Five-Step Drought Busting System

Wow! It really works! On a 100-degree September day, around three o'clock, I took some photos of garden vegetables that were not wilting in the blistering heat. Tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, zucchini -- all were standing tall.

Plants used to wilt noticeably in the hot afternoons even during non-record breaking summers. It was always such a sad sight that I used to avoid the garden during that part of the day. But now, well into what will likely turn out to be the hottest year yet on record here on Planet Earth, my humble veggies are basking and flourishing.

The Five-Step Drought Busting System works.

Although the portentously titled "System" is just a collection of simple practices that many gardeners follow, I believe it is the combination of five techniques that is making a noticeable difference in keeping the plants happy. Here's how it all fits together.

Step One: Add lots of organic matter to the soil, and

Step Two: Don't dig!

Add organic matter and don't dig????? But . . . but . . . how??? Simple. Just layer it on. This approach works just fine for Mother Nature. Go to a forest and take a look at what's going on beneath your feet: you will see layers and layers of leaf litter covering dark, rich, moist loam.

A statistic I've seen quoted frequently states that for every one percent increase in organic matter in an acre of ground, an additional 16,500 gallons of water can be held in the top one foot of soil. That's a lot of liquidity! And all that water stays in the soil.

I once saw a demonstration (most likely in Debra Koonz Garcia's wonderful film Symphony of the Soil) by a scientist who had set up four clear plastic cylinders of different types of dirt. He ran water through the cylinders to show which soil types held water and which did not. Soil with plenty of compost held nearly all the water poured on it and the little bit that trickled through was clear, showing that nutrient-laden silt was not washing away.

Even more convincing is the experience of Paul and Elizabeth Kaiser of Singing Frogs Farm in Sebastopol, California. They use massive amounts of compost on their three acres of vegetables to produce numerous harvests per year. After five years of building soil they have reduced their water use by more than 50% and their ponds and run-off are "almost crystal clear." Tests by experts have shown that their storm water run-off shows no leaching of excess nutrients to pollute waterways, confounding conventional wisdom about heavy use of compost.

The secret to the remarkable results at Singing Frogs Farm may well be the Kaiser's no-till philosophy. The active approach of adding massive quantities of organic matter is balanced by a passive avoidance of tilling or digging. The hands-off dig-free style allows the billions of life forms in rich soil to flourish. An intricately patterned living web holds on to the water and prevents leaching.

Bringing this data down to earth in our backyard means that the summer plantings -- about 100 square feet of ground -- should be holding plenty of moisture and retaining plenty of nutrients after a couple of years of intensively layering on various types of organics:

• chopped up cover crops such as fava beans and mustard 
• fallen leaves
• straw 
• yard debris 
• small amounts of manure
• small amounts of organic fertilizers
• rock powder (for minerals) 
• cardboard 
• newspaper 
• lots and lots of compost.

The only digging implement used is a trowel to loosen up the top few inches of soil right before planting.

Step Three: Install Drip Irrigation

Drip irrigation delivers a slow steady trickle of water right to the root zone of a plant and is nearly 100% efficient: pretty much all of the water reaches its objective and is not lost through evaporation or run-off. By contrast, overhead watering is thought to be about 50 to 70% efficient. Drip irrigation works even better with rich soil that holds the moisture in place so thirsty roots can make the most of it. Despite all that, until very recently I never used a drip system, preferring to water by hand with a spray nozzle on a long hose. I couldn't face the myriad tiny plastic parts and teeny hoses that have to be meticulously assembled and maintained.

Then I found the marvelous "Snip and Drip" irrigation system from Gardener's Supply. Nice fat soaker hoses with Tinker-Toy sized plastic connectors are so easy to assemble a kindergartner could do it and even a senior citizen has a good chance of success. Included in the package is a length of regular hose. Both the soaker hose and regular hose can be cut with scissors (that's the "Snip" component) so the pieces can easily be customized for a raised bed garden. Sections of regular hose run across the paths and link together the raised beds outfitted with lengths of soaker hose (the "Drip" component). Very sweet! Plus, it can all be disassembled and reconfigured as needed from one season to the next.

