Many people are adding pools just for a water reserve.

 

I mulch the garden every year with straw, wood saw dust and chips and compost. Not many gardens left around here, but mine is producing heavy right now.

 

A simple thing i've done is plant near trees for the shade. i've found most veggies dont need as much sun as they say they do! plus plant further apart. :thumb:

 

I have lived in Las Vegas in the past and found the only things I was able to grow were...lemons, limes, corn, sunflower seeds and beans. My attempts at growing squash, tomatoes,basil, eggplant were quite unsuccessful due to the fact I couldn't control the amount of sun/shade plants were getting.

 

First thing I did once I cleared my land was put in a pond. Takes a while to seal itself and to fill, so that went in before even the house was built.

A 2000 sq foot roof collects over 1000 gallons with just an inch of rain. That is a lot of 55 gallon drums. Put in a cistern and you will be way ahead of the masses.

 

One word,, MULCH. You will be astonished at how little water your plants need. Tree roots are water hogs and those roots spread out real far. Like the pool idea, But it must be filled and evaporation prevented. I hear you can still buy and install hand pumps on wells though I'm not sure how. You can have interchangeable electric and hand pumps that supposedly are simple to change.Some places people can have their own well, even in town. My dad had 2 wells on his farm. during the 80's droughts, 1 went dry. We had to carry water from grammas house across the road. Going in with neighbors and having multiple wells with hand pumps would be great to have during SHTF

 

My family spends 40k a year in crop insurance. If you are in Indiana and still have a garden you are bad @ass. Water collect and other tricks are great to know but nothing beats 6-8 inches of compost. Budog got a good idea but in a wet season it will cost you on production. (Once you hit a drought like this all water will be used for your self or live stock)

 

Water is Life out here in the desert. Twice in the last 12 days water pressure has dropped to zip, zero, nada, and lasted for several hours. Apparently the water company has been having pump failures. While I have potable water for over 30 days, water for other uses is only about 20 gallons right now. So I'm looking at getting a 250-325 gallon tank just for secondary usage in the next couple of days. A cisturn would be better but the finances just arn't there.

 

Our BOL has a swimming pool that's rather huge. 12' deep and maybe 24 yards long. Half of it is 12' deep though. Has a shallow and a deep end. We are going to make it so all our rain water goes into it so we have constant, clean, water to use.

 

Yes. We're having an exceptionally hot summer. I had mulched the front, which worked great for a while, but it should have been more ( I did about 3 inches of straw this year) I will do more straw.

I like Mike's idea of planting under trees. I noticed one of my neighbors grows tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, etc, and they grow under the outer edges of trees.

I have two wells, one doesn't have that much, but they refill quite quickly. I have so many things to get on such a limited budget, but one of the things I'll get is a handpump.


One of the members on the board here has made a novel inexpensive LARGE water storage tank with photos. the one he initially made is rectangular and it looks good. He is going to make another one, but circular as this will be even better. So I am considering making a largish one near the house and a smaller one toward the end of the field so that I can drain water to the garden. I can use rain water collection during winter months and also the wells to fill up the water storage. Here's the link, if you check out the "photo's" link, you'll see lots of pictures with detailed steps of how he did it. http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=248228

Also I'm thinking of using my electric pump while I still can, in the winter, and just really soak my field and THEN do the mulching - to give it a really good reserve and the mulch will keep it moist.

Also I'm looking at shade cloth. It's the hot hot HOT sun beating down on the plants that scorches them.

A week or so ago, it was 118 degrees in the sun. It's just not fair on anything living to be exposed to that!!##@!@@

 

In a drought your 55 gallon water barrels will be about as good for your garden as peeing on a bushfire i'm afraid.

Gardens use a LOT of water. As other posters have stated you need cisterns, pools or ponds to have any hope of having enough water for garden usage.

I have a 1250 gallon cistern which is not nearly enough for garden watering, but it will do me for drinking, cleaning and cooking indefinitely (fills with the rain).

 

I have been looking at installing a couple thousand gallon water tank, along with a small pond to feed the garden.

 

add as much organic matter/compost as you possibly can to your soil & use organic or plastic mulch. using shadecloth covers is way better than planting under trees, they are water & nutrient hogs and their roots extend out to the dripline. but alot of plants require full sun depending on your region.

 

Best thing about living in new england i have almost unlimited amounts of leaf mold available at my towns transfer station, the stuff is amazing at holding moisture in the soil.

 

Get land next to a river.

 

3 things. Move to my state of MN; 10,000 lakes, 5,000 ponds and 2,500 rivers and creaks and you are good. Second, hunting trick is to buy small, plasit kid pools, bury in locations and they are good rain catchers. Third, you could do hyroponics.

