Ezzirah, I sure have! Not going to grow as many tomatos for sure. I may grow some squash and Okra, and that's about it.

What I am growing:

Tomatos - 10 in containers, max
Squash - 1 yellow, 1 zuke, 1 watermelon, 1 canteloupe
Okra - 2 Little Lucy

No peppers this year, didn't get them started.

I am growing some potted flowers for the butterflies and hummingbirds - probably about the same as normal.

Susan

I have changed my plans. I expect to plant buckwheat in an area that I was going to grow food, I don't want to water all the extra plants.

I hope to try to stock up on organic matter and be in better shape next year. Family medical issues have caused me to scale back a little also.

Larry

Well...the flip side to this is "how many of you are planting a bit MORE, due to the crazy economy and the cost of food"????
That would certainly be me...I do know that water costs (the water that I get out of my hose, and not my very-sad-rain-barrel), but if I am careful to mulch, and very judicious in watering, I am hopeful that it will be worth it. If anything is to suffer, it's going to have to be my lawn, or lack thereof.

Sharon

I've changed my plans quite a bit because our garden is huge and gulps water like crazy. Dryland farming in red clay is almost impossible, although in previous droughts I did learn eggplants, peppers and Seminole pumpkin can continue to produce on little rainfall and no irrigation. Some tomatoes will produce when we have drought + low humidity, but they'll need a lot of water.

I think some of my cool-season plants, certainly the snap peas, are doomed. They've been dealing with a lot of high temps in the upper 80s and even 90 a couple of times and they are just sitting there stalled at about a foot tall. Their lower leaves are yellowing and browning like they do in June when the heat is burning them up. So, I may not get any peas and I'd say broccoli and cabbage are iffy but the rest of the cool-season crops (the ones that produce an underground crop) are fine and are growing very well because I am keeping them well-watered.

I'll be planting almost "everything" possible in one big push this week and next after our (hopefully) last night in the 30s on Monday night. My goal is to get it all planted, water it well, feed it well and hope for great production before the drought makes me cut off the watering sometime in June.

Planting everything all at once to the extent that I can means I won't be planting succession crops of beans and southern peas and such every couple of weeks...just planting a lot at one time. I'll plant all three types of corn at once instead of sowing each variety 2 weeks after the preceding one. That's subject to change, of course, if rain were to begin falling regularly and break the drought.

I won't be counting on harvesting all summer long and I won't be planning on a fall garden if the drought continues deep into summer.

I'll probably plant individual seeds or plants in my garden a little more closely than usual. Since rainfall is likely to be scarce, they'll stay a bit smaller so closer spacing won't hurt, and by spacing them closer, they can shade the ground for one another and help keep it cooler. I would not use closer spacing if I were not watering and would choose farther spacing if growing dryland style.

I haven't decided whether to plant many melons. They sure like a lot of water, especially the watermelons, so I'll toss a coin on that one.

I'll be planting fewer flowers and herbs so I can cram every bit of fenced-in garden space with more veggies.

At this point, in our county I'm not worried about the trees and shrubs and such because we have good deep soil moisture from last fall and early winter. Our upper level soil moisture is very poor and that affects mainly affects annuals planted in the spring and veggies because there's not good upper level soil moisture to help get them going.

I've been watering the fruit trees pretty well too so that won't abort their fruit in these dry conditions.

I expect our garden will do moderately well and we'll have lots of goodies to eat, but the question is how much we'll put up for the non-gardening months. I hope to fill up the freezers again this year. We packed the freezers and the canning closet last year, so I still have some of those things left to carry us through part of this year if the garden produces less than we'd like.

The crop that is happiest this year is the lettuce. I'm growing it in a container which has eliminated all my pest problems and which has produced a huge crop of lettuce and other mesclun greens. In the heat it has grown very quickly and hasn't had any pest problems because none of the usual pests can reach it. Onions are a close second.

We have to be flexible, so if the drought were to turn around (which seems unlikely) this spring, I would return to my usual gardening style of heavy succession plantings.

