Today is one of those sultry summer days where Nature just can’t quite seem to make up its mind to rain. Or not. It’s overcast, humid, hot, and windless.
Not that a little bit of rain is going to make much difference at this point. My garden water barrels have been empty for most of June.
June 2024 is going to be the second-driest June on record in this area. The records, in this case, go back to circa 1960, for Dulles Airport. Even if it does finally manage to rain, it’s not going to rain enough to change that.
According to NOAA, Dulles Airport (one of the weather stations of record for my area) has received a total of just 0.69 inches of rain, so far, this June:
Source: Weather Underground, historical weather for Vienna VA
National weather service monthly precipitation data (Google link for Dulles) show the following:
For Washington, DC, the NOAA precipitation record goes back to the 1930s. There, 2024 is shaping up to be the third-driest June, edged out by 1988 (as above) and by 1940.
Dry, no matter how you squeeze it.
Conclusion
If if have learned nothing else from back-yard vegetable gardening, it’s that I would surely starve if I had to grow my own food.
So far this year, I’ve had poor yields of peas, potatoes, and garlic. My 100-square-foot potato bed yielded just under 50 pounds of potatoes, most of which were small (but still edible) potatoes. (Thus giving me the potato yield assumed in the movie The Martian, see Post G23-016. If I eat 2000 calories per day, my 100-square-foot potato bed generated enough food for nine days.) For my garlic, I suspect I’ll be lucky to end up with a half- ounce of usable garlic per square foot, from a roughly 64-square-foot bed.
And now, my little patch of garden is surviving courtesy of my municipal water supply. Absent that, pretty much everything in the garden would be dead, given the drought.
On the plus side, my investment in surface-laid irrigation is paying off (e.g., Post G22-027). Right now, I’m using a mix of 1/2″ dripline, 1/2″ drip tape, and some “bubblers”. To water my garden, I dial in an hour on my hose timer, and walk away. Beats the heck out of toting watering cans in the heat.
