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Cucumbers Cabbage Eggplant Radishes Kale Rutabagas Potatoes
Don't like foliars Beets Leeks Onions Spinach Chard Lettuce Peppers
Like fertigation Brussels sprouts Kale Savoy cabbage Cucumbers Melons Squash Eggplant Peppers
Tomatoes
Fertigation every two to four weeks is the best technique for maximizing yield while minimizing water use. I
usually make my first fertigation late in June and continue periodically through early September. I use six or
seven plastic 5-gallon "drip system" buckets, (see below) set one by each plant, and fill them all with a hose
each time I work in the garden. Doing 12 or 14 plants each time I'm in the garden, it takes no special effort to
rotate through them all more or less every three weeks.
To make a drip bucket, drill a 3/16-inch hole through the side of a 4-to-6-gallon plastic bucket about
1/4-inch up from the bottom, or in the bottom at the edge. The empty bucket is placed so that the fertilized
water drains out close to the stem of a plant. It is then filled with liquid fertilizer solution. It takes 5 to 10
minutes for 5 gallons to pass through a small opening, and because of the slow flow rate, water penetrates
deeply into the subsoil without wetting much of the surface. Each fertigation makes the plant grow very
rapidly for two to three weeks, more I suspect as a result of improved nutrition than from added moisture.
Chapter 3. Helping Plants to Need Less Irrigation 16
Gardening Without Irrigation: or Without Much, Anyway
Exactly how and when to fertigate each species is explained in Chapter 5.
Organic gardeners may fertigate with combinations of fish emulsion and seaweed at the same dilution used
for foliar spraying, or with compost/manure tea. Determining the correct strength to make compost tea is a
matter of trial and error. I usually rely on weak Rapid-Gro mixed at half the recommended dilution. The
strength of the fertilizer you need depends on how much and deeply you placed nutrition in the subsoil.
Chapter 4. Water-Wise Gardening Year-Round
Early Spring: The Easiest Unwatered Garden
West of the Cascades, most crops started in February and March require no special handling when irrigation
is scarce. These include peas, early lettuce, radishes, kohlrabi, early broccoli, and so forth. However, some of
these vegetables are harvested as late as June, so to reduce their need for irrigation, space them wider than
usual. Spring vegetables also will exhaust most of the moisture from the soil before maturing, making
succession planting impossible without first irrigating heavily. Early spring plantings are best allocated one
of two places in the garden plan: either in that part of the garden that will be fully irrigated all summer or in a
part of a big garden that can affordably remain bare during the summer and be used in October for receiving
transplants of overwintering crops. The garden plan and discussion in Chapter 6 illustrate these ideas in
detail.
Later in Spring: Sprouting Seeds Without Watering
For the first years that I experimented with dry gardening I went overboard and attempted to grow food as
though I had no running water at all. The greatest difficulty caused by this self-imposed handicap was
sowing small-seeded species after the season warmed up.
Sprouting what we in the seed business call "big seed" corn, beans, peas, squash, cucumber, and melon is
relatively easy without irrigation because these crops are planted deeply, where soil moisture still resides long
after the surface has dried out. And even if it is so late in the season that the surface has become very dry, a
wide, shallow ditch made with a shovel will expose moist soil several inches down. A furrow can be cut in
the bottom of that damp "valley" and big seeds germinated with little or no watering.
Tillage breaks capillary connections until the fluffy soil resettles. This interruption is useful for preventing
moisture loss in summer, but the same phenomenon makes the surface dry out in a flash. In recently tilled
earth, successfully sprouting small seeds in warm weather is dicey without frequent watering.
With a bit of forethought, the water-wise gardener can easily reestablish capillarity below sprouting seeds so
that moisture held deeper in the soil rises to replace that lost from surface layers, reducing or eliminating the
need for watering. The principle here can be easily demonstrated. In fact, there probably isn't any gardener
who has not seen the phenomenon at work without realizing it. Every gardener has tilled the soil, gone out the
next morning, and noticed that his or her compacted footprints were moist while the rest of the earth was dry
and fluffy. Foot pressure restored capillarity, and during the night, fresh moisture replaced what had
evaporated.
This simple technique helps start everything except carrots and parsnips (which must have completely loose
soil to develop correctly). All the gardener must do is intentionally compress the soil below the seeds and
then cover the seeds with a mulch of loose, dry soil. Sprouting seeds then rest atop damp soil exactly they lie
on a damp blotter in a germination laboratory's covered petri dish. This dampness will not disappear before
the sprouting seedling has propelled a root several inches farther down and is putting a leaf into the sunlight.
Chapter 4. Water-Wise Gardening Year-Round 17
Gardening Without Irrigation: or Without Much, Anyway
I've used several techniques to reestablish capillarity after tilling. There's a wise old plastic push planter in my
garage that first compacts the tilled earth with its front wheel, cuts a furrow, drops the seed, and then with its
drag chain pulls loose soil over the furrow. I've also pulled one wheel of a garden cart or pushed a lightly
loaded wheelbarrow down the row to press down a wheel track, sprinkled seed on that compacted furrow, and
then pulled loose soil over it.
Handmade Footprints
Sometimes I sow large brassicas and cucurbits in clumps above a fertilized, double-dug spot. First, in a space
about 18 inches square, I deeply dig in complete organic fertilizer. Then with my fist I punch down a
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