I think most of us started with picking a spot for the garden, the spot decided on had terrible soil, and we got busy and improved it. Won't be done in one season, but if you can get a few loads of horse manure or other suitable compost to mix with the clay, a reasonable harvest could be achieved.

I'm not sure I'd try to raise the existing garden, if the raised portion is sitting (floating?) on water.... Take whatever material (presumably good garden soil?) and put it on the poor quality area. Lying fallow for 9 years isn't a bad thing. Getting perennial weeds under control we've all gone through, but it can be done.

I'd go with the option which has the best chance of success, which would seem to be starting over in a higher area.

Good luck,

Ev

Nine years of weeds does not make for poor soil, specially the tap-rooted ones like dandelion and thistle. My guess is that if you go dig there you will find decent amounts of earthworms.

I fully understand your dilemma. You have an extremely short season (I am shocked you can do corn in Zone 2), and to treat the weeds with Roundup you would have to wait too long. Likewise, laying down burlap and covering with some mulch would kill the weeds (so long as you have no brambles) but keep the soil cold for maybe too long.

What are the ground raising options? Bring in new soil or dig it around the perimeter and pile it high? My beds are in an area that gets flooded occasionally, and they are only 8 inches above. Everything I have grown there was fine. What are the plans for shoring up the edges? Basically, you are considering making a giant raised bed.

I thought that the presence of dandelions was an indicator of good soil?

Pity you can't export your excess water to my drought-stricken, southeastern neighbors and I.

I'd move to the new spot. Raising nearly 3000 square feet of garden to a height sufficient to give the roots room before they hit water would probably be more work and take more $$$ than improving the other site.

I've moved a lot and created a lot of new gardens where gardens had not been before. My experience is that you simply have to accept that the first year off fresh-busted sod is not terribly productive and requires a lot of weeding. The alternative is to throw a LOT of money at the site all at once -- building raised beds and buying soil that is guaranteed to be good.

Successive years are always an improvement.

What you can't see in those photos (behind the camera) are the huge, heavy ties we've bordered the garden and perennial beds with for a mowing edge (we weren't mowing when those pics were taken as it was too wet), a ceder arch that took a lot of work to cement properly and all my perennials (established rhubarb and raspberries as well as two dozen asparagus crowns that I started from seed in 2004. The amount of work we've already put into this area makes it not so easy to abandon.

Area number two doesn't get as much sun and it's really like the soil is... dead. I can't explain it. If dandelions are an indicator of good soil, then that tidbit didn't reach my dirt. Plus, I've spent far too many years digging roots thicker than my thumb and that originate practically as far down as the pits of hell to buy into the thinking that these things have any good properties whatsoever. It's taken multiple applications of Roundup (in early spring and as per my farmer neighbour's instructions to apply in the late summer/fall for best effect) to even make a dent in the area we've already been working at. I'm not starting that again unless we've lost hope (ie. raising the soil level isn't sustainable without frames).

Agreed, fallow isn't a terrible thing, but properly fallowed fields are still tilled to control weeds. These have been left to seed for those nine years.

We would bring soil in, there's not enough to pile from the edges.

Consider going with wide-row raised mounds in your existing garden. Pics below.

Lets you use your existing better soil just by mounding it up in 3' wide rows, improves drainage while leaving the water in the valleys between that can be heavily mulched with straw or with boards for walking paths, dries and warms the soil faster, and are easy to make if you have a tiller, plow or tractor attachment.

Just something to consider.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: wide-row raised mounds

g'day macky,

well right up front raised beds for sure, probably at least 12"s + but also need to look toward drainage the pics seem to indicate there may be an issue?

you say some are moving out is that an option for you?

if there is this sort of drainage issue how does it affect your home? the pictures don't realy show but even to put in an agricultural drain between your property and root cause of the probelm, you need to drain that water to a lower spot.

at this stage i'll mention this but i don't count on it being an option, if your house is on higher better dained gound (or i see this water issue might cause issues), then the option of filling your land to bring it to higher ground would work, not sure how you local authority would view this? also what impacts it may have on neighbouring properties.

anyhow check our ag' drain featue it may help?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens agricultural soakage drain

I would suggest drainage, but it sounds as if you are facing acres of flooded area, not just your garden, am I right? Nowhere to drain the water to.