Sharon, I've planted a lot more the last couple of years and the crazy economy and skyrocketing price of food just makes me glad that I've done so. I get "sticker shock" when I look at the price of fresh produce (and other stuff too) at the grocery store. The other day Tim wanted pickles so he went to the area where we store our canned food and found the kind he wanted. That sure beats going to the store and buying them, and that's especially true with gasoline prices going up all the time too.

I don't know that I'll have as many veggies to share with our family and friends as I'd hope to have this year, but I think we'll be able to raise plenty for us. It is just that I'll be trying really hard to get everything planted, producing and then being harvested before the worst of the drought hits at mid-summer. We've been down this road before in our county, in 2003, 2005 and 2008 so I know what to expect and what to do to work around it. However, that doesn't mean I'm happy about it!

Dawn

Exactly...and...one disclaimer here is that I don't EVEN begin to grow on the scale that some of you guys do (!) My extensive garden plans this year are my already-planted 8' X 8' plot + the two new approx. 8' X 4' beds...so you can see that I'm already tiny at my largest, if you know what I mean.

Let's all pray for rain and soon!
Sharon

Dawn - I never heard of "dry land farming". was is that?

I know I was thinking about this the other day and was wondering if what was needed is a change in watering style. I am thinking flood irrigation. Has anyone tried this? It seems to work in the driest parts of Pakistan, so I was wondering since we are dry if it would not work here.

I too have been looking at the prices in the stores and it is just amazing. I am particularly upset at the local walmart who seems to think we are fooled by listing fruit prices by each, not by the pound. 25 cents each, is not cheap in my book. I was hoping to really plant a lot this year, all at once, which I normally do, and get a good harvest to store. :( It may not happen.

I'm going to put a good effort into a productive garden. We need to replenish our pantry.

We usually sell at the farmers market, i'm affraid some folks are going to be dissapointed this year. I'm going to be selfish and keep all i can.

we was at walmart yesterday and was price checking the produce.(which most of it was from guatamala,chile,mexico)

The prices are shocking, but at the same time, i know how much work i put into raising a crop.And mine actually has some flavor. The last fruit i bought was plums and grapes. they were bland, no flavor to speak of. But i'm sure some folks have never ate a true vine/tree ripe fruit/vegetable.
Another thing i wonder about is nutritional value, do vegetable/fruit have any nutritional value if it is picked green,trucked across the country and artificially ripened?

I know i have a cousin that trucked veg/fruit for a while.He said tomatoes were green when loaded, he would turn the chiller on in the box untill he was within so many miles and then open the vents to get warm air over them.They would be red when un loaded.

Sure wished we would get some moisture so i could plant some corn.

Ezzirah,

Dryland farming means raising crops only with natural rainfall! For the record, it is hard to do, especially in our part of the country where heat is so extreme and drought is so common and where "enough" rain rarely falls in July and August even when we are not officially in drought.

My Dad's family dryland farmed on the Texas side of the Red River about 30 or 40 miles from where I now live back in the 1920s-1940s when he was growing up. It was a very hard life and while they were able to survive on what they raised themselves, they rarely had cash to purchase anything they couldn't or didn't raise themselves. I do think his love of gardening came from growing up on the farm, but he never attempted to grow dryland at our house when I was a kid growing up. In a bad year, about all they could raise dryland style in Nocona, Texas, was corn and pinto beans. Sometimes okra and melons if they had enough rain in May and June to get them going before the real heat arrived. In a good year, they could raise anything and everything and they always canned every bit they could not just for that year but in case the crops failed the next year.

When I was a teenager, my dad took us back to the farm (by then it was just a cow pasture and the old unpainted house was collapsing and being used to store bales of hay). The old red sandy-clayey soil there was so poor that there wasn't a lot growing in it. Looking at it, I could not imagine, even as a teenager, how they were able to raise enough food in that soil to feed their family year-round, or how the skimpy pastures had nourished their milk cow, pigs and chickens and also their donkeys that pulled their plow. Somehow they did it, but I cannot imagine raising a garden with no supplemental water at all, especially knowing it was our only food supply.

