I made a bit of a social faux pas the other day. I commented in my local gardening group about what a brilliant season it’s been for the garden—record eggplant, capsicum, and tomato crops, not to mention an abundance of zucchini, basil, and beans. I’ve been loving the extra heat, which has really helped things along.
However, as the comments started rolling in, I quickly realized that for those without town water—relying instead on tanks and dams that had gone dry—this had been one of the worst seasons in a long time.
Let’s take a quick sidebar to sum things up, courtesy of AI—because I have gardening to do and would rather not spend time summarizing when I have a tool that can do it for me.
Over the past four months, [my town] has experienced significantly lower rainfall than usual, raising concerns for gardeners and farmers alike. From November 2024 to February 2025, total rainfall measured just 71.8 mm—roughly half of the historical average of 142.7 mm for this period. While December saw a slightly above-average 40.2 mm, both January and February were exceptionally dry, recording only 2.8 mm and 0.2 mm, respectively. Compared to the same period in 2023-2024, which saw 129.6 mm of rain, the current conditions are noticeably drier. The Bureau of Meteorology has reported below-average rainfall across western and central Victoria, signaling a shift towards drought-like conditions. While an official drought declaration requires further assessment, gardeners should take proactive steps to conserve moisture, improve soil health, and choose drought-tolerant plants to navigate these challenging conditions. With climate variability playing an increasing role, sustainable water management will be key to maintaining healthy gardens in the months ahead.
I have to admit, I felt bad. We have town water and can afford to pay for it (though we strongly believe water should be free).
That said, we also rely on good gardening practices and microclimates to retain moisture. The more you feed and cover the soil, the healthier the soil bacteria, and the better the water retention—each element influencing the other.
To the west of our vegetable garden, we’ve planted native trees to block the worst of the winds. We also have a grapevine specifically grown to provide afternoon shade. The vegetables still get at least six hours of sunlight daily, which is all they need—there’s no reason for them to bake in the sun all day.
We also use four main wicking tubs made from IBCs (large industrial containers), which help reduce water usage. They work especially well for eggplants, capsicums, and cucumbers.
To further improve soil health, I’ve let a few zucchini vines trail over unused raised beds, keeping the soil shaded while the green matter inside breaks down. These beds are also covered with seaweed and straw for added moisture retention.
The garden’s shade cover has also increased significantly over the years. We have fruit trees—lemon, lime, plums, and quinces—along with a maple, magnolia, elderberry, and various natives. Birdbaths are placed under some of these trees so that when the water is refilled, the trees benefit from incidental watering. Nowadays, I can walk around my garden until midday and stay in the shade—something that wasn’t possible 15 years ago.
Our raised beds are filled halfway with logs, which retain water and promote bacterial activity as they decompose. Even the unused beds require minimal resources, especially when covered with mulch and seaweed. Larger areas of bare soil are also heavily mulched or naturally shaded by plants.
I felt somewhat vindicated when a permaculturist house-sat for us in January. She told me it was one of the best water-wise gardens she’d seen—designed to protect and nourish the soil. That made me really happy!
Of course, not everything has thrived. Our Granny Smith apple tree, which isn’t near a hose, has struggled—I’ve had to haul buckets of water to it every couple of days just to keep it alive.
When we first moved here 15 years ago, the land was quite dry, and I considered installing a greywater system. That’s still on the cards if we face another drought, but for now, we’re managing. I’ll continue feeding the soil through winter with layers of mulch and manure so next summer’s garden will be just as resilient.
Thankfully, we had a good soaking of rain the other day, and the whole town rejoiced! Even so, the dam at the bottom of our property, which usually overflows, didn’t fill up completely this time. Hopefully, more rain is on the way. Last night, the frogs and birds were singing like mad—and, honestly, so were we, on the inside.
I’ve realized that I mostly learn as I go. I’m not much for reading gardening books—I prefer to experiment, observe, and adapt. But after years of trial and error (since my teenage years), I’ve picked up a few tricks that have helped our garden survive the summer—and helped us, and the frogs, along the way.
With Love,
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Here in my country summer is coming that means water level in dams would be low.
In my place, we have water supply but not 24/7. There are times no water at day time and would restore past six in the evening.
On the worst days of summer, it would be only on wee hours and for an hour or two. if unlucky not even clean. That is why I always put a strain on the faucets.
Yet here I am , planning to do gardening 😂😆. If I haven't read your post, it totally slips my mind .
Where do you live? That sounds like some hard effort! Look into wicking beds, they are amazing
man it is good to see that everything wiorked out so well in the garden this year. I didn't know water was such an issue by you guys?
(can imagine that the househunt is less appealing if you had all of that work done already in the garden and wouldn't want to give that up)
Yeah we haven't been in drought for a while but summers can be dry. If we go into drought again it'll be harder. Back in the 90s we were only allowed 150 l a day so people weren't allowed to water their gardens. Hence why people had grey water set ups. People used to tell on people if they used the town water to water their veggies, it was mental. I imagine it'll get like that again. Everything in cycles.
Yeah I really love our place, just wish I was closer to coast but it's only a 25 m drive so I need to remind myself of that.
Mulching makes all the difference. We've been in at least level 2 drought since last year but I only had to water the veg gardens 3 times last season. I had to water the flowerbeds more as they don't have mulch.
That's really good going. Your soil must be amazing!
It's getting there. I've been working on it since 2010.
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Is it just me? (It probably is!) But I've always had this assumption when looking at your gardening posts, that you had a nice rainwater harvesting system up, and you looped the used water back into a couple of cycles. So you can imagine my surprise that you don't have a graywater system 😲 - though I am still fairly certain about the rainwater capture from your roof surface, even though I didn't see you mention it.
By the way, I am in no way advocating going 100% off grid. To me that sounds like unnecessary struggle. In my mind the best way is to stay hooked up to city water, and install various other systems to supplement it on the side. And this you are doing in various ways you're describing here, which I'm always excited to see. 😁
Nope. Could never afford the grey water system and we haven't been in drought for years now. Water here isn't that expensive and we are on town water so it wasn't the priority. If we hit drought again we may consider it.
Now I'm starting to wonder if maybe we mean different things by a gray water system... The simplest type is just draining your water into your garden, one sink at a time. But you probably meant collecting your gray water from all of your sources, and spread it out to where it's needed, maybe even with a nice reed-bed for filtration, perhaps feeding a pond... Yeah, those are the types that get me excited, but I agree, they tend to cost some money and a bit of work to be implemented.
Yeah, but that means adjusting the plumbing and so on and if we resold the house (like we have thought of many times) we have to change it back, becuase here in Australia they are assholes about having everything totally regulated and approved. If we had a pond close to the house, yeah maybe, but then we'd need a pump - it's just not set up that way. Money and time have definitely stopped us too - there's been other things to spend money on. Hell, we need rainwater tanks to start with, but we need about 10k for that, and right now we are pretty bloody broke!
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STOPits really surviving for all plants. We don't even know anymore whether it's the rainy season or the dry season because it's too biased. Even though we only have two seasons.
Yes you have different issues in Indo.
I hope that things will turn out the better way for farmers in my country. The rain supply was minimal last year and so, crops yield was low
It's always worrying for farmers who rely on the crops for income. I hope you have a better year next year.