Drought resistant plants, lots of soaker hose, 3-5 inches of mulch on everything, and deep watering once a week. I hope that all the soil improvement I've been doing during the wet years has helped make the soil able to hold more moistures without becoming clay soup. We'll see! We made it through the last drought without losing anything

I keep telling my husband I am going to keep buckets in the shower and collect the water that runs before it gets warm enough to jump in. He doesn't like that idea at all, but I think he will dislike super high water bills even more. That is, of course, if we are even allowed to water if we go into drought status. The way the city here laid out its new water law makes it seem my area (outside city limits) will get cut off before those folks in town. *sigh*

DH is supposed to put out some barrels for me to capture rain..if and when we get some. Seeing 1/2inch total for the past 8 weeks wouldn't have filled very much.

I also have more mulch down in the garden and suppose I ought to put some around my berry bushes as well.

Here's to hoping the forecasts are wrong and that we will NOT have a drought year again.

~Heidi

Just the usual drought precautions, about the same ones OKC1 mentioned: lots and lots of mulch; soaker hoses and drip irrigation; deep watering once a week to promote deep root growth; putting out buckets, barrels and tubs to catch rainwater IF it should rain, and hoping (just like OKC1) that all these years of soil improvement will pay off. All I can say is that for all the compost and other soil improving materials I've added, it had better pay off! :)

I also zone all my plants according to water needs, so that those with the highest water needs are all together in one bed, those with lower water needs (and that will get no supplemental irrigation) are grouped together, etc.

I'm only putting water plants in one small pond, so the other 3 can just go dry (and they are, quite rapidly, in fact!) and I won't have to worry about them.

Most of my annuals are REALLY tough, drought-resistant plants like zinnias, cleome, Texas Hummingbird Sage, tall verbena (Verbena Bonariensis), Mexican Sunflower, etc., and I won't plant any annuals this year that are real water guzzlers. I'm going to add more mulch around the shrubs and trees, and continue adding throughout the summer.

The good drought news (and you have to look for the silver lining in any situation) is that my veggie garden does best in drought years. With only minimal water, it will give me tasty okra, tomatoes, beans, black-eyed peas, melons and peppers. I think hot peppers and tomatoes taste best during drought years.

Droughts often bring masses of grasshoppers, so now is the time to consider how to deal with them. I usually put out Nolo Bait, which is a natural bacteria that kills them when they are in the smaller instars. My guineas take care of the rest.

For the wildlife, I keep a small wildlife pond filled with water, and put out fruit for them occasionally, as they suffer during drought too. For the birds, I keep a birdbath full of water, too, and will put out birdseed if SEVERE drought is affecting their natural food sources.

That's about all I can think of. Oh, and don't forget to water your house foundation and the soil zone around it with soaker hoses if you have the kind of clay soil that contracts/expands/cracks. It can save you from major foundation damage during severe droughts!

Dawn

When I was a kid my Dad disconected the washing machine from the main septic drain line, and let the water go directly onto the lawn. That probably wouldnt work if you live in a city, but you might try it in the country. My brother-in-law actually has a special septic system that uses grey water (not used for drinking) to water his yard. It seems to work well especially if you are concerned about prairie fires like we are in SW OK. Susan

Dawn-
Where do you get the Nolo Bait? I absolutely hate grasshoppers, but I hate poison more. I have guineas, too, but only four are full grown now, and I have four "tweens." They have finally feathered out, but I won't let them around the others until they are full grown. I had a massacre last year when I got in a hurry.
AMy

Amy,

I have never found the Nolo Bait in Oklahoma (which is not to say that it is not here). I bet it could be found at feed stores or nurseries, but I don't know for sure. If you want to find it in your county, you might try asking the agricultural extension service office for your county if they know of any local suppliers.

I usually buy mine at Marshall Grain Company in Fort Worth, since I have family there and go down there once every couple of weeks or so. I don't know where you live in Oklahoma, or if you've ever down in Texas, but I have found it at the Calloway's Nursery in Denton before.

You can order it on-line and have it shipped. A lot of the folks that sell organic products have it, and shipping wouldn't be too much if you only needed a 1-lb. pkg. Now, if you need 25 or 50 lbs, that's a whole different story. Planet Natural is one company that sells it under the name Semaspore Bait, in 1-lb., 5-lb. and 50-lb. pkgs. One pound covers one acre. Their website is www.planetnatural.com.

If you've never used Nolo Bait, you need to know that it will infect this year's grasshoppers SOME but the real difference will be most apparent next year. Once grasshoppers eat the stuff and begin dying, the disease is spread to the others through cannibalism. They claim that in 2 to 4 weeks, 50% of the current population of grasshopppers will die, if you put out the Semaspore while the hoppers are at the 1/4" to 1/2" stage. From my experience, I think they are not exaggerating. But, one problem with grasshoppers is that even if you kill the ones you have, more may migrate in. I guess the guineas could take care of those, though!