Step Four: Make Some Ollas

Oh-yahs, oh yes! Ollas are unglazed clay pots sunk into the ground  and filled with water that will be sought out by the roots of nearby plants. It's an ancient system thought to have originated in Africa, with the first written record coming from the Fan Sheng-chih Shu, a guide for farmers compiled more than two millenia ago in China.

In case you are wondering why an African or Chinese system has a Spanish-sounding name, our modern terminology is derived from the Latin word for "pot," olla, which passed unchanged into Spanish, The word, plus the technique was brought to the Southwest USA by the early explorers and taken up by Native Americans.

It is now re-emerging in our water starved regions of the West. The research is advancing as well, proving the extreme efficiency of a system where every drop of water goes straight to roots that need it and not a single drop is wasted. A good overview of the method (lots of research citations and further reading) is to be found at the Permaculture Research Institute website. 

When I first started using clay pots several years ago I felt like an early explorer myself, trying out something known only to readers of obscure gardening blogs and permaculture websites. Now ollas are to be found at local nurseries and hardware stores or online from a variety of sources. As they are not only amazingly efficient but amazingly pricey, I still make my own from cheap clay planting pots stoppered with rubber corks and lidded with the pot's own overflow dish.

In our summer garden each plant of tomato, zuccini, and cucumber has at least one sunken pot to ensure a reliable supply of water through the heat of the day.

Step 5: Mulch, Mulch, Mulch

The last step in the Five-Step Drought-Busting System is to add a thick layer of mulch such as dry straw which covers the other elements: the rich undug soil holding moisture like a sponge, the soaker hoses tricking water sparingly into the sponge, and the sunken pots of hidden water nourishing thirsty roots directly. A thick mulch helps to keep the whole garden bed moist and prevent the small percentage of evaporation that occurs from the drip irrigation lines and the unglazed clay pot lids that remain above the surface of the soil.

Mulch is almost a religion with some gardeners for very good reasons. In general, it's a good idea to avoid bare soil. Nature abhors a vacuum and Mother Nature abhors uncovered ground.

The final step is to go out on a searingly hot day and enjoy looking at your happy plants!!

Mid-Summer TLC for Tomatoes

It's time to add some booster fertilizer to the tomatoes, which are sucking nutrients out of the soil at a prodigious rate to fuel their splendid growth. It's also a good opportunity to catch up with installing the water-saving system that should have been put in when the plants were seedlings.

I use three-foot by three-foot Grow Beds, ten inches deep, for all the vegetable plantings, and have never been able to figure out how to install the long hoses of drip irrigation. And I find all those little plastic fixtures way too complicated. It's a good thing I love the soothing chore of hand-watering with a hose! Water is always an issue in our rainless summers. Our city is not on water-rationing yet in this ultra-dry California drought year but we have been asked to cut back.

Last year I read about sunken clay pots that are used in developing countries to bring water directly to roots and allow the roots to draw water through the porous clay as needed. The water percolates through the clay as the surrounding soil dries out. Nifty! The pots are specially made for that purpose -- beautifully shaped large round amphora-like jugs with narrow necks. It's a very ancient practice going back millennia.


A local equivalent that works well is to use clay flower pots with their drainage dishes and some black rubber stoppers from the hardware store (who knows what their actual purpose might be!). The rubber stoppers can be jammed into the hole at the bottom of the flower pot to create a permeable closed container. You have to be careful to get the right sized stopper for the particular pot.




I tried this last summer and liked the results so I'm gradually adding more pots. I dig a hole next to the chosen plant, trying not to disturb the delicate roots. In this picture you can see why this job is best done when plants are small: numerous white threads of disturbed rootlings. I plop the pot into the hole and gently pack the soil around it. The last step is to fill the pot with water and put the drainage tray on top as a lid. Voila!: an underground supply of supplementary water. It's not enough to take the place of hand watering, of course, but it helps keep the soil from drying out completely. Tomatoes like steady moisture. I read somewhere that they are like children: with warmth and consistency they thrive. Eventually, the hole will be completely lined with a spider web of tiny white roots.


