The Heat is On! How to Drought Proof Your Garden

6 Short and 6 Long Term Solutions

Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash

With shocking heat waves settled over many parts of the United States, Europe and China, now is the time to get really good at drought proofing your garden.  The challenge is that you never know in the spring that a severe heat wave is going to be wilting your plants before your very eyes later in the season.  Not only is your garden under dire threat, so are the major food supply chains of the world. 

That means it’s time to roll up your sleeves and take action. There are both short and long term solutions to severe drought on a garden by garden basis.  Let’s look at the 6 best short term and 6 long term ways to drought proof your garden, no matter where you live.

Short term solutions to drought proof your garden

1. Create shade now

If a heat wave comes out of nowhere, the shock of it can be very devastating both for you and  your plants.  When the heat wave hit my area in 2021, I could feel the difference on the very first day.  Even though I live in a place with very hot summers, this heat was off-the-charts different and it came unseasonably early.  The impacts on plants and animals (and me!) at my farm were shocking.

The first thing you can do in a crisis like this is create shade.  Literally anything can work in a pinch.  Hang up a beach towel.  Use a table umbrella.  String up a tarp.  Shade cloth is ideal if you have it.  You can even use a cardboard box to cover smaller plants in a pinch. Because in a crisis, creating shelter from the hottest part of the day can be the difference between getting plants through or not.

Shade is perhaps the #1 fast solution to drought conditions (Photo by Alex Gorin on Unsplash)

2.  Change your watering habits

Do NOT water during the heat of the day.  You see, in that sweltering heat, plants are not actively transpiring.  Many plants minimize or close their stomata (the tiny openings in their leaves where water evaporates from) to try and save what fluids they have.  That means no active water uptake is happening in the heat of the day. You may notice some plants visibly droop even though they recover later. That is the shift in their transpiration behavior. That means watering during the heat of the day isn’t providing accessible water to the plants.

Instead, water after the sun has set or first thing in the morning which gives plants their best chance to actually soak some up before they again shift into fluid conservation mode. Focus your watering on the soil, and water deeply to encourage deep root growth. Drip irrigation systems can deliver more water directly to the soil and minimize wasting what water there is available. Timers are a great help in shifting watering patterns.

3.  Mulch

Don’t let bare soil bake in the sun.  Cover that soil with whatever mulch you can find – grass clippings, straw, cardboard, shredded paper . .. .but not plastic mulch.  Plastic-based mulch heats the soil up and under the intense sun conditions that come along with droughts, this could bake your plant’s roots.  So if you used plastic mulch in the spring, either remove it during the drought or cover it up with a reflective material like straw.

4.  Stop weeding and do this instead

Weeding during a drought is a big mistake.  Read that again, please! Although you don’t want your plants battling weeds for the water that is available, pulling out weeds can disturb your plant roots. 

Most plants can handle soil disturbance when there is a lot of water and they can be easily settled back in.  But in drought conditions, that soil disturbance may be enough to badly weaken or even kill your plant if the roots get exposed to dry soil, air and sunlight.

Instead, smother small weeds with a generous helping of mulch. Or, if the weeds are already too big and out of control, cut the weeds off carefully close to the ground and then add a generous helping of mulch to smothering the rest.  Cutting the weeds instead of pulling them protects the soil and your plants from excess disturbance.

You can learn more about this technique in the 30-Day Get Started Garden Mini-course from Food Abundance Revolution.

5. Use compost not fertilizer

Compost as a top dressing is a great triple-duty way to support your plants during a drought. 

Compost placed near the plants can act like a mulch to conserve water and prevent soil disturbance.  It can boost your plants with slow-release nutrients which is very different than the effects of a chemical fertilizer (Chemical fertilizers create a rapid burst of new growth that is very vulnerable in the heat and drought conditions). 

Perhaps most importantly of all, compost adds to the soil structure and micro-organisms in your soil.  Focus on creating Healthy Living Soil! Plants need soil life (microbes, fungi, bacteria, insects, etc.) to fully extract the nutrients they need.  Compost supports this soil biodiversity.

Thus compost gives you mulch, slow-release nutrients, and soil complexity that will help your plants survive in drought conditions.

6.  Don’t forget the pollinators!

Drought conditions not only affect your plants, but also the pollinators that help make sure you get a food harvest. 

