Gardening Without Rain: Improving Water Resilience in Gardens & Allotments

Drought, Low Rainfall & High Summer Temperatures Are All Contributing To Challenging Growing Condition & Climateflation. Here’s How To Combat The Lack Of Rain.

This summer we have had a long dry summer where I live in Devon. Temperatures have been above average as well. But we are lucky here in East Devon, it has been much worse in the south east of England. Temperatures have been much higher and rainfall is always lower than here.

Vegetable production as well as grain and grass production for livestock has been badly hit both this year and last year. Globally we have similar problems. Terrible floods in some places and severe droughts in others. Food prices are going up due to “climateflation”*. That is inflation fuelled by the change on climate that leads to food shortages. And let’s not just imagine this is something that happens in Africa and other distant places. In the UK many crops have reduced yields and/or smaller fruit or tubers. And that is leading to price increases in the shops. It is easy to blame farmer greed, but if farmers cannot make ends meet they cannot produce food for us all.

Water Resilience: Combatting Water Shortages

I’m going to cover how to combat temperature increases in a future article. In this one I am focusing on Water Resilience. They are of course linked in many ways!

There are three things gardeners and farmers can do to improve their water resilience. I list them below. The principles are the same for gardeners and farmers but the methods used on a field scale are sometimes different to those employed in a garden.

Harvesting More Rainfall

Most of us own a water butt. It is a simple way to harvest water as it runs down the downpipes from the gutter. And in winter filling a butt is easy. But we don’t need much water for the garden in winter, summer is the time we are challenged So finding ways to both fill buttts in winter AND summer are key. In fact the latter is more important in my mind because as my butts empty in spring and summer I want to be able to replenish them quickly.

Two things come to mind here. Firsly having enough storage capacity. That means increasing our water storage capacity. Simply put, increase the size of your storage tanks or butts or add more butts per downpipe. This might mean allowing water to flow through pipes or hoses to an IBC or similar in a distant part of the garden. Secondly it means ensuring every downpipes has a water diverter fitted EVEN IF we don’t have space for a butt next to it. Just harvest the water and pipe it to somewhere where a tanks can be installed.

I’ve just doubled my rain harvesting capacity by fitting extra diverters that send rainwater to my IBCs. tha doesn’t increase winter storage per se but it means that a shower can contribute a lot more water to replenish the emptying tanks in summer. Remember a millimetre of rainfall is a litre of water per square metre. I have 150 square metres of roof and that means 150 litres of harvested water for every mm of rain. That is a lot of water in summer. The slightest shower gives me a lot of water.

Improving Soil Water Capacity

If our soils can hold more water before they dry out then we have greater water resilience. We don’t want them badly drained, but they can be both well drained and have increased water holding capacity if we add organic matter. By adding organic matter we can improve both the pore space and moisture holding capacity. So we have more moisture and enough air spaces in the soil.

I’ve written many other articles on this website about organic matter, carbon sequestration and no dig. All of them improve or impact water retention when organic matter is increased.

Other ways to increase soil water levels is to actually increase the water level in the soil. This can be done by raising water levels in nearby ditches by using leaky dams or similar, by slowing land drain flow rates or by digging swales. All of these techniques can be used on a field or garden/allotment scale.

Perennial Crops & Water Resilience

Establishing crops when water is limited can be a challenge. It is often much easier to do when we can irrigate or water with copious amounts of water. But when that water is absent or very limited, then we have problems. One way around it is to grow perennial crops. Deep rooted or drought tolerant plants that are already established with their roots deep into the soil. We can’t grow perennial carrots but we can grow perennial kale, cardoons and a host of other crops such as blackcurrants, gooseberries, raspberries, figs, apples, pears etc.

These crops aren’t a substitute for carrots, potatoes or celery. But they can reduce the area of cropped area that we need to irrigate. And this means we have more water for the annual and water sensitive crops.

Too Much Faff

I get that many of us don’t want gardening to become too much faff, with having to watch water butt levels, change to more perennials or keep sourcing more organic matter. But the alternative are crops that suffer from a lack of water .. if they grow at all.

The choice is ours. Each of us will decide on a different mix of the above. What we can’t do is to put our heads in the sand, even though our soils are becoming sand dry more often!

Isabel Schnabel from the European Central Bank’s (ECB) executive board coined the terms “climateflation”, “fossilflation” and “greenflation” to describe the ways in which climate change, fossil fuels and a transition to renewable energy can generate inflationary pressures.21 Feb 2024

Tag: Water Resilience