My is to create a pond close to the garden area, using the dug earth to raise the garden area and allow for drainage into the pond. The side benefit is that you'll create a nice area to stock with fish.

Do you have a neighbour with some heavy machinery to do that kind of work?

Those photos sure look familiar!

The raised mounds can work pretty well. In the process, you create trenches. You need to get the garden area graded so the trenches channel the water away from the growing area. The pond is a good idea, too, to have somewhere for the water to go, and using the excavated soil to build up the grade of the garden.

The problem is getting the area dry enough so you can do all this work.

Hamiltongardener's got it... there's not really anywhere for the water to go. This is our front paddock (3 acres) in 2007; it's gotten worse since then. The trees in the back there surround what used to be his dugout (a very deep, man made pond like you're describing).
{{gwi:28713}}
We're talking not just acres, but entire quarters being under water. What's happening immediately surrounding our 8 acres is this...

The water is flowing north, under the main highway via culverts. It's joined by overflow heading east from the lake that flooded a portion of the same highway. They meet up and flow north down the ditch of our road, going into the fields quite a bit. It turns west again when it meets the southernmost edge of our property and goes around... the soil of our treeline is slightly higher than the surrounding land. There's a huge slough area north of us that's gotten huge since 2007... our neighbour has lost a LOT of farmland.

Trenching is something I hadn't thought of, but a) if the water table is full (ie. even a light shower means puddles on your grass because there is nowhere for the water to go), then won't any ditch you dig just fill up with water and b) because I'm not sure if our treeline soil is acting like a berm, I'm afraid that trenching beyond it would actually let water in instead of out... IF situation (a) didn't happen first.

The surveyors that were poking around the area last summer suspect the flow of the water might reverse in 2011, but we can't figure that out. I don't know if that changes anything. We have such a hard time visualizing because it just seems so flat here. All the jokes about Saskatchewan being flat seem so true until you throw masses of water on it.

But back to the garden, Dave, raised beds (like raised rows, only I really need paths that go crosswise, too) are what I'm thinking already. I hesitate to dig into the soil level that's already there, however, to accomplish it. How does that work with a high water table? I'm not draining away water coming from above so much as digging into water below. The plants might be okay, but wouldn't the lowered paths fill with water? Where would we walk? Maybe I'm not grasping this.

ltilton, you posted while I was typing. Grading the whole garden area means we still lose the hardscaping, right? Not what my husband wants to hear.

Going with an Ag drain is the best solution. However, if I read your initial post correctly, you don't have anywhere to drain it "INTO" as the water table in your area has risen dramatically? If you do have somewhere to drain it into renting a walk behind "ditch-witch" or equivalent and laying in the perforated plastic pipe shouldn't be too expensive. The link posted above abut Ag drains is excellent. I would take issue with using the rigid piping as opposed to the coiled variety. No question that rigid is much better and longer lasting. Economics do come into play and if you're going to spend $5,000 to be able to grow $500 worth of veggies..... With the large PVC pipe you'll have to bring in a backhoe or other heavy equipment.

I still suggest that the most cost effective and most likely successful way would be to relocate.

An alternative would be to take the $$ you're going to invest in doing "something" and just buy produce at the farmers market in the fall. Can, freeze, store, etc. until the water table returns to normal. We're all in this forum as we like to garden. However, I think we all agree that when your tomatoes, etc. are ripe, they're available for cheap at the farmers market.

I feel really bad for you, can only imagine what it would feel like to develop and improve the soil for veggies and then have to abandon it....:-(

Please keep us informed as to how this plays out.

