High Productivity in Dry Conditions

High Productivity in Dry Conditions

The spring of 2018 has turned out to be unusually dry, and it's now pretty safe to say that the spring rains never came.

It was also an unusually cold start to spring which delayed everything by a few weeks.

The long term climate forecast models used for things like commodities markets, launching rockets into space, and other critical sectors of human activity are pointing to a continuation of the global cooling trend that has been in place for the past decade or so.

The geopolitical implications of this, should it come to fruition, isn't the topic for today. Rather, I thought it would be good to write about some techniques that can be employed in the garden if this exceptional dryness becomes the norm.

Hopefully by now everyone should be aware of the benefits of mulching and how it reduces the need for watering by a factor of 10. Direct seeding in a mulched garden bed can be a challenge which means that more often than not a mulched garden bed also means seedling transplants.

But let's focus on mulching systems as a means to conserve water and hold nutrients within the system longer.

The image to the right is a banana circle. It is a mulching system used in the tropics for the production of bananas, and it has been reported to produce 100 times more bananas per square meter than the traditional plantation method.

Pretty much every permaculturist knows what one of these are and how it's constructed so I'm not going into the details here.

But what if we can adapt the principles of a banana circle and apply them to the great white North?

The system is constructed by building a doughnut shape with your soil into which you will plant your crops. The middle of the doughnut is then filled with coarse unfinished compost / mulch and then the whole thing is covered in a thick layer of straw or hay.

Converting a 15 foot long double reach bed will yield roughly 50 square feet of growing space as illustrated above. I employ double reach beds in my garden, and find that 3 rows in the bed are manageable. 

This method delivers the same amount of growing space as I usually have, and there is the added bonus that I'm utilizing the center areas to finish off my compost from the year before. I have essentially stacked two functions into a space that I'm currently using to perform just one.

When you go to water the bed, you simply pour the water into the center area and let it wick into the growing bed from the center. No drip irrigation or sprinklers required. Just dump the water in there!

This system is suitable for water hungry plants like squash, melons, tomatoes, peas, beans etc.

Read Part 2 to follow my implementation of this concept.