They would carry out the wash tub of water after washing dishes, clothing, or even people, and dump the 'used' wash water on their most precious plants, but that couldn't have amounted to much water in comparison to trying to raise a year's supply of food for 11 people.

Care to give dryland farming/gardening a try? Just try raising a garden with no supplemental water. It is the most frustrating thing in the world, especially in drought years.

Some of our older neighbors here grew up dryland farming and they have absolutely no desire to have a vegetable garden now. All their memories of growing their food with their parents when they were growing up are painful ones....hauling buckets of water from the river or from a well, hoeing by hand for hours a day, hand-picking bugs in the blistering sunlight, etc. The work was so hard and the results so poor in the absence of rainfall that they never developed the love of gardening many of us have.

Think how lucky we are. All we have to do is turn on the water hose.....and pay the water bill!

Dawn

My grandparents make their entire living on dryland farming now, and they live in western KS where they only get about 15" of rain a year in normal years. Of course, they grow winter wheat and milo which can tolerate being so dry, and there's a huge difference between tilling the soil by hand to feed your own family and driving around in circles in the comfort of an air-conditioned tractor on a much larger scale for income. My grandmother used to try to keep a garden and would get loads of strawberries and cherries, but it's definitely hard to do when mother nature gives you so little rain and constant wind.

I'm not changing my gardening plans much, but I'm letting our lawn go dormant. The neighbors are watering like crazy, and I just don't see the point. It's less to mow for my fiancee anyway. ;)

I am planning on purchasing some more 55 gallon drums to set under the eaves of buildings to catch rainwater.

We decided not to grow melons. They don't do well for us anyway as we plant them in the middle of the corn bed and that means they don't get enough sun til the corn comes out in July and by then they should be about ready to eat, and ours are always still small.

Otherwise my garden will need more water than in previous years because we took out 6 50 ft rows of asparagus and will be growing cucumbers, squash and strawberries in part of that space. I never watered the asparagus bed, but will have to water the new stuff.

Also have newly planted nut and fruit trees which will need lots of water this summer and next.

Plan to mulch the summer stuff even heavier than usual.
Watering will be as it has been for years, from soaker hoses buried under the mulch.

Since DH retired, we spend much less money on gas. (He used to drive 120 miles a day.) So we aren't worried too much about the extra money for water.

Good grief. I could never imagine dry land farming! That sounds so hard! Yeah, I am not going to complain about the water situation this year!

Not me. I am forever optimistic.

I am sure I will be cursing in a month or two.

Next year's project is pvc irrigation. First I make it pretty, then I make it functional. ;)

Jo

I've never been one to water. My gardens have always been watered once, maybe twice each year when first getting direct seeds going and that's it. (Unless the kids get the rare wasted water treat of playing in the sprinkler on a terribly hot day.) Of course, in OK, we usually got plenty more rain than much of the rest of OK. Still, we'd be dry from mid-June until fall most times, not much in the way of rainfall.

Here, I've already changed up the garden plans but not for drought. They're calling for some massive flooding in the area this spring. We'll be fine here but flooding nearby will mean that our moisture will drain away much slower. We were going to do raised beds, just adding in a few each year as we could afford to buy lumber for the sides. Since seeing the flooding forecast, we've gone ahead and are doing all raised beds without sides from the beginning. We're also adding in drainage trenches to carry the excess water away. If it turns out to be drier than expected, it'll be easy enough to block those trenches back up temporarily. This way we're prepared no matter which way it ends up.

Diane

Jo - PVC irrigation? I was thinking of the same thing. I saw this thing online that was a plan that was drawn up by a kid in Kenya where a bucket was placed in front of the garden with the pvc pipe running out of the bucket ( the bucket sits about a foot up on a stool) then out through the garden. It was called dream kit. (because he won an award for the design, and it was then sold in Kenya in kits) Pretty cool stuff.

Here is a link that might be useful: link that outlines the system