maybe
we have a chance to get an inch of rain in the next
2 days here
maybe

if you like to garden you know that it takes a lot of
water supplementation to keep your garden alive here

now in texas before we moved
there was a long drought that was the worst they had
had for years and years
since we relied totally on rainwater for our gardening
and all our water needs
well
you learn to figure out ways to use less water

so over the 17 years we lived at the country n
we learned how to do a lot of things to save water
now
when i say we i really mean me
my wife she has a brown thumb
she will readily admit it
she only took care of the plastic plants in our house
i did let her care for the cactus in our cactus beds
ie you just leave them alone

so now here where i garden there is i guess no limit on
how much water i can use in my garden
however
i pretend im still in texas gardening in a drought
since
i know if the dry weather continues around here
someone somewhere is going to limit water use
in the garden
i want to be ready for that day
plus its the right thing to do
so
i am transferring my texas dry farming techniques to my
sb country n garden

once plants are established i do one watering a week
a real deep watering
this makes the roots go deep

i only hand water the garden
keeps my shadow in the garden

i have enriched the soil over the last 9 months with
a lot of biological material like compost and more compost
layers of mulch layers of leaves layers of newspapers
layers of cardboard
so now you can almost garden with just your hands
without any tools
much like in my texas country n garden

this year as i plant my spring stuff i am burying a 1 foot potting
pot into the ground for each large plant eg tomato pepper
egg plant basil etc
filling it about 1/4 with compost and pine straw

i will water once a week by filling this up with water
or a seaweed molasses fish emulsion mix
this reduces the amount of water used
the roots of the plants go deep down into the ground
for the moisture thats there

then i dug a foot trench all around the edges of my
approximately 20 x 10 ft garden bed
this trench is then filled with mulch
packed in good
this trench then will hold water in the mulch
helping to keep the moisture from wicking out of
the bed
eventually when this mulch is all composted down
i will just dump it over into the garden bed
then
replenish the mulch as needed into the trench

also
down the middle of the bed there is a 1 ft + wide walkway
that is also a 1 foot trench filled with mulch
with every 4 feet i have buried a 5 gallon bucket
worm tower
here is the link to my blog on how i did that
this all holds moisture in the middle
and will eventually provide the compost for the garden
all plant material from the garden goes into
the worm towers

these trenches of mulch down the middle and surrounding
the garden bed holds in a lot of moisture

these trenches can hold 500 gallons of water
a 1 inch rain will put 30 gallons of water in those trenches

then
a layer of pine straw mulch is kept over the beds
to keep the upper soil from drying out too much

so when things are growing well
i just water the plants by filling up the buried pots
all 16 of them
once a week
if we dont have rain

so thats how i dry farm in my sb country n garden

thanks to all the austin area folks that taught me over
the years
little did i know i would have to use these techniques here

the organicgreen doctor