Ev

As a proponent of raised bed gardening I would encourage you to consider building raised beds in the soggy area - raise them at least 12" to 24". They would drain a LOT better than gardening right in the ground, and the water retention in that area will help plant growth. The only problem I have ever had with my own beds has been some difficulty keeping them from drying out at the height of the summer - you however would have a sort of built in insurance policy against that condition. Let the water table work for you! And lay in a good pair of rubber boots - you should be all set.

The way you describe your crops, it is mostly pick-once pantry crops right? Potatoes and various other root crops, corn, winter squash. If that is the case, you don't really work around them much, it is just seed and pick. The wide rows then are OK. They can be mounded, since there is no running water, and you may put in stepping stones here and there. Surely you have an idea how high the water gets, but I am guessing 18 inches.

Keep in mind that any soil you may bring in (say, from a construction site) is going to be typically poor. If it is topsoil, the 150 cubic yards you need will cost you a pretty penny. Either way, you will not be growing in the soil that is there now and this is very important.

The other site, well, it is contradictory, the soil can not be poor if you are constantly digging large roots and applying Round-up to keep up with the weeds. It might just be too acid (dandelion is one of the indicator plants for acid soil) for crops. You may consider covering with burlap in May, then cover with whatever organic (straw?) you can bring in that will keep burlap down, shade the soil and decay in one year. You can not grow anything there for one year, but you have a backup plan if the wide rows don't pan out. Actually, in this arrangement (mulched soil), you can try growing some potatoes, which tolerate acidity, by carefully punching holes in the burlap just for the plant, as a test. If they grow, then all you need is lime or wood ash. Or you can try mulching and liming one other section and see if beans will grow there. If they grow, you may just need nitrogen.

raised beds 12-24 inches with pebbles/rocks in the bottom of the beds.

My only thought at first - when I first saw this was rice...grow rice.. However, I don't know that growing rice is maybe an option in your zone? My best suggestion at the moment is to consult with a local agricultural extension office..??
Much like yourself, I'm just just floored by the photo's here. It's a lot easier for me, I just click on something else and no worries... However your still stuck in the mud/water so to speak.. WOW I can't even imagine what you are about to attempt at this point!
Or what has been previously suggested "raise the site" however, if you do not have access to free fill dirt, that can be cost prohibitive if not exceptional.. The only other resources you may have open to you is to get a phenomenal amount of organic matter to try and capture back a bit of growing space. Hopefully it will not turn into a bog... Sorry I'm out of suggestions the photo's were rather overwhelming. Simply said I'm not sure I would even attempt to garden at this point until the current issues are resolved in the area at hand... My other suggestion would be to grow somewhere else if you really desire to grow. Growing in containers such as I do is not always a bad thing it is just something in the interim to do until you acquire some grow-able land...
bgrow_gardens

Have you approached the provincial officials responsible for the lake? Or for the highway? Seems to me that you problem was created by their problem, which would seem to make them responsible.

Here's my thinking:

Digging paths to create raised beds is not an option. Everything you add will have to be brought in and put on top of the surface you've already got. You might as well use your existing garden bed, the other site isn't likely to be much better.

When the water table gets lower during the summer, the plant roots can reach down for whatever nutrients remain from last year.

I did some figuring (for this season): 50x55' = 2750 sqft.
If you brought in decent soil and made raised beds 3ft wide with 18" paths, that would cut down the actual area of planting beds by about 1/3, to 1815 sqft. If you made beds 8" tall, this would be about 1200 cuft, or 44 cubic yards of soil. That is an awful lot of soil! Over four dump truck loads if the trucks held 10 cu yards.

Solomon told how to check the type of soil in the jar. I would SERIOUSLY recommend doing that before buying any soil. You don't need to pay big bucks for garbage 'soil' like pure clay. Try to pin down the sellers as to EXACTLY where they got the soil, and what it really is.

