September. The cabbage weighed in at 6 or 7 pounds and was sweet and
tender.

Up to that time, all my gardening had been on thoroughly and
uniformly watered raised beds. Now I saw that elbow room might be
the key to gardening with little or no irrigating, so I began
looking for more information about dry gardening and soil/water
physics. In spring 1989, I tilled four widely separated, unirrigated
experimental rows in which I tested an assortment of vegetable
species spaced far apart in the row. Out of curiosity I decided to
use absolutely no water at all, not even to sprinkle the seeds to
get them germinating.

I sowed a bit of kale, savoy cabbage, Purple Sprouting broccoli,
carrots, beets, parsnips, parsley, endive, dry beans, potatoes,
French sorrel, and a couple of field cornstalks. I also tested one
compactbush (determinate) and one sprawling (indeterminate) tomato
plant. Many of these vegetables grew surprisingly well. I ate
unwatered tomatoes July through September; kale, cabbages, parsley,
and root crops fed us during the winter. The Purple Sprouting
broccoli bloomed abundantly the next March.

In terms of quality, all the harvest was acceptable. The root
vegetables were far larger but only a little bit tougher and quite a
bit sweeter than usual. The potatoes yielded less than I'd been used
to and had thicker than usual skin, but also had a better flavor and
kept well through the winter.

The following year I grew two parallel gardens. One, my "insurance
garden," was thoroughly irrigated, guaranteeing we would have plenty