One advantage of using Semasphore or Nolo Bait is that even the sickened grasshoppers who don't die are still affected and will eat 75% less of your plants! If you don't use all the Semasphore or Nolo at one time, just refrigerate it. It will last 5 months in the fridge, or 4 to 6 weeks in the closet. I'm always careful when I buy it to check the "Packed On" or "Use By" date, as some retailers will sell it when it is out-of-date.

The active ingredient is Nosema locustae, a naturally occurring grasshopper disease. The bait is safe for use around people, pets, etc. I think it may kill crickets or locusts also, but I'm not positive.

I have read that one guinea can eat 2 lbs of hoppers a day, so you may not need to put out Nolo Bait at all, unless past experience indicates that putting it out would be a prudent move. I only use it in the worst drought years, and think I last put it out in 2002 maybe? That was before I had guineas.

I've very careful with my birds too. They free range during the day, Spring-Fall, and are securely locked up at night. Lately they've been staying locked up in their coop/pen all day, 'cause we have a panther prowling about.
I do lose one of them occasionally, but they seem able to reproduce enough babies each year to sustain their population. Right now I have 3 tiny keets with more eggs to hatch.

If you have more questions about Nolo Bait/Semasphore, let me know.

And, if you have an outbreak of grasshoppers later in the year when it is too late to use Semasphore/Nolo Bait, there is a relatively new product, also offered by Planet Natural, called EcoBran. You can see it on their website. I haven't tried it, but folks who have tried it felt it was effective when they used it. It is a chemical, but it has a relatively low percentage of active ingredient. I don't know if it is labeled for use around poultry or gamebirds though.

Dawn

They usually have Nolo Bait at TLC in OKC -- got some there the last 2 years and will be looking for more this week.

Diane,

Thanks for the response on where it can be found in OKC! Since I am down here in far, far southern Oklahoma, I am clueless about where to find stuff in this state, as we're in a remote area far from almost all of y'all!

Thanks again,

Dawn

I've bought the Nolo bait at Plants and Things (?) nursery in Purcell. At least I think that's the name of it. It's the nursery out by the Interstate. I sure need to buy some more Nolo soon. We had a grasshopper plague here for three years that began after a rainless April. I can't stand to remember those years when the grasshoppers ate everything we planted . . .

So tell me how Nolo Bait is packaged . . . I've never even heard of it before. Is it a powder? Where do you put it to get the best results?

D.

Wolflover,

Weren't those the most awful years? I hope never again to experience something like that. Those hoppers were even eating the window screens!

D.

Nolo Bait is packaged and sold under different names. The two I see most commonly are Nolo Bait and Semasphore. The actual active ingredient to watch for is Nosema locustae. I usually buy it in a one-pound tub or a five-pound bucket, because I have to cover a large part of my 14 acres. A woman I know in Texas who has a lot of acreage buys it in 50-lb. bags, but I think she has to get the feed store to special-order the bags for her, as most people buy the smaller quantities.

It is a granular product...not quite a superfine powder because the protozoan which is the active ingredient is on pieces of wheat bran the grasshoppers eat. I scattered it by hand or using an old, antique flour sifter as I like to keep things simple. Since it is non-toxic to humans, it is perfectly safe to handle it with your bare hands. The month of May, before it gets too hot, is the idea time to put it out. The smaller the hoppers are, the better it works.

Here's a link that shows one Nosema locustae product:

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Nosema product at bottom of page

I have questions about watering. Just found a couple of soaker hoses at our Habitat for Humanity Restore for $2 each, but I 've never used soaker hoses so need the Watering 101 instruction. Am I correct that I need to run them right near the plants I'm trying to water, or will they water an entire bed? How long do I keep the hose running when I use them. Very low pressure, right? Do I just water once a week or more regularly - In other words, is this the same as the once weekly deep watering or something different.

And about the once weekly deep watering - How do you know when you 've watered deeply enough.

Thanks all.

okprairie, put a coffee can in the garden, water from above. When there's an inch of water in the can, that should be enough. 1 inch once a week should be plenty to keep everything going.

Or, you can plant drought tolerant natives that slough off drought and heat because they're used to these conditions! My front bed of purple coneflower, goldenrod, black-eyed susan, penstemon, stokes aster, coreopsis and bluestem doesn't seem to know it hasn't been raining.

OKprairie,

You can use soaker hoses to give your trees, shrubs, flower beds, ground cover beds and veggie gardens their once-a-week deep watering. For large lawn area, sprinklers will do a better job of evenly distributing the water though.

