When water is scarce

A scant two or three days over 30◦C and already, you’d think we’re at the height of summer! All of a sudden we’re faced with full-on heat, humidity, scarce rains and trying to figure out how to deal with it all. Fortunately, over the years we’ve developed something of a Pavlovian reflex: as soon as we see hot weather settling in, we move to unwind our ‘layflat’ tubing, hook up the drip tapes and turn on the pumps in our irrigation ponds. A technical break from field work that is a life-saver for our plants, but that always begs the question : ‘what will we do if the well/pond runs dry?’ – a question which is sometimes not just a rhetorical question, as demonstrated by last year’s record-breaking July drought. To water or not to water, when to water, how much to water: it’s a calculated risk we take, we’ll deal with the fallout later if necessary.