Mix in Solomon's Complete Organic Fertilizer, regular strength should do -- with that much water you'll probably lose it next winter, anyway. No point in wasting it.

Next year, if you have the money and inclination (after dealing with this year!), bring in more soil and fill in the paths, bringing them to the level of the beds.

With that kind of leaching, planting a cover crop for the winter will be the only way to hold onto some of the nutrients you've got in the soil.

And I would follow ltilton's suggestion to contact the provincial officials and raise a fuss. If nothing else, they may pay for your soil, which would be better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Sue, in W. WA, which looks a LOT drier!

Thank you all for your replies. :) Hubby and I have been discussing this whole thing all afternoon, in between weekend chores, and I've been going through photos of various areas of the yard that I've taken in the last few years. He now suspects we may be able to run a trench from the garden to the north side of the barn where he's convinced it can exit lower, but not under water. With all our snow right now still, though, we won't know for sure until April sometime. I think he hadn't been going there in his mind before because it would mean cutting so close to the barn and I would obviously have concerns over an open trench tripping up and possibly injuring our horse and donkey when they're in that pen. I was reading about traditional (no plastic pipe) French drains, though, this afternoon and I think he's intrigued. We may be able to do this (he wasn't keen on extra expense of pipe, but we can get local gravel for cheap). Trenching equipment is in high demand in our area as there are a lot of pipelines going in in recent years. Machinery would be cost-prohibitive for us because of this high demand, so we'll be trenching by hand, if we do it.

So in that line of thinking, could a large French drain going down the centre of the garden, north to south (those first photos are facing south), under a permanent path we would create to mark it, drain that large of an area or would we be better off doing a loop around the edge of the garden? (I'm hoping the former would work as it's less digging!)

Exmar, our closest farmers market is in the city, an hour away, and the produce, from what I hear, compares to the supermarket. Any money I put into the garden here can help long-term. Good idea if we were in a better area for markets, though.

Raisemybeds and treenut, I hate to say it, but raised gardening goes against my (under normal conditions) low-input philosophy. I really prefer rows that give my plants a lot of room. The prairies are typically an area where we deal more with drought than with flooding. I fear that creating dramatically raised beds (more than a foot), though it may solve the immediate problem, could turn into a long-term detriment considering our usual norms. Minimally raising larger, unframed beds, just enough to get us through right now, leaves us the opportunity to flatten them out when we're left dry again.

Glib, the crops I mentioned were the ones I lost completely as they were in the south part of the garden that flooded worst. I have crops I need to pick/tend regularly as well - peas, beans, tomatoes, leeks, brassicas. We would bring in a true topsoil either from a garden centre or see if our neighbour, who farms the fields that surround us, would let us skim here and there (we wouldn't think of taking all from one spot and wreck that spot) before he works the soil in the spring. We have a half-ton for that. The acid soil angle is interesting, but I don't think it applies here. Our well water is very hard and there are alkali flats spotted here and there throughout much of the larger area, as far as I know. The area with the most dandelions (option two) has not been dug or had Roundup sprayed for years. It's the current area (option one) that's being tended. Yes, we do have masses of earthworms in the current garden area. We've tried mulching the thistles and dandelions with total blackout mulching fabric, but they just push the fabric up until it's basically useless.

Bgrow... rice! *rofl* Actually northern Saskatchewan is a huge producer of wild rice, so yes, that might be an option for me, LOL!

ltilton - The rural municipality has been fighting the watershed authority on this since it started. The province will not permit us to redirect the natural flow of the water. There was HUGE uproar over the fact that they allowed the lakefront properties to be protected for so long when farmland was flooding. It's been fought and lost, unfortunately. Apparently they don't view the highways and culverts as unnatural diversions to the flow, even though they are. Sigh.