 

An open pool or pond can have the water level drop fast from evaporation if you are dealing with 100+ temps. and wind.

For long-term, better have a well or other means to refill storage.
In addition to mulch in a garden, building up the organic matter in the soil helps the water holding capacity.

 

Quite true. In addition, still, open water invites all sorts of insects, including mosquitoes.

Rainwater capture is great, but do not forget that you must discard the first of the water, especially if you intend to drink it. (It may be just me, but I would never water my vegetables with water I would not generally drink.) The rule of thumb that I have seen is dispose about 1 gallon for every 100 sq feet of capture area for a roof of the first of the rainwater.

 

I agree with mulching and growing in areas that are shady (not dark). I used low tunnels this year. (Wire hoops holding up light fabric that lets light and rain in.) I was trying to protect cabbage family from cabbage butterfly but it turned out that the plants also needed a lot less watering, as in almost none. Another thing I do is plant closer than the seed packages and "experts" tell you to, I get a bit smaller yield per plant but the plants shade the soil, the water doesn't evaporate as fast and because there are more plants the total yield is the same. Unless you have a good method for filtering and boiling water, rain that can be safe for plants may not be for people since roofs can have toxic chemicals, plus things like animal feces. Of course, if you have to use it, you have to use it. I have many things growing in my back and now front yard and I don't water often. Most plants will get used to less water by having deeper roots. My fruit trees and bushes are never watered and this year they have done better than ever. (I'm trying to kill all my lawn but since I never have watered it in seven years, it's always green when my neighbors' are brown.) We are lucky because we have been getting rain again after a while of almost none. I'm also lucky I live about a mile from the Mississippi in an area before it becomes really toxic so that's my backup plan for the plants.

 

Also plant things that can tolerate drought.

In the main forum I just read about blackeyed peas and how well they do.

I am looking at what is doing well this year in the extreme heat and taking note. My figs, for instance, are the best they've ever been and incredibly sweet. Grapes and plums are doing really really well. Quinces are abundant but smaller than last year.

 

Watering restrictions are imposed on the citizens here in Texas. NATURALLY, this does not apply to MUNICIPAL buildings. I think we should all take 5 gallon buckets down to the city hall, place them all over the lawn , and collect the excess water from their sprinkler systems. TP

 

Great idea!!! :thumb:

 

http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=249299

These aussies have the best Ideas, they been going with out water for a longer time than we have.

There are companies in Australia, Texas, and Oklahoma that build these large tanks that can be hooked to you gutters and collect your rain water, from there it is as simple as hooking up a water pump, or attaching a spiggot into the base of the tank.

Think about how much water there is in just one inch of rain hitting the top of your house.

 

Water here in Australia is pretty scarce at times, but like many other countries a lot of people waste this most valuable resource. My husband and I used to run an organic piggery in an outback area that did not get a lot of rain, we ran of a dam that we had dug out and every couple of years we would invest in putting a little bit more depth to it if possible. We did have a 2 rain water tanks holding around 10000 litres but our main concern was actually evaporation from the dam. We used a trick that many have used before not too pretty but is quite effective. Gather some soft drink/juice bottles etc. half fill them with water and put the cap back on, toss them into your dam/pond etc. the light still goes into your water source but when the bottles settles lengthways on the water the widest part of the bottle is at the top level of your water, cover the pond with these and if you have some coloured ones this will help cool the water for fish etc. giving them a little reprieve from the heat as well. We stopped a lot of evaporation this way until we could develop some shade over the area with trees etc. If you have the money place some kind of pool cover over it but the bottles do just fine and it is recycling after all, they are easy to get out if need be and the fish are much happier if you have any in there. Just remember to leave a small area for fish to come to the surface if need be.

We ran our small piggery and a massive vegetable garden and orchard as well as the house and other livestock on our small dam and 2 inches of rain (if lucky) per year.

Good luck during the drought guys, I know how you feel been through a 10 year drought here not fun.

 

2" of rain? Wow, you do know drought.
I would have never thought of pop bottles on a pond to reduce evaporation.
Great idea. What plants and orchard crops did you raise on so little rain fall?
Did you have your own water well? What supplied water to your pond?
Did you line your pond?

 

Streams

I had always wanted land with a creek or stream on it, and 6 years ago I got it. We added a pond that is continually fed by several springs, and even in years of moderate drought I've not noticed a decrease in flow.

It took time to find the right property and luck, but we now have a renewable source of fuel (trees), water and food (fish). We're working on our garden and fruit production, but even if I have to carry water from a stream to irrigate, I feel fortunate and blessed.

 

Yep, Back to Eden garden. Won't have to worry about whether it rains or doesn't and won't have to share water with the garden.