How To Save Your Garden From Heat Stroke
Inexpensive & creative ways to stop wasting water
It’s no secret that our world is getting warmer, and that brings a whole new host of challenges to gardeners. We’re forced to either adapt and get creative in keeping our gardens watered, or watch them all shrivel and die in the crushing heat.
I don’t know about you, but I never give up without a fight.
For reasons that I’ve mentioned before, I don’t grow in rows. I plant in raised beds, use a lot of containers and plant in blocks of one or two square feet. It’s actually much easier to garden this way, and much easier to deliver water to my plants.
I live out in the woods, not too far from where Margaret Atwood grew up, with a shallow well less than 30 feet deep. So drip hoses aren’t an option. They need water pressure to work effectively, which I just don’t have. One way to imitate that delivery system is to adopt an ancient technique using porous terra cotta jugs called ollas (pronounced oy-yas). I don’t have those, but I do have plastic bottles and jugs that I’ve kept out of the garbage dump by giving them a new purpose. I fill them half full of water, freeze them and then drill a series of holes in the bottom third and middle of the bottle. (Freezing the water inside keeps the plastic from tearing into an un-useable mess) Then I sit the bottles over my rain barrel to drain, rather than water plants with ice-cold water. They don’t appreciate that. When the bottles are empty once more, I bury them with their necks above the soil-line, and near where I’ll plant my seedlings. Once my plants are in the ground, I fill the bottle with water and allow it to seep slowly out of the bottle through my pre-drilled holes into the soil. Because the bottle is buried, the water goes right to the roots, and a little deeper, thereby encouraging the roots to go in search of water. This results in a healthier root system.
Alternatively, you can take smaller terra cotta pots, frequently sold at dollar stores and nurseries, line the bottom with newspaper, cover with pebbles and bury almost to the rim. When you’ve filled this with water, cover the top with a terra cotta saucer that’s usually sold with the pots. This keeps bugs, reptiles and rodents from catching a drink and drowning.
Those black plastic nursery pots can be used as water reservoirs too. Line the bottoms with newspaper, fill the pots with small stones, then sink the pots to their rims and fill with water as needed. The newspaper inside will still allow water to seep through, but at a slower rate that will soak the surrounding soil more thoroughly. The benefit of both of these tools is that they both encourage deep root systems and the water doesn’t sit on the surface, evaporating in the heat.
Another interesting adaptation is the “sunken garden”. 2–3 foot wide gardens with soil piled around the perimeter of each square foot, so that the garden resembles a waffle. The ridges of soil direct water down to the plants, rather than running away from the plants, and hold the water there so it soaks in where you want it.
Another way to adapt our gardens is to plan ahead and provide shade to the plants that don’t need, or like, full sun. For example, sunflowers planted on the sunny side of lettuce plants will, if planted early enough, grow and provide shade for the lettuce. Corn will do the same for spinach plants, or any other plant that appreciates some shade. Old screens directed away from landfills will serve the same purpose if you can find a way to keep them upright. My favourite way of doing this is to use lengths of saplings that I’ve cut while cutting the brush back from the edges of our property and shaped into a point on one end, then hammered into the ground. Two of these placed like semicolons : will hold a screen on one end. Repeat at the other end of the screen. -: — :-
Perhaps a more obvious method to retain moisture is to use mulch. I’ve seen a variety of things used as mulch — cedar chips, newspaper, grass clippings, small stones and straw. I don’t use mulch because I grow in containers where I can, but you may find it works for you.
No matter what method you choose to deliver water to your plants, and then keep it there, climate changes are forcing all of us to get creative. Our plants are depending on us.
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