To use soaker hoses successfully, all you have to do is pay attention to your soil and how quickly it absorbs water. It is mostly a trial-and-error process since everyone's soil absorbs moisture at its own rate. Good soil will absorb water fairly easily whereas dense clay soil will not. If you are watering dense clay soil with a soaker hose you will have to watch closely for run-off. If you see run-off occurring, turn off the soaker hose and wait for the already-applied water to penetrate deeper into the ground. Then, if the soil still needs more moisture, turn the hose back on. Run-off will be more of a problem on slopes also.

For trees and shrubs be sure you place the soaker hoses so the entire root zone receives water. Many people place the hoses too close to the trunks and neglect areas farther out.

I use soaker hoses to water shrub & flower beds and my veggie garden. In a raised bed I will run the soaker hose down the highest side of the bed (my property has a gentle slope) and then down the middle of the bed. This ensures the whole bed receives adequate moisture. If the bed was ABSOLUTELY level, I would run the hose down each side, but I have to compensate for the slope of the land/bed.

I will use sprinklers on the lawn, if they need it, and will use cans as Matt already described to measure the amount of moisture dispersed through the sprinklers. I use sprinklers that keep the water as low to the ground as possible. As much as 35% of the water from sprinklers can be lost to evaporation. In times of drought I pretty much let my lawn go dormant and water it just enough to keep it alive, but not necessarily green.

During most summers, one inch of water a week will keep most plants alive. There are exceptions, though, which is one thing that makes it so hard to try to water according to some pre-scripted set of rules.

I always pay attention to the "pan evaportion rates" for my county which I can get from the data from the mesonet station nearest me, and which our local weather guy always gives on the noon news.

If pan evaporation rates for each day add up to a moisture loss of 2" a week, for example, I may have to give my lawn more than 1" of water. But, it all depends on the soil and how quickly it dries out, as soil evaporates less quickly in the ground than in a pan. Still, pan evaporation rates and relative humidity rates help me understand how quickly or slowly the soil is drying out.

Unlike many people, I never water my vegetable garden with sprinklers as getting moisture on the leaves encourages all kinds of foliage diseases. And I have found that many plants can get by on very little irrigation--but that may be because I have deliberately planted trees, shrubs and flowers that are low-water users.

Hope this info helps. I know it would be nice if we could just print some sort of canned statement like, "water once a week for 3 hours", but it simply isn't possible due to the variability in soil water absorption, evaporation rates, etc.

Good luck keeping everything green.

Dawn

Thanks. That helps. I can see it's going to take awhile to get them situated to best advantage. Do you hide yours under mulch?

Some of them I do, and some I don't. The ones that are in shrub/perennial beds are under mulch (at least until a thunderstorm with 4" of rain washes the mulch downhill!). The ones I use to water trees get moved around, because I have lawn and no mulch under some of the smaller trees. I AM looking forward to the day that those trees are big enough to shade out the bermuda. Then I will plant groundcovers under the trees, lay down soaker hoses and add mulch to hide the hoses!

The ones in the veggie garden also get moved around. If I ever win the lottery, I will buy a soaker hose for each raised bed in the veggie garden, but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen! (I don't buy lottery tickets, so can't expect to win it, can I?) I really ought to buy one hose for each raised row and put them permanently under the mulch, but the thought of buying that many hoses makes me wince.

In past years I was so guilty of overwatering everything, and gradually I learned that plants could get by on less and less and then even less water than I was giving them.

Learning how much water plants need is part art and part science. Mulching helps hold soil moisture in considerably, and the thicker/deeper the mulch the better.

The whole key is deep watering. Nothing else you do will help your plants as much. If you water deeply the roots will learn to reach down deeply. However, if you water shallowly, and all the moisture stays just under the top surface of the soil, that is where all the roots will be.
Plants with no deep roots and many surface roots will NEVER get enough water to stay happy, but plants with lots of deep roots can survive on relatively little water.

When a drought is looming, I decide ahead of time what is worth saving and what it not. This is a hard thing to do, but it is best to make this decision when you can be calm, cool, rational and logical. Once everything starts wilting, leaf margins are showing stress, leaves are drying and curling under, etc., it is easy to panic and just water, water, water, at least until the water bill arrives and you say, "Well, I can't run up a bill like this again!" lol

So, if I had to decide NOW what I would do if a drought occurs this summer, here's what I'd decide:

1) Top Priority: the soil immediately around the foundation of the house and the shrubs beds that surround the house. This is important to avoid cracking of the clay soil that can lead to foundation cracks. My highest-need plants, water-wise, were planted here deliberately, and the soil is amended/improved and heavily mulched.

