Lessons from 12 weeks of drought

After the post about our irrigation system many wondered how it's been for us the extreme hurricane and the unusual warmth. Thanks to winter's abundant snowfall, which in itself posed to the on the problem, were all dams filled to the brim at the beginning of the growing season and also the ground water supply was well-stocked. In May, however, we received as little as 50% of the normal rainfall for the month, while the average temperature was more than 5 degrees above normal. Therefore came örtskiktet never started really. All focused on a lot of growth in majvärmen, but was punished quickly when the topsoil dried out after a few weeks. Many plants withered down much earlier than they usually do.

The trees and bushes were planted two years ago or earlier escaped excellent until mid-July, even when they had problems to supply their water needs. Then it quickly and most began to show clear signs of water stress, the drooping, stained sheets and poor maps development. In July's first 27 days we got virtually no rainfall at all, while the temperature continued to be almost 5 degrees above normal value. The only real rain between early April and late July, just before midsummer, when we got 18 mm rainfall.

To conserve our water reserves, we restricted irrigation from July to be unnecessarily numerous plantings (more on that in a future post), nursery, glasshouse and vegetable lands. The nursery and greenhouse watered every day we, while others were watered every two to three days. The output of our large pond was around 1000 liters a day.

From mid-July it began, however, be stressful. From 100 000 liter of water is usually found in the upper four dams had reduced to approximately 10 000 liter, even though we had not taken a drop from them. In the large pond of water with reduced 2 000 liters a day, twice as much as we took out the pump, and the end of July we were two weeks away from running out of water in all our reservoirs. The whole thing was resolved by the huge rain on 66 etc. we got 28-30 July. Since then, the brown savannah converted into the juicy green forest garden we are used to.

Had it been able to get even worse?

In retrospect, I'm very happy for the experience that this summer has given us. It is good to test drive our system before we have made us more dependent on them for our survival. Väderextremen learning course become even more common, so it is good to be prepared for whatever may happen. Now you might think that it can hardly be worse than it was, with a statistically unimaginably improbable warm May and July, which was the warmest at least 260 years, but it had actually been able to get even worse. Had we not had such huge amounts of snow this winter had water supplies probably emptied several weeks earlier than they did. Had the redemptive rain in late July had failed to materialize, we had to move the entire nursery with thousands of seedlings to a lakeside location in order to get them to survive and probably had not had much to harvest from the vegetable garden.

Based on this, we have drawn some conclusions for future seasons to guard us both drought and extreme heat.

Invest more in autumn planting

In our harsh climate where frost may go into the ground relatively early in the fall, I usually prefer to plant in spring, but after this summer, we will invest more in late summer- and autumn planting. Sensitive plants mulberry, walnut, chestnut and the like, we will plant in the spring and early summer to continue, with all that implies for watering burden. Everything is more or less hardy and all herbaceous plants however, we will begin to put into the earth in the period mid-August to late September, so that they perform better through the first summer.

Get a second pump (or two)

One thing I tried to repress all summer, our pump had indeed been broken. We have some spare parts at home, but you never know which part will break. Therefore, we will obtain one to pump or preferably two for not having to encounter long outage. After having watered for two hours every day in helvetshettan hose, I would not even think about how it had been watering all the water jug ​​from the ending dams.

Expand the storage capacity

Avdunstingen plants and water caused the water level in the dams fell at breakneck speed during the second half of July. Therefore, we will increase water storage in the beautiful white tanks the land's highest point. There can be no plants or the sun and the breeze to access and steal the water that we need to nursery and vegetable cultivation. Even now we have expanded capacity to 4 000 liters and will expand it to 6 000 liters for next season. Then we can handle even a prolonged breakdown of the pump would be shut down.

Besides pumping system we took the opportunity also to dig another pond that captures some of the water that was previously only created problems in the vegetable lands. The dam can hold no more than 15 000 liter, but it is better than nothing. It is not impossible that there will be more dams ahead.

more hoses

When the ponds in the garden's upper part was dehydrated we had to go 50 m with water jugs for watering the plants we had planted beyond the reach of our irrigation hoses. The simple solution is to have more hoses, so that we can reach the whole culture with them.

Observations on landskapsnivå

Apart from experience in our own plantations, it was interesting to walk around the countryside with open eyes this summer. Each successful nature create production despite the drought and overheating was an issue I had with me on all my trips in summer. The pattern emerged clearly, because the drought served as a contrast agent to enhance the differences in the landscape. Frodigast grew in depressions, valleys and along the ditches where it is moving soil water. North End Ingar, as the less hot and dry year is considered bad from the culture viewpoint, suddenly became relatively high yielding areas. Areas where the only addition of water comes from rainfall and where no significant ground water flow will hit the other hand, the worst of the drought. It was where one could see the tree with yellow leaves by mid-July.

The conclusion I draw from these observations is that I will value the north slopes and shady places higher and start planting edible even there - lucky that almost half our growing property faces north.