Summer is a time of abundance on the allotment. After having worked hard to grow and plant seedlings and getting the plot ready in spring, now is the time to harvest and earn the rewards for all your efforts. Summer is also a time for holidays and many a plot holder has come back after a short time away to find that the courgettes have ballooned to marrows, and everything is green and luscious.
This year, things were different for me, though. I went away during the first heat wave at the end of July. While I had entrusted a kind plot neighbour with looking after the watering of the plants in my polytunnel, I had assumed that, like in previous years, the outside plants would be fine looking after themselves. After all, I would not be away for very long. On my return I was greeted by a luscious green jungle of melons, peppers, aubergines grapes and physalis in my polytunnel, which made me smile every time I entered. However, outside was a different matter. Not only was the water level in my freshly-constructed bathtub pond dangerously low and the capping stones had been pushed off – probably by some thirsty badger or fox, but instead of finding marrow-like giants on my courgette plants, I found small, dark and half-shrivelled little things (see picture). Most of my cabbages had bolted, my beans looked stunted and my other veg was also looking very sorry for itself. The real shock, however, were two of my blueberry bushes. They had been happy in their designated place in a raised bed for several years and had been full of nearly ripe berries before my holiday. Now they were brown, dry, very clearly dead and had lots of shrivelled berries on them. The young blueberry bushes in the part of my plot which is to become my new mini forest garden did not look very happy either but at least, they as well as the other plants around them had survived. Truly a tale of two halves!
After my initial shock, I sat down to take stock. In recent years, dry spells, heat waves and periods of drought have increased considerably. Perhaps it is time to rethink how we have grown before and find new ways of coping with changing weather patterns. Certainly, the combination of a solar-powered watering system with top-up hand watering in the polytunnel worked well. However, the water butts had nearly run dry and that would have stopped the automatic system. Also, the plants in my forest garden area on the plot seemed much happier than the ones in the raised beds, which have weed membrane underneath to keep out the mare’s tail. So far, they have worked well for growing annual veg, but perhaps they will need a deeper soil level in the future. The forest garden, on the other hand, is definitely something I want to explore further. The idea is to mimic nature and grow plants together in guilds, i.e., plants of different levels like a taller tree, medium-sized and smaller bushes and ground cover (as well as climbers), so that they can benefit from each other. The taller ones provide some shade and shelter for the smaller plants and benefit from their ground cover as they keep unwanted weeds down. Also, when growing plants with different nutritional needs together, they do not compete but benefit each other. So far, I have mainly trees, fruit bushes and herbs in this forest garden arrangement, but I will try and experiment with growing some annual veg in between the gaps in the future. Perhaps this will provide better conditions. Additionally, I will explore growing more perennial varieties of veg which will be more established in the long run and therefore less susceptible to changing weather patterns.
Finally, I will explore different watering methods such as the use of so-called ollas, a very ancient method. Ollas are unglazed terracotta pots which are buried in the ground up to their neck and then filled with water. Due to the porous nature of the material, the water is gradually released into the surrounding soil, providing a more sustainable and long-term method of watering. It is very easy to make your own ollas out of two large terracotta pots. Fill the drainage hole in one of them with silicone or similar so that no water can get through. Then glue the pots together by their rims, making sure the seal is watertight. You can then fill them up through the unsealed drainage hole of the pot on the top.
Hopefully, even if we have another drought next summer, some of the new growing methods will pay off next year.
Please let me know if you have any other good ideas for growing in drought conditions (https://www.facebook.com/courtoakroadallotments).
Happy gardening!
Astrid Fiess
