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!!

Mystery Fungus

I was raking leaves in the front yard when I noticed this mysterious object amongst the leaf litter. My first thought, seeing it from a distance, was that the dog had chewed up one of my black socks and left it lying there (he does have a fondness for our well worn socks).






When I came closer it revealed itself as a strange growth, ominously alive.

Nothing stays mysterious for long in the internet age. I typed into Google Search the description of what it looked like to me: "wrinkled black fungus" -- and soon found a reasonably close photo and identification. The photo, taken on a trail side in Poland, is posted on TrekNature, a place for adventurous travelers to share their finds.

Adrian Szatewicz kindly provides the name and features, and Wikipedia fills out the story. This is an evil cousin of the marvelous and much-sought-after morel mushroom, called Gyromitra esculenta, or "brain mushroom." "Esculenta" means it can be eaten and supposedly, it can, if cooked properly, with all windows open to vent the poisonous fumes which have the same chemical composition as rocket fuel. In some parts of Europe it is sold in markets. But don't try this at home, kids! It can also cause illness and death.

I have never wanted to touch wild mushrooms since the time I read a newspaper article about the head of the local mycological society, who succumbed to an ill-chosen fungus. Even the experts can make mistakes.

The most interesting thing I learned is that some mushrooms, like this one, are mostly saprotrophic: they live on decaying organic matter. Others are mostly mychorrhizal: they send out thin white filaments which interpenetrate the rootlets of plants in a symbiotic exchange of nutrients, an important factor in soil chemistry. Having lots of mychorrhizal activity in your soil is a good thing for your plants.

Lasagna Gardening: Gourmet Version

Although the winter garden has served us well, the plants aren't as large and sturdy as in previous years. Case in point: the rather spindly Bronze Arrow and Black Seeded Simpson lettuces pictured above. The vigorous volunteer Forget-me-not seedlings are taking over the bed.

The soil in all the beds is overworked, I think, because as soon as one crop comes out another goes in. I do add organic matter whenever possible but, clearly, it's not keeping up with the demand. What to do? Although there are now enough beds to let some go fallow and pile them with mulch for a season or two, I don't seem to be able to make time for that forward-looking task: the immediate gratification of planting and harvesting gets in the way.

Solution: lasagna gardening. As I understand it, this approach involves building what amounts to a mini-compost pile of layered materials -- hence lasagna -- with soil on top like a very thick layer of Parmesan cheese. The claim is that the plants grow just fine even as the various layers are slowly breaking down and enriching the soil.

It's certainly worth a try. Maybe it's the perfect way to have our vegetables and eat them too -- to build soil and grow plants all in one smooth operation, just the way Mother Nature does it. And there is the immediate gratification of planting right away.






So today I ventured out to the yard to turn one of the garden beds into a yummy casserole of nutrients for the hungry roots of some lettuce seedlings from Cottage Gardens.

The hardest part -- which required violating my no-dig philosophy in order to get a quick fix to the problem of declining fertility -- was removing all the old, overworked soil. Once that was taken care of, after lots of little weeding breaks to rest my aging lumbar vertebrae, the rest was fun. All it took was layering in the best ingredients I could find to make up a real gourmet masterpiece.

The first layer was some hand-selected, carefully-aged sections of newspaper gently moistened with the hose. It was not too thick, just one or two sections worth of newsprint. The worms love this stuff, so I hope the newspaper will draw them to the area and get them interested in turning all the undigested organic matter into the top grade soil amendment only they can create.







The second layer was an inch or two of well-aged, locally-sourced manure from Pt. Reyes Compost, self-styled "purveyors of premium poop." The version I used is cheekily called "Double Doody," a mixture of cow and horse droppings, and the bag is marked by an image, half cow, half horse that reminds me of the two-headed Pushmi-pullyu creature from the Dr. Doolittle stories.







The third layer was thick pads of organic alfalfa hay, sprinkled with some high quality general purpose organic fertilizer (Whitney Farms Tomato & Vegetable Food, with a 4-5-3 balance of nitrogen, phosphate, and potash).






Next came a layer of leaves, also locally sourced (just down the block) and organically grown. This layer, too, was dusted with fertilizer. In fact, all the layers were, starting with the bare dirt before the newspapers were laid down.






The last layer was shovelfuls of the original dirt from the bed. There was room for more than half of it to fit back in, so there should be plenty of room for the lettuce to take hold, right on top of the gourmet lasagna layers. I soaked the whole assemblage thoroughly and let it mellow a bit.







It was nice to find a fair number of earthworms in the soil. I sure hope some red wiggler worms will show up to start digesting the layers of organic matter.






The last step was to set in the lettuce seedlings -- Forellenschluss and Garrison. Hope you like my casserole, little guys. Enjoy!