Natives and Irrigation

What are the plants you should never need to water? The answer is the ones which are growing wild in your neighborhood, the native plants. If they can grow wild in your area then they can grow in your garden without watering. We had a hard drought almost all of last summer. I had expected the melons, especially the watermelons which probably originated in the Kalahari Desert of Africa to handle the drought the best. I also thought the sweet potatoes, a crop that grows in the hot South and has a long tap root to handle drought well. Both the water melons and sweet potatoes did fairly well in the drought but both required some watering. The only plants which required no irrigation at all was the sunflowers whose wild relatives grew along a nearby creek bank.

The same holds true for ornamental plants in the yard, although sunflowers could just as easily be grown as  ornamental plants as in the vegetable garden. We have also started mimosa trees on the property which are beginning to spread like the weeds which many people consider them to be, but are covered with beautiful fragrant flowers all summer long.  The wild Hoosier ditch lilies have covered one of our road banks for years. Neither the mimosas nor the ditch lilies have ever been watered except by rain. So take a good look around your neighborhood to see what is growing wild and then consider if the wild plants has any close relatives which might be grown as vegetables or fruits. Someday we may not have fresh water for our gardens and yards but the natives should continue to survive on natural rainfall.