2) Raised beds with roses and herbs. These are small beds, well-amended soil, and well-mulched. They are right by the back-entrance to our home which we use all the time, so they are a high-priority. Also, any container plants would be watered and maintained. I add water-retention gel granules to my containers when I plant them so that they hold their water well and don't need to be watered as frequently.

3) Veggie garden. As long as it is producing well, I will water it. If production drops sharply because of extreme heat, drought or insects, I stop watering and let it sink or swim or its own.

4) Trees. All but the very newest and youngest trees can get by on little water. I make sure to water the absolute youngest and newest trees (in the ground 2 years or less) though, as they are not well-enough established to survive on their own. Large trees have to get buy on what nature provides.

5) Herbs, Perennials, Annuals: Minimal water. I don't go to great lengths to keep them alive. Can't afford to.

6) Lawn--Bermuda grass will go dormant and turn brown. It is only dormant at that point and not dead. I let it go dormant sometimes. Other times I water it well. The key is this: if we are having a lot of wildfires in our county and the fire danger is Extremely High, I try to keep a green buffer of about 30 yards all around our house. If fire danger is relatively low, I let the bermuda grass go dormant and brown out. As soon as rain comes it will green up again.

7. Pastureland: Only a small portion of the pastureland behind the garage might get watered if needed. The reason would be to maintain a fire buffer.

8. Woodlands: About 10 of our 14 acres are woodland. They get no supplemental water ever. Because of the danger of wild fire, I spend part of each winter cleaning out the underbrush and deadfall in the woods and limbing up tree limbs no less than 8' or 10' from the ground. Vines are not allowed to climb the trees because fire can climb the vines up into the trees. (Now, every year the vines try to climb up, and every year I cut them back. Guess it is a standoff.)

You asked a simple question and I gave a long and complicated answer. Sorry. It's just that after 20 years or so of battling our climate and droughts, I want to share what I've been able to learn.

Dawn, who would be writing more brief answers if the weather were nice and she could go out and play in the dirt!

Thank you, Dawn. I appreciate your sharing very much.

We're not getting any rain here. :( I have to stay inside and work, though - seriously. Just stopped by here to check. I'm going back to work now.

Do you shop second hand stores? Seems like I see soaker hoses a lot in these places. I got mine for $2 each at the Habitat for Humanity Restore here.

Happy to share any info that will help with our looming drought.

I do like to shop at secondhand stores, but we don't have a lot of them around here. Actually, since we live in a rural area, we don't have a lot of any kind of store. lol
But, whenever I make it into a town of any size, I go visit the stores, both second-hand and otherwise. Sometimes I get so sick of Wal-Mart I could scream, but that's what we have, so that's where I go.

It is getting better, store-wise. When we first moved here, the nearest Lowe's was in Sherman. The nearest Home Depot was in Denton. Now we have a Lowe's about 20 miles away from us in Ardmore, and a Home Depot about 20 miles away in Gainesville. And each of those towns has a second-hand store or two.

The nearest Habitat for Humanity Restore to us is in Fort Worth, as far as I know, about 75 or 80 miles away.

My drought techniques may not suit everybody - but I dig all the super precious plants up and make a special bed of highly ammended soil and sort of concentrate their numbers in that space. That way if watering is going to be minimal I only have to water one small area to keep the favorites alive. Everybody else just gets mulched and cut back hard. Some years it works others it doesn't.

Hi TriangleJohn,

Thanks for the input. We're always on the lookout for new ways to help our plants survive drought.

How common are droughts in North Carolina? Because here it seems like we have them maybe 3 years out of every 5, with a really, really severe one maybe once every 6 or 7 years.

Last year was both cooler and rainier than usual and was a rare treat! We only broke 100 degrees one time here in southern Oklahoma. It looks like we are paying for it this year.

Dawn

A drought out here is nothing compared to the droughts back home. I remember times in the late 70's or early 80's when the leaves fell off the trees in August and the ground was so cracked and it was over 100 for like 40 days in a row (this is in central OK). Out here it still rains but only half an inch each week instead of a full inch. The higher humidity helps the plants but not the people (actually the humidity here in Raleigh isn't that different then OK towns like Idabell or Poteau). I've only lived here a little over 4 years and only been through one drought where water restrictions were in place, lawns suffered but not much else. The real blessing is the absence of strong wind. Its nice have tall plants stay tall without being staked.

The drought you're remembering from the late 70s or early 80s is one I remember also. I lived in Texas at the time. It was awful. I had a car with no air conditioning too!

North Carolina sounds nice! We just met some new Okies at the plant swap in OKC last week and they had moved here from North Carolina.

Oh, c'mon, don't you secretly miss that Oklahoma wind sweeping o'er the plains, and knocking down all the tall plants in its paths!! Some years it looks like I am trying to grow corn and hollyhocks horizontally on the ground....
have a great day!

Dawn