In drought conditions, be sure to provide SAFE water sources for pollinators.  That means DON’T leave buckets of water standing open because hundreds of pollinators can die trying to get water from these death traps. 

Instead, provide a shallow pan of water with rocks.  Place the pan in your garden in a shaded area where the pollinators can come to have a drink.

Bees need water too (Photo by Mat Sestak on Unsplash)

Long term solutions to drought proof your garden

1.  Design your garden to create its own shade

If you live in a drought prone area (and even if you don’t because we might ALL live in drought prone areas soon), you can design your garden to create afternoon shade which will help plants survive the intensity of summer sun.

You can:

• Stagger your plantings from east to west so that the tallest plants are on the west side of the garden and will shade the rest in the afternoon.

• Use more trellises and vertical structures throughout your garden.  Plant the heat loving and drought tolerant plants on the sunny side of the trellis and the shade loving plants on the other side.   I like to plant my tomatoes on a trellis in the middle of a 4-foot wide garden row and then plant carrots and beets on the sunny side and lettuce and greens in the tomatoes’ shadow. It’s a simple strategy that maximizes yields and saves me a lot of effort.

• Plant more intensively.  This may seem counter intuitive at first, but using wide rows and group plantings maximizes food production while minimizing the garden footprint.  This system also helps to minimize weeding too.  To learn more about this technique take the 30-day Get Started Garden Mini-course from Food Abundance Revolution.

• Plant more drought tolerant varieties.  Your local garden center or fellow gardeners are your best source for tips on what will be drought tolerant in your region. Focus on those.

2.  Think about zone shifts

Typically here in North America, we use plant hardiness zones to figure out what can survive.  More and more I am seeing that these zones are not necessarily reliable. 

Take for example my Honey Locust which is a great shade three that attracts pollinators.  This tree is well established and over 15  years old, considered hardy to Zone 3 (I am zone 5 – normally) – and yet this tree has been all but killed by the unusual weather patterns of this past year.  The upside is the tree has re-sprouted from the base and will regrow.  But I won’t have the kind of shade I used to have for quite a few years.

This example has made me think more and more about how to choose plants moving forward.  Unfortunately I don’t have any answers right now, but I am thinking carefully about my perennial plant selections these days.

This may also mean, moving forward, that plants that were okay in your area may need extra support to continue surviving there.

3.  Plant more trees and shrubs

Thinking long term, perennial trees and shrubs provide shade, are lower maintenance, and are drought tolerant if you select them with this feature in mind.  They can also produce a lot of food while helping you reduce the overall water footprint of your garden. This is especially true if the trees and shrubs help reduce any lawn area you have.

Drought tolerant Trees = More Shade + Smaller Water Footprint

4.  Plant more native species

Native plants tend to be better adapted to the climate of an area than something you import.  Choose more native plants for a sustainable landscape.  This has the added benefit of helping out native insects, birds and animals as well by providing more habitat.

It’s also a good idea to look at the landscape in your region and mimic what survives well there. If it is a multi-storied forest, then use that pattern in your garden design. If it’s a minimally vegetated desert, then model your garden after what is thriving in your area. There is no one size fits all.

5. Install grey-water recycling and/or re-use house water for the garden

Even during a drought, most households use a lot of water.   You can recycle the water out of your house and use it on your garden.  Just make sure that any soaps or cleaners you are using are safe for the environment!  My home has a partial grey water system.  I can see improving that over the years as droughts become more frequent to help supplement available water for the garden.

6. Focus on Healthy SOIL

I mentioned this above under short term strategies but it is the ultimate way to drought proof your garden. Everything depends on the health of the soil, including your own health an how nutrient dense your plants will be.

Healthy soil is a process that takes time to create. Each season brings about an opportunity to work on soil health. In drought conditions, it is incredibly important to not disturb the soil and open it up to hot sun and wind. Shield your soil

Growing a living mulch of low-growing plants and herbs is a good long term solution to drought conditions. The roots help stabilize the soil and provide shelter for important soil dwelling animals.

The future is HOT! (Photo by Scott Goodwill on Unsplash)

The Future is HOT

No matter how you look at this, or where you live, our future is going to be hot and droughts are going to be more frequent.  Finding ways to drought proof your garden in the short and long term makes a lot of sense. 

Do you have drought proofing tips to share?  A method that has really worked for you?  Share in the comments.

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