US (OR): Researchers give dry farming a try

The squash plants’ leaves are wilted and crinkled in the mid-day heat, and look like they desperatel…

The squash plants’ leaves are wilted and crinkled in the mid-day heat, and look like they desperately need water. But unless it rains, they won’t get any.

In fact, they’ve never been irrigated since they were planted this spring. Neither have the zucchini, dry beans, potatoes, melons or tomatoes growing alongside them.

The vegetables are part of a dry-farming demonstration project at Oregon State University’s Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture. In three 10-foot-by-100-foot plots, OSU Extension instructor Amy Garrett is examining the possibilities of growing food crops without irrigation.

It’s a topic under serious review as drought grips the West.

Hold the water
Irrigators throughout the Pacific Northwest and California have been restricted or shut off entirely this summer, the mountain snowpack that feeds streams in late season has already melted and many storage reservoirs are at alarmingly low levels.

Climatologists believe longer, hotter, drier summers and winter precipitation that falls as rain rather than snow is the “new normal.”

Beatrice Van Horne, director of the USDA’s Northwest Regional Climate Hub in Corvallis, said that will be the trend for the coming decades, although individual years may vary. “Those are pretty clear results” of climate modeling, she said.