How To Grow A Garden In A Drought

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How To Grow A Garden In A Drought

Gardening in drought-prone areas is always a challenge, for one obvious reason: Plants, like people, can’t survive without water.
But the good news is we can manage to grow a productive dry weather garden with a bit of planning and innovation by taking a few lessons from nature. After all, nature has not left even the high deserts completely barren, and we find a unique array of vegetation surviving even here in the harshest of conditions.
Protection from wind and scorching sun
We know from our own experience that wind is highly dehydrating. The rate of transpiration – plants losing water through the tiny pores on their leaves – increases in windy conditions. Wind also replaces the moisture-laden air around the plants with dry air.
Sunlight provides the energy plants need for making their food, but it also can scorch their leaves, especially when they don’t have the protection of an envelope of moisture-rich air around them.

In desert areas, we find more vegetation between the hills and on the hill slopes than on wide stretches of open desert. Rocky outcrops offer some protection to the plants from the drying effects of wind and also provide shade. We can protect our garden by creating some windbreaks and shade.Vertical walls as wind breaks
1. Vertical walls as wind breaks. Surprisingly lush home gardens flourish within solid high walls in many desert countries. Filters such as trellises, split bamboo rolls, plastic wind-break mesh, and hedges of cacti and succulents may not block the wind completely, but are just as effective in offering wind protection as solid walls, if not better. Although they can mar the aesthetics to some extent, growing some attractive climbers over them can remedy that.
2. Natural and artificial shade. Vertical walls offer some amount of shade to the plants growing between them, especially low-growing ones, such as herbaceous flowering plants and green leafy vegetables. Planting your garden against a wall or a natural or man-made rock outcrop where they get protection from the afternoon sun is a great idea.
Shade nets can offer protection to newly started flower beds and vegetable patches. Alternating rows of vegetables with trellises covered in climbers helps, too.
Turning the space beneath trees into a garden can benefit both the trees and the plants. The canopy offers welcome shade and creates a high-humidity area that helps plants thrive. The fallen leaves enrich the soil. The trees, too, benefit from the water and nutrients we provide to the plants.
Trees with light shade and deep-growing roots should be selected. We want to avoid the tree roots competing with those of the garden plants and the canopy blocking out too much sunlight. Remember that some plants cannot thrive in the acidic soil created by the leaf litter.
3. Crowding them in
When water is premium, it may sound counterintuitive to stuff more plants into a small area. But this is one natural way to help plants thrive as a community. For one thing, the taller plants offer shade and wind protection to the low-growing ones.

But more importantly, the surrounding air, dense with the water vapor released by all the plants, creates a humid microclimate for the plants. This brings down the effective temperature and further water loss through transpiration.
Providing water at the point of use
When we see plants all tired and wilted in the dry weather, it’s tempting to give them a good shower of cool water. It’s not only a waste of this precious resource, but can possibly cause some damage to the foliage, too. Drenching the soil thoroughly can definitely make the plants happy, but that would be too extravagant and can cause a weed problem, too…..More Here

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