Belgian pup, you posted while I was typing. :) Splitting up the project of raising the area into two years is an interesting idea. I wonder if instead of beds and then paths, if we would maybe raise the beds to the south (where more water lies) more and the beds to the north less... kind of like grading, but in patches. My beds last year were 10 x 12 and I really liked that size. We didn't walk in the beds except to hoe and weed, and when I did that I walked backwards and hoed my footsteps. My calculations were similar to yours. I wonder if I could skim topsoil from my neighbours' section (with permission) for half the amount I need and then buy the other half. I'd love to be able to sow winter cover crops, but we get too much... well, winter here! ;)

I had a few thoughts on this...

First, it would obviously help to know which way the water's going. Both near-term, and long-term. If it's just a short-term problem, you might be better off waiting it out, and skipping a season. And spend the money on something else.

If the water's going to get deeper, and it's going to be a long-term problem, then how much deeper? If it's going to get a lot deeper, I think you'll need to build an island, before you build a raised bed.

And if it's going to stay about the same, you could try building up the existing garden, like other people have already suggested. And one way to do that, that I haven't seen suggested yet, is to use straw bales. Then pile some of your good soil on top. And maybe some compost. You might get more slugs that way, but I don't know if slugs are very good swimmers. Also, if it's supposed to slowly get better, the straw would eventually compost, leaving you with some nice raised beds.

So, I think that getting the best assessment you can, about what the water is going to do. Including reasonable estimates on when. Would be an important first step. I have no idea how difficult this would be.

Also, is there anything in your area that could contaminate the water you're being flooded with? I remember reading about a reservoir that flooded a bunch of land in Hungary with toxic sludge a while back.

Where you raise the beds should be most suitable to the site and to you. I just came up with the 3' raised beds as easiest to visualize due to their commonness.

To check the slope near your barn, just get a cheap LINE LEVEL, about $6 USD, you provide the string. It's a cheap, quick and simple way to find how much slope you've got, just to see if what you think you've got is close to accurate, or if it is just an optical illusion.

Sue

Lasagna type raised beds on relocated garden should work to control weeds and give you a place to grow the vegetables that you tend regularly. I have essentially two foot deep compost piles covered with ~6" soil/compost to plant in. I built these up using 6" wide fence boards laid on edge like a rail fence. It doesn't need to be an either or question.

Also, does the main garden dry out enough for later crops?

the french/agricultural drain won't work unless it has drainage to a lower area.

putting fill ove the whole area will have the effect of lowering eh water table so the water is not seen, i would suggest that that lagoon is fed from water table just as much if not more so than run off.

not sure i'd suggest taking on the local authority they have this unwitty knack of weasling out of their responsibilites. to have any overall effect you might have to stop the runoff from the higway to realy stop it (out of the question), but raising your whole area using fill or/and then raised beds as well will help a lot.

if doing raised beds over poor soil is a choice then the quality of the soil won't matter as the raised beds will have their own medium.

if you dig a whole how far down do you go before the hole fills with water? if water doesn't flow in over the top then what occurs is sub aquafa water.

len

Macky77,

Glad to hear you have a plan. I think I recall you mentioning that you had clay? Don't quote me on this, but I seem to recall from a Vocational Agriculture class I took in high school, (Yikes that was 50 years ago!!!!) That size of soil particles go from sand (largest) to clay (smallest). You might want to check on this and investigate putting "something" over or around the gravel which would be permeable to water, but stop the clay from infiltrating. If I'm right and the fine clay particles got into your gravel they'd quickly clog up and make all your hard work for naught. We have county soil conservation offices down here who can answer questions like that, assume you have something comparable up there?

As far as routing the drainage ditch, I'd just put it down the middle. Then if necessary you could put in cross connects. Think of a tree with a main trunk, then two or four side branches. Seems like that would be less digging and gravel and could be adjusted as time, money, and inclination permit.

What does Red Green say? "We're all in this together."

Best of luck and keep us posted,

Ev

I second (or 3rd or 4th) the suggest to talk to the local authorities.

