Today is a bit of a sad update about the old garden and my thoughts on the the changing weather I’ve noticed over the years. Specifically, the lack of rain. A cloud of dust follows me as I drive down the track that used to be muddy, and I can’t help thinking this feels like a change we’re going to have to adapt to for the future. I know a lot of you from France and Spain have shared with me how uncharacteristically cold or even wet it’s been this year for you. So I wanted to make this video as a call to actions. Please let me know your experience the last few years in the comment section and tell me what you plan to do to cope with this in future years. I also encourage you to engage with other commenters and provide support and tips to help them with their gardening struggles.
Some annual crops that have done well during my low rainfall
– Corn
– Squash
– Tomatoes
– Peppers
– Oregon Peas
– Beetroot (boltardy)
– Perpetual spinach/chard
– chickpeas
HuwsGarden.com helps us develop more content like this video. Browse below!
↪️ Huw’s Module Trays: https://huwsgarden.com/collections/propogation-trays
↪️ Huw’s Cold Frames: https://huwsgarden.com/collections/undercover-growing
↪️ Raised Beds: https://huwsgarden.com/collections/raised-beds
↪️ Supplies & More: https://huwsgarden.com/collections/garden-supplies
Ambassador for Gardena: https://www.gardena.com/
🌱All online courses: https://abundanceacademy.online
Direct Plants for soft fruit bundle https://directplants.co.uk/the-huw-richards-potted-soft-fruit-bush-and-plant-collection-by-directplants/ (affiliate)
📖Books
The Vegetable Growers Handbook by Huw Richards: https://huwsgarden.com/en-gb/collections/books/products/the-vegetable-grower-s-handbook-1
The Nature of Food by Sam Cooper: https://huwsgarden.com/en-gb/collections/books/products/the-nature-of-food
🔗Social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/huwsgarden/
🍴Delicious Garden Recipes
Farmer & Chef https://instagram.com/farmer.and.chef
#gardeningideas #gardeningtips #permaculture
19 Comments
Not just lack of rain with my transplants but the intensity of the sun’s rays, however well one mulches.
If you’re not able to attend to your 1st garden more than once a week, I’d definitely move towards a drip watering method. At least 8 zones and an app to monitor.
Saying that, I didn’t need to water my indoor tomatoes and peppers most of last year. Once settled, their roots reached the damp soil deep down. I fed them occasionally.
You can order a bowser to deliver.
Best tip for new growers is to have shade cloth, plant in shade of slightly taller plants, make nice mini hurdles with uprights extending 8” to secure In ground. Mulch with anything you can get your hands on and install drip tape with timers if you’re busy although I believe allotments don’t allow drip systems. Early morning best to alleviate slug pressure.
Shade cloth is vital with this intense sun.
why not just haul in water, around here there are plenty of homes with cisterns and people who haul water from municipal wells. also, consider putting in a well.
Last year we had stage D4 drought in Texas. Over 2 months in summer with no rain and temperature every day above 100 F. My garden still grew great and all my vegetables kept growing. A year before I put one foot layer on top of the ground of wood chips from tree trimming companies. Under the woodchips I put a bit of compost on top of the ground first. When it did rain earlier in the year the super deep wood chips soaked up the rain like a sponge and did not let it run off my land and run away. The very top layer of wood chips went light sun bleached color but underneath that top sun bleached layer was dark wet wood chips. This year I have stopped watering my gardens completely. I have a flower garden in the front. And I have a fruit trees and vegetables and melons and berries garden in my backyard. We are now at 100 temperature every day and I still am not watering at all. I am still watching my plants but so far no signs of stress and the ground is still damp when I dig away the top layer of woodchips and put my fingers down into the soil underneath. The secret to deep wood chip mulch is you never dig them into the soil. You treat it like a Forrest that trees die and fall on the ground and leaves and dead twigs and branches fall on the ground but nobody in the Forrest ever digs this into the ground and nature takes care of converting wood and leaves on top of the ground into new soils. And nobody is watering trees in the Forrests but they are still green. 🧐
Now more than two years later I’m starting to see the top layer of wood chips thinning and nothing but dark rich soil underneath from all the mushrooms that have eaten the wood and converted it to new soils. So I’ll have to think maybe in year three or year four getting some more tree trimming company wood chip waste and putting a new fresh top layer on top again. I won’t go a foot deep for the refreshing the top layer. Now I’ll only add three inches to four inches when refreshing as I did deep to start the gardens.
Do you water your plants by hand? I haven't installed one (although I plan to very soon) but drip irrigation is supposed to save a lot of water. The one I ordered from Blumat works completely without electricity. Only requires a raised watertank.
Same for me last year and this year. I'm in Essex, and I have had a problem with lack of rain. We do have water troughs on site but spending so much time watering that harvesting and looking after plants is taking a back seat. Not a good period at the moment had only 6mm of rain in June so far, the ground is parched and cracks appearing all over.
After more than a month of no rain I found out that one part of the garden still had moist soil which I could plant in quite easily. It's the part that I covered with a layer of around 20 cm of horse manure and flax from the stable in the winter period. I covered it all with a thick layer (about 20cm as wel) of hay in the spring. My planted squash is enjoying it very much without watering. I hoped to interplant it with corn but unfortunately things happened and I missed the opportunity this year.
