The Ojai Garden

Irrigation-Free Permaculture Gardening ...

In Nagano Japan we garden largely without irrigation. A rainy season comes in June-July, so we pretty much rely on the direction of divine nature for the green veggie crops. We occasionally have to put a waterpump in the shrine pond, which is fed by rice-paddy irrigation canals, and pump water to the kobocha (pumpkin, winter squash) and tomatoes, giant dikon radishes, potatoes, strawberries and garden greens.

In Year Three of our Goddess Moon gaia-culture experiment, we are attempting to also go irrigation-free. This last week we brought in a pickup load of Oak leaves for mulching, then two pickup loads of year-composted horse corral sawdust/hay/manure cleanings ... which included a few score of beautiful Crickets to add to our garden song.

Here is the volunteer fruiting Mulberry tree near garden front/center, which we are training sideways along the direction of main wind flow, and along the garden paths to enable ladder-less berry picking.

These are two Aloe Vera plants, on drier area ends of terrace garden beds, which otherwise would not grow any greens. This lower Aloe is on the end of a bed of baby Red Capsicums, Sweet Bell Peppers.

{click on continue and see eight more photos ...}