A couple of other thoughts in addition to the advice above. Are you SURE the water table is full? Because if not, and you have anywhere lower (it doesn't have to be by much), you could dig a pond for drainage and possibly help out some of the rest of your property, too. This has the additional advantage of not disturbing the soil you've been improving.

If you do decide to relocate the garden, you could take a year off from vegetables to work on the new site. Or just plant vegetables very tolerant of wet soils in the old site, like watercress. Rice was a great idea but I don't think it's warm enough there.

Long term, if this is going to be an ongoing issue, you may consider planting some thirsty trees and plants to help suck up some of that moisture.

If you are sure you can drain it, that's the way to go. A French drain is going to cost a lot less that 150 cubic yds of topsoil of unknown fertility.

But you should consider remediating the other, drier, site, too. If weeds grow, the site is eminently salvageable. A soil test is $10, 3000 square yards of recycled cardboard could be cheap, specially if you talk to a superstore manager nearby, and loads of wood chips are free.

Yes, I realize this is an old thread, but I'm rather curious about what macky77 decided to do and how it worked out. Hopefully whatever method they chose was the answer!

Wow, I don't envy someone with that large-scale of a problem :(.

My advice is probably too late for the OP, but in case it helps someone else:

You don't have to move all the plants, or make a new garden big enough for everything. Some plants will enjoy the swampy conditions. Your raspberries, for example, will probably be fine. Maybe the brassicas, too.

What did well last year, when it was wet like this? Just make raised beds for the things that need them. A research water-tolerant garden plants -- maybe you can grow some new stuff :).

Also, consider digging a pond and using the soil from that to raise your beds. Maybe put some fish in the pond.

Time for an update, I see. :)

Well, hubby backed out of the plan to install a French drain in 2011. I can't take something like that on by myself, so that was the end of that, unfortunately. Thankfully, the water table returned to workable levels that year and we had a great garden just doing things the way we always did.

In 2012, we trialed the raised mounds, digging the paths lower and turfing the soil onto the beds. It worked great. When we had heavy rains, they pooled in the paths and the plants were high and nothing puddled on the beds. The paths usually drained within a day and we were able to walk on them shortly thereafter because they were so compacted. The only drawback was the time it took to actually form all the beds. It took us so long that planting was delayed significantly.

This year, 2013, we got a new tiller. The guy we hired in 2012 did a terrible job and only the surface was scuffled, so we tilled the entire thing as deeply as possible this spring to break through the hard pan layer, unfortunately destroying the raised mounds (hubby isn't the tidiest tiller operator... yet). There wasn't time to re-form the mounds before we *had* to get stuff in the ground (remember we have a super-short season). I want to re-mound them this fall. We've had significant flooding in the province again this year and the table is very high again. Our potatoes and the dry Orca beans (the only things south of the asparagus and raspberry beds) had terrible germination because of the sogginess there. Everything north of the asparagus and raspberry beds have been fine, with the exception of the cucumbers, which are in the lowest part of that main area. Lots of water in that path, making it hard to access them to periodically spray fungicide.

So, yeah. I wish I could say there's been more progress, but that's how the cookie seems to crumble around here sometimes. Guaranteed, as soon as we do something major about the water issue, we'll move into a few years of drought. ;) Murphy and I are long-time friends.

macky - that's how I do it. My garden is in a low spot, and I till in the fall and set up the garden for the next season. Then in spring it's ready to go as soon as I can get into the garden area. Saves much time when time is critical.

Thank you for the update! Your previous post predated my time here, and when it got bumped to the top I was very curious about how things were going for you :).

I'm glad this year was better :).

My dad gardens in a swampy area. I am thinking about what does well in his garden. Peas, strawberries, green beans. Those and brassicas, chard, spinach you could probably grow in the low areas. Squashes also tolerate more wet (and more drought) than one would think. Potatoes I would think would need higher ground so they don't rot.

If you have the time and energy, you could start the beans in flats and transplant, to get past the problem of seeds rotting in the wet ground. Once they are growing I think they will enjoy a fair amount of water.