Today, after putting in the irrigation pot and before putting down a couple of layers of mulch, I dug in some organic fertilizer (Whitney Farms Tomato & Vegetable Food 5-3-3), sprinkling it around each plant several inches from the stem and digging it in. It's important to water thoroughly both before and after applying fertilizer. I'm not sure why -- probably it has to do with root burn -- but it's a process I observe faithfully. Like all gardeners I have accumulated a number of rituals that have to be followed no matter what.

The first mulch layer is newspaper -- double sheets folded once to make a thin covering that worms absolutely love. They will snuggle up underneath the newspapers in droves and hopefully do all kinds of nice things for the soil.

The second mulch layer is dark compost -- Mango Mulch is what's shown here -- one to three inches thick. Ritual demands that it be kept several inches away from the plant stems. I think it's to give the stem plenty of air and keep it from rotting, but, again, I'm not sure why this has to be done. If all goes well this tender loving care will give the tomato plants everything they need to flourish.

Full disclosure: every year, no matter what rituals are followed, all my tomatoes get some kind of mysterious symptoms on the lower leaves. It's never enough to interfere with a bountiful harvest but always enough to make me fret and worry and wonder what's going on. There are so many different afflictions of tomatoes that I've not been able to make any positive identifications. These leaves are on the Sungold cherry tomato plant and the Better Boys are showing a similar condition: yellowing with brown spots that get larger and larger. And these are the hybrids which are supposed to be disease resistant!

Each year, however, I learn a little more and try out new things. That's part of the fun -- a big part.

Zucchini Factory

The great green machine is revving up. Above is the zucchini patch as of mid-June, a couple of weeks ago, and again as it is today. This is a row of three plants, rather close together. In the top photo you can see the lid of the sunken, plugged flower pot that serves as an irrigation reservoir. There is one next to each plant.

Planting History:
Variety: Green Racer zucchini
Source: Whole Foods (Sweetwater Nursery) seedlings
Seedlings planted out: May 10, 2009
First harvest: June 14, 2009


These are the first few pickings in chronological order left to right. You can see that the earliest blossoms are brown and dry and the first couple of fruits are smaller and tapered toward the tip. Probably they didn't get fertilized (that's my theory, anyway) because the bees didn't get the press release. The news is out by now for sure. This past weekend there was a big bag of beautifully shaped zucchini in the fridge. Time for green soup!!! Who cares if the temperature is pushing 100 degrees -- summon up that old pioneer spirit.




There's no recipe for green soup, just a general process. The ingredients change according to the seasons: winter is kale and chard and broccoli; summer is mostly zucchini. Here's a description based on this weekend's batch:

1. Heat up a thin layer of good olive oil in a favorite soup pot.

2. Smash four or five cloves of peeled garlic, stir them around in the oil to infuse the flavor.

3. Saute chopped onion and celery -- enough to make a half inch layer on the bottom of the pot.

4. Add peeled, chopped carrots and potatoes -- as many as you feel like and have on hand. This batch has four big carrots and a couple of medium new red potatoes.

5. Stir it all around until coated with oil. Put lid on and let mixture soften up a bit.

6. Cover with vegetable broth -- homemade mushroom broth can't be beat. Let simmer to soften up the carrots and potatoes some more.

7. Add as much chopped zucchini as you can cram into the pot, along with any other greens you have around. This batch used the whole bag of zucchini -- about 10 lovelies of various sizes. It also includes the last few volunteer kale plants from a corner of the yard. This is the point to add any quicker cooking veggies you have on hand. Some chopped parsley is nice.

8. Add some cooked beans if you have them -- garbanzo or small white beans are great -- for extra heft and nutrition.

9. Simmer until everything is soft.

10. Put in the fridge to cool. It makes blending easier. If you have hungry people hanging around, go ahead and blend right away.

11. Eat some now.

12. And freeze the rest. I take these little packages to work for lunch so often it causes comment. But I am unabashed. Green soup is nectar and ambrosia in one fragrant, sustaining brew, the elixir of life. H. loves the stuff so whenever he comes by he takes a couple home.