Quote:
Originally Posted by ilex
Dry farming is an art, were you basically store water in the soil and prevent losing it. Loose soil in the surface prevents water from being lost through capillarity action.
Just checked some climatic data from the area ... 877 mm avg per year. That's double what we get here, and it seems they get rain all winter. We get most in October and then ... you never know. I'm sure they can dry farm without many problems.
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Wow! So there you have it. As cwavec says, dry farming causes deep roots and the plants survive without being swamped with water, but they do have access to water!
As Ilex noticed, the trees and shrubs in the vicinity like lots of water, so it would be easy to be led astray by seeing the very dry soil in the video and thinking that the plants needed to be dry.
I dry farm here some summers as I use black plastic on top of the soil, and I don't usually give extra water all summer. The difference here is that once the roots get beyond the 6" of aged manure, they hit CLAY, which probably retains water in most years. Last year we had a drought and I did give some supplemental water.
Think I will just grow my Piennolo in pots, in good potting mix, just like I do with the other compact varieties.......
Linda