>Guaranteed, as soon as we do something major about the water issue, we'll move into a few years of drought. ;) Murphy and I are long-time friends.

Well, maybe then you can plant in the paths and walk on the raised beds ;). Or at least mulch the beds heavily, like we do where I live and summers are always very dry. Collect leaves, if you have trees, and/or straw, in the fall to use as mulch in spring. That's what I do, anyway.

Good luck :))).

Thanks for the well-wishes, NJ. :)

We're under a tornado watch this lovely Monday. At the very least, it's going to be one heck of a thunderstorm with a chance of grapefruit-sized hail, according to Environment Canada. Awesome. Anyhoo...

I already grow everything you mentioned above except chard. While I agree that the squashes seem to be less affected by soggy soil, I have to respectfully disagree on the rest. Strawberries rot in the wet. Brassicas are stunted. Beans, peas and spinach simply don't germinate and if the rain comes after germination, they turn yellow and struggle.

While I do give my pole beans a head start by germinating in pots indoors, I simply don't have the space to do so for the 250+ feet of bush beans (snap and dry) and 132 feet of peas that I planted this year. Not that I don't wish I did (fussing over starts is a favourite pasttime). ;)

GRAPEFRUIT sized? Good golly!

Hmm.... I see from your list of what does poorly that your soil is more waterlogged than I realised:(.

I suppose part of the problem is that I cannot really conceive of summer rain (we don't have that, here) so I assume wet soil gets drier as the season goes on. But maybe that is not true for you?

I am starting to think the rice farming sounds good :/.

Storm passed us completely by, though there were some beautiful thunderheads to the east. Not even a drop. Yay!

I'm on the other side of the same coin, NJ. I can't conceive of it *not* raining in the summer. I frequently read in gardening books and even on GW here about not getting the leaves of certain plants wet. I've scratched my head for years. Doesn't rain get them wet all the time?

We just got back from a road trip to Victoria, BC a few days ago. It doesn't really rain in the summer there either. It was extremely strange to see brown grass (where it wasn't irrigated) and occasional falling leaves and I was told this was normal in the summer. That just doesn't happen here except in drought years. We saw farms all over BC baling beautiful hay. They could cut and bale at the optimum nutrition level because they totally controlled the irrigation. Time to cut? Just stop watering. Take as much time as necessary to dry in the swath; heck, take a couple extra days to flip the swath and dry it through. It's amazing. We just can't do that here most years. Usually, when it looks like there's going to be a rash of a few days with no rain, farmers are dropping everything - even 9 to 5 jobs in town - to 'make hay while the sun shines'. Even then, it's unusual to get hay off with no rain at all on it. Most of the prairies here support "dry-land" farms with no irrigation setup at all.

In an average year here, I only usually need to water the garden at the beginning, when seeds are close to the surface and yet to germinate. After they've established, I rarely need to pull out the sprinkler. There's at least an inch of rain per week or so and when there's not, the roots dig deep enough that they're good for a few more days until it rains again. This is only my second year doing dry bush beans, but I'm finding it difficult to mature them on the plant because of the short season and because the rain still comes in the fall, though less. Same for the pole beans, though, they're up in the air and do dry off a little faster.

No rain in the winter - just snow, cold and more cold. We can go into the -30s Celcius for a couple of weeks at a time and -40 and below is not unheard of. I don't get to do cover crops. Typically, last frost is within the first week of June (or late May in a good year) and first frost is usually early to mid September (but can come as early as August in a bad year). We can extend harvest into early October by covering on nights where there's frost forecast. Crops mature, but don't really grow much by then.

I've tried mulches a few times, but have discarded the idea. I know it's a great thing for many gardeners, but I find it cools the soil too much and there's not really a need to conserve moisture. Should we go back to drought years, I'd see about trying it again. Right now, though, I need heat heat heat to reach my soil. :)