Southern California has a bizarre relationship with
water. The water that flows from your
tap or garden hose in Los Angeles comes from hundreds of miles away, from the
Owens River Valley, from the Colorado River, or from the State Water Project
which is basically the Sacramento area.
Meanwhile, all the rain that falls here locally on the city each year is
treated like a waste product. It is
whisked away as fast as possible, off our properties, into the storm drains,
and out into the ocean (where each year its chemistry and pollutants cause
great disruptions to ocean life).
Over the past few years, California has experienced droughts
severe enough to merit water use regulations.
Residents complained – a lot – but in our classes at the Community
Garden we point out that some of the regulations are wise gardening practices
anyway, and that water consciousness is the new normal.
Climate change is shifting our rainfall patterns. Rain will fall in different places – not
necessarily in the locations and quantities that our massive water collection
infrastructure has been built to collect.
The Union of Concerned Scientists forecasts that in future decades,
Californians will have only 70% of the water supply we do today, and that’s the
best case scenario. If we keep emitting
greenhouse gasses at business-as-usual levels, we may change the climate so
much that by 2070 Southern California may have a mere 10% of the water supply
we have today.
Pumping and processing water in California takes lots of
energy: 18% of the state’s electricity.
Thus saving water means saving energy as well. Since nearly 64% of the state’s electricity
is derived from fossil sources (18.2% from filthy coal and 45.7% from not-much-better
natural gas ) saving water becomes another big way to cut greenhouse gas
emissions.
As we leave the era of cheap oil, how will we maintain our
water infrastructure? How will we keep
those vast pipelines operational? Sure,
the Romans made aqueducts without the benefit of fossil fuels-driven vehicles
to repair and rebuild them. How will we
do it amidst an era of severe economic contraction? In James Herbert’s novel Dune, characters were forced to stretch far beyond water “conservation”
– they had to develop moisture consciousness.
No matter which way we look at it, the answer remains the
same: the days of opulent water
consumption are now over. The ways of
the future include expanding our water sources with localized rainwater
harvesting, changing our water use habits to reflect appropriate use, embracing
extreme conservation, and changing our attitude about “waste”water.
That said, how do we go about getting high yields in our
urban agriculture despite limited water resources? Oddly enough, the answers don’t begin with drip fittings and
hose-end nozzles. The answers begin on
the drawing board, when you’re planning your garden. And like everything else in organic gardening,
the answers begin with the soil – rich, healthy, live garden soil.
We have a misleading expression in our language in that we
say “I have to go water my plants.” The
more appropriate phrase would be “I have to go water my soil.” Recall the soil critters we talked about in
Chapter 3. As we water our garden, our
goal is to keep those soil critters
happy.
Organic material within your soil acts like a sponge. It will soak up water and hold it in the root
zone for soil critters and roots alike.
When the sandy soils in my Westchester garden and at the Community
Garden at Holy Nativity get dry, the particles within the soil merge together
and make a tight surface. When you water
that overdry stuff, the water beads up on the surface and runs off, leaving the
soil mass as dry as ever. As clay soils
dry, the soil particles clump together in heavy, thick clods. Deep cracks form between the masses. When you apply water, it runs down the cracks
and fails to penetrate the clods.
Start building your soil. Add plenty of organic material – live
homemade compost, or store-bought if you have to. Compost feeds your soil critters, plus serves
as a “sponge” to hold moisture.
Mulch is the fluffy quilt on top of your growing beds. It helps slow evaporation, thus slows water
loss from your soil. In late spring,
when the weather begins to warm up and the nights are no longer as cool, it’s
mulching time. Mulch everything. Put a thick blanket of material across your
entire garden. Remember Emilia
Hazelip: Nature abhors bare soil.
The grading of your soil – the hills and dales and
earthforms -- are important too. Photos
of the fields of Kansas have mislead us into thinking our gardens should be
flat. But we don’t have giant combines, thus
we don’t necessarily need flat. As
you’ll see in the rainwater harvesting section, sculpted earth forms can be an
important tool.
Garden catalogs promote raised beds, but in our Southern
California dry season, a raised bed is an isolated block of soil exposed on
five sides to the drying influences of the air.
It simply doesn’t make sense.
Here in Southern California, we should be doing the
opposite. We should take a lesson from
the Anasazi of the desert Southwest and use sunken beds. Sunken beds
are only exposed to the drying air on one side – all the other sides are
enclosed by Mother Earth. At my home garden and in the Community Garden at Holy Nativity, we have been experimenting with planting in
depressions in the earth.
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