Rick ...
>>>Plants that often have to scramble for water probably adapt by putting more energy into growing deeper roots and more root hairs. I have read that root fungi grow thicker on plants that don't have sufficient water or phosphate. They will scavenge what water does appear very efficiently.
I think we are on the same page with this one. Even in years when drought was not an issue, I've used this theory to help the roses develop a deeper and wider root mass because of my dense rocky soil. I wanted to encourage the plants to push their roots through the small crevices between the rocks.
When I shovel pruned a rose last year, the roots extended out further than the canopy of the rose. Sometimes the only way you know your theory works is when you dig up a plant ...
The only plants I am going to concentrate on bringing through the drought are the roses and a couple of trees. Everything else is easily replaced. Roses typically abandon any growth they cannot support, so the leaves go first. They will still try to bloom to continue the species, but if the plant cannot support the blooms, it will stop wasting any resources to bloom and go into survival mode, which is a kind of dormancy. I am hoping to induce heat dormancy in the plants so that they will need less water to survive. Yeah ... I am working on theory and have never done this in the past, so I don't know for certain if I can pull it off.
I don't need to worry about wind, but I have been trying to figure out a way to shade the plants because that will slow down the transpiration rate of moisture from the foliage.
I tried using drip irrigation in one bed last year, but the roses showed water stress and I ended up abandoning that method last summer. But I am a beginner in using a drip system and may not have set it up right.
Gardening in dense rocky "soil" is an adventure because water will flow where it can get through the rocks. I could set a dripper underground and it's very possible that the water might end up flowing
away from the plant because that's the easier way for the water to flow. Another lesson learned the hard way. Of course, I am always open to suggestions.
Smiles,
Lyn