Note: this part of the garden is the highest part next to a road. So if it works there it wil certainly work elsewhere in the garden.
It’s tough isn’t it… we harvest as much water as we can, but here in the South East uk, we really haven’t stood a chance this year and now a hosepipe ban….😢 I have spent so much time, energy and expense on my garden I just can’t sit and watch it die. I think, if this is the future, the only way forward is a borehole or huge underground tanks….
Im going to grow some pioneer species trees for chop and drop in autumn and summer shade like paulownia and black locust
Hello mate what variety of field beans do you grow thanks in advance
It seems like you're using 2 different cameras. Cause you look a bit different on each cameras . Or am I wrong? BTW, still love the colour science 🤝🏼
🌱🌱🌱
I have an allotment in Yorkshire with no water supply and I can absolutely identify with this. My 1/3 plot has a total of 2 water butts, 7 black dustbins and a blue barrel for water storage, and everything was full at the end of winter. I haven't a greenhouse so there is only a 4ftx6ft shed to collect rain water from, so I improvise. When rain is forecast I put out large drip trays along the paths to collect as much water as possible and I leave my barrow in a place where it is exposed to the rain. I also make sure that there is plenty of space in the water butts by bucketing some into the dustbins if necessary so I catch as much as possible. After heavy rain there is often a large puddle in one corner of the plot and I use a compost scoop to scoop it into a bucket to transfer to the bins. The dustbin lids are left upside down to collect any rain. It is surprising how much water you can collect using these methods.
When there is no rain I take cans of water down in my car. I have a moisture meter so I can check the soil moisture to see if watering is really necessary and I direct the water at individual plants rather than watering with a rose or watering the whole bed. I make as much use of mulches as possible and prioritize peas, beans, potatoes and anything that is newly planted or has recently germinated. Where possible I grow plants at home and only take them to the allotment when they are in need of planting out so I don't have a lot of young plants in modules to water there. If I have part of an empty bed waiting for the next crop I cover it with weed matting to conserve moisture.
Plants that have done ok with very little or no water once established include parsnips, cauliflowers, onions, strawberries, currants and gooseberries. Surprisingly the rhubarb hasn't liked it at all, possibly because it is at the top of a slight slope.
Down South in East Dorset here, we've had hardly any rain for about 2 months. Our allotment's a mile away so doesn't get as much attention as I'd like to give it, plus we have just one pump – old-style hand-pump – between over 100 plots. The only way I can keep stuff alive in dry patches is to mulch, mulch, mulch, and I'll use anything – grass clippings, chicken bedding, fallen leaves, wool – that comes to hand. I've just pulled out my over-wintered garlic & noticed that the biggest, fattest bulbs have their roots firmly entangled in clumps of the wool that was mulch for last year's sweetcorn. I buy in fleeces from the shepherd who keeps a small flock of rescued sheep on the water meadows near our house; the money she raises from us allotmenteers helps her afford shearing costs & vet bills. Wool's a brilliant resource – keeps moisture in the soil, slugs really don't like it, deters weeds from sprouting, and evidently some plants, like garlic, really love it!
Sounds stupid but I'm experimenting with planting empty plastic bottles with my plants ( drilled small holes in the bottle to slow release water directly to the soil under the top layer of soil) that way the water goes straight to my roots top can dry out as much as it does and snails don't do so well on the sandy soil. It's helping my "baby-trees". I fill the 2l bottle every 2 to 3 days here on the Netherlands. So slow drip mostly out of sight and trains my plants to grow deeper roots.
Drip irrigation where the water is directed drip by drip directly to the base of each plant warms really well
Have to go old school,
Water shed & Wooden
water~wheel 💡♻️🌊👍🏻✨
We farm in a monsoon climate in Hawai’i so wet winters and dry summers are the norm for us. The last few years seem to continue to be getting more extreme in the wet and dry. This year we had 50 inches of rain in February and have had less than 4 inches since. Some of the principals we use to help that are universal are lots of organic matter in the soil to hold moisture including hugelkulter mounds, extremely deep mulch, succession timing drought tolerant shade plants such as nitrogen fixers to grow ahead of the crops and of course always looking for more drought resistant crops but ours our likely very different than the temperate zones. Good luck it is very stressful. 🤙
Steve Solomon has a book called "Water Wise Gardening" that was helpful.
I had drought last year. Here are some things I learned:
1. Water evaporation is very real when surface watering.
2. Mulch prevents evaporation but kept water from penetrating the soil. Soak soil before mulching.
3. Use shade cloth over fruiting plants and those that require more water.
4. Ollas (Oya) help reduce evaporation and get water to roots. These terracotta pots work great, but require too many for huge gardens. You bury the pot in the soil near the roots of your plants. You pour water into the mouth of the pot (or spike) that is just above ground and the water slowly seeps into the soil. For large gardens, I think those old terracotta drainage pipes would work beautifully.
5. I have heard some dig trenches in their rows or near their plants that collect the run off water when it does rain. My garden has done much better this year.