Apparently there are places in New Mexico that are experiencing their driest spring since people started tracking the weather here. When might that have been?
Yep. You read that right. The driest spring in almost 120 years. Holy hell.
Here in Santa Fe we are currently experiencing a severe drought with no relief in sight. Now, I knew it was dry because:
1) We have gotten zero rain
2) There is almost zero humidity in the air
…but a drought. Oh man!
On the small scale, this means I have been watering like a fool (with a hose and with buckets) just trying to give the seeds I planted at the beginning of May a fighting chance. This also means that when I do water, it all evaporates before I can water again a few days later, so nothing is growing. Well, almost nothing. But really, almost none of the seeds I planted 4 weeks ago have come up. I have one pumpkin, a few blue corn and beans, about 4 sweet corn and one sunflower. This all equals sadness in the garden. If it weren’t for the wagons where we started seeds and transplants a few months ago (they’ve had more time to get their roots under them), we would have zero green in the garden.
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| This whole bed should be full of corn, beans and tomatillos. Unfortunately, the majority of what’s come up is sunflowers. Yes, they are pretty, but they won’t feed us well. |
What have I done to help this? Well, we’ve been catching water in the shower, recycling water used to wash veggies, make pasta, etc. and I have mulched all the beds I can as deeply as I can to help with the heat and to hold in the moisture as much as possible. Now I’m just crossing my fingers that the sun can reach through the mulch to actually help the germination process (I’ve also re-seeded several of my beds thinking maybe we just need to start over a bit and give some newbies a shot).
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| The little bit of green you see here is a single sunflower and two transplanted (and very sad) tomatoes. I re-seeded this bed with tomatoes, jalapenos, bell peppers, winter squash and more sunflowers. At this point it’s almost too late to put in seed, but I’m not sure what the other options are… |
But I don’t think I fully understood what the bigger meaning of this was…I just kept thinking, “I don’t ever remember it being this dry before!”
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| This should be cucumbers, pie pumpkins and winter squash. Instead, it’s completely bare. This bed has been re-seeded. |
On a bigger scale it means that ranchers are going broke amidst all this dry, dry, dryness and we will probably wind up with tighter water restrictions than we normally do in the summer. In the long run, I’m not sure what it means for all of us, or for my tiny garden. I guess I’ll just have to adapt…Stinkin’ drought!
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| This whole bed should be peanuts and sweet corn. Instead there are about 5 corn barely peeking through the soil. This bed has (since this pic was taken) been completely re-seeded and covered in mulch. Fingers crossed. |
Very interesting, indeed! It has been a crazy spring and there’s obviously no end in sight! Funny thing is, as soon as I mulched the beds, the majority of my seeds sprouted! Like, literally within 2 days!!! Maybe this is just coincidence but I think they just needed a little extra shade from all the maddening sun. It really makes me wonder though if i should re-assess our garden and be way more intentional with all of my future plantings. I try to be intentional with water but it’s really easy to fall into the trap of “when I turn on the faucet, it just comes out, so everything will be ok”!
What are you doing in your garden this year? In general and with this drought? Do you have any tips to “stretch out” water???
I was talking to a friend of mine from Tesuque Pueblo and he said that some of the elders are saying we are returning to a climate that is more typical for our region. I found that to be an interesting, if not completely scary perspective. Makes me wonder, what do they know that most of us don’t? I know our acequia gente are used to practicing water sharing in times of shortage and know how to “stretch out” the water. I sure feel for the ranchers, too. Anyway…good luck with your seed babies! May they grow to be big and strong…with as little water as possible 🙂