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Wednesday, September 9, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Researchers give
dry farming a try
By Eric Mortenson
Capital Press
CORVALLIS (AP) —
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 and toma-
toes growing alongside them.
The vegetables are part
of a dry farming demonstra-
tion project at Oregon State
University’s Oak Creek
Center for Urban Horticulture.
In three 10-foot-by-100-foot
plots, OSU Extension instruc-
tor Amy Garrett is examining
the possibilities of growing
food crops without irrigation.
It’s a topic under serious
review as drought grips the
West.
Irrigators throughout
the Pacific Northwest and
California have been restricted
or shut off entirely this sum-
mer, the mountain snowpack
that feeds streams in late sea-
son has already melted and
many storage reservoirs are at
alarmingly low levels.
Climatologists believe lon-
ger, hotter, drier summers and
winter precipitation that falls
as rain rather than snow is the
“new normal.”
Beatrice Van Horne, direc-
tor 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.
Faced with that reality,
some farmers and ranchers
are thinking about making
changes.
About 100 people attended
a dry farming field day that
Garrett hosted at her OSU
demonstration plots in early
August. She’d expected that
30 people might show up.
What they saw may have
surprised them. Garrett is
growing four varieties of
dry beans, her Yukon Gold
potatoes are producing about
four pounds per plant and
the squash, despite looking
withered, have produced nice-
looking Stella Blue and Blue
Hokkaido varieties.
Then there are the Dark
Star zucchini, which look as
vigorous as if they’d been
irrigated all summer. Planted
May 27, they were in full pro-
duction by early July. Garrett
said she’s picked lots of
“zukes” in recent weeks.
“It’s like a machine, a zuc-
chini machine,” she said with
an admiring glance.
The hit of Garrett’s field
day, however, were the small,
striped Little Baby Flower
watermelons, which easily
won a taste test.
“Across the board, they
preferred the flavor, sweetness
and texture of the dry farmed
melon over an irrigated one
of the same variety,” Garrett
said.
Dry farming is not new,
of course. Mediterranean
growers have been raising
wine grapes and olives with-
out irrigation for centuries.
Some California growers
do the same, and the term
“old vine Zinfandel” often
refers to dry-farmed vine-
yards that are more than
75 years old, according to
the California Agricultural
Wa t e r
Stewardship
Initiative.
Other California crops that
are sometimes dry-farmed
include tomatoes, canta-
loupes, garbanzos, apricots,
apples, squash and potatoes,
according to the group.
Pacific Northwest pro-
ducers grow wheat and other
grains without irrigation, but
Garrett wants to see what else
can be grown that way.
Many of the farmers inter-
ested in the project are rela-
tively new to the profession
or are just now venturing into
commercial production. In
some cases, they’ve leased or
bought land, then discovered
it did not come with water
rights, or they are in a state-
declared groundwater-limited
area and can’t sink a new well.
Dry farming is not an easy
option. Without irrigation,
yield and size are almost cer-
tainly reduced, although qual-
ity remains good.
It requires altered tech-
niques, revised expectations
and the right conditions, start-
ing with the soil. A layer of
clay in the soil, common in
Oregon’s Willamette Valley,
holds moisture that plants can
access during the summer.
Dry farming is less likely to
work on soil that’s sandy and
porous.
Soil preparation, seed
selection and the timing and
method of planting are criti-
cal, Garrett said. Many of the
seeds she planted come from
varieties that are dry-farmed
elsewhere. The Stella Blue
and Blue Hokkaido squash
come from a line originally
developed by a Veneta,
Oregon, farmer who has been
dry-farming vegetables for 40
years.
Dry farming calls for
deeper planting and more
space between plants to
reduce competition for
water.
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