The Optimism of Spring is quickly, cruelly crushed by the reality of Autumn.  — dpr    

 And with that quote, so begins my fall. All that I had hoped to accomplish this summer in my lawn and in my garden is now face to face with the reality of what happened this season.  My harvest has been acceptable, but just barely. I put up several quarts of cucumbers, I have tomatoes waiting in canning jars for some fall stews and pastas, my potatoes will wait in their earthen tombs until I get a hankering for them, but all in all the performance was lack luster. Sure, thanks to Monty’s my results were better than most in the area, but still not nearly what I had anticipated in those days of spring when I assaulted the earth with my hoe and seed packets. As for my lawn, the work I had done to rid it of weeds fell apart. Sure I was the only lawn without the plague of dandelions, and my Bermuda grass strengthened in the areas where it was already growing, but that is small consolation when you compare it to the bevy of crab grass clumps now growing where fescue once thrived.

I have talked the whole thing over with my county extension agent. Bottom line, my planning, optimism, and hard work were brought to naught by our drought. Again, small consolation, but I am in the same boat with everyone in the country except for New Mexico and Iowa, who, for some reason in the russian roulette called weather, received an abundance of moisture this season.

The only saving grace is that what we experienced this year can prepare us for next year, or the next time we encounter similar circumstances.

In order to do that, we must understand our enemy; in this case drought.

So here are some quick lessons about drought and plant response:

Drought- drought is defined as a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall particularly one that negatively affects growing or living conditions.  Sometimes drought symptoms occur because of a dry period, at other times you may be receiving normal rainfall, but are experiencing unusually hot temperatures.  So you are getting your traditional rainfall, just not enough to support the additional heat units. In this scenario, you may not be in a ‘drought’ climatologically but it is all the same to the plant. 

Drought is not death- Many people assume that if their lawn or plants turn brown that they are ‘dead’.  This is not necessarily, or even usually, the case.

Learn to speak ‘plant’ – Drought response occurs in stages and by understanding the stages we can determine how best to react to preserve our precious plants. Everything a plant does is telling us something, from “everything’s okay so I’m growing and producing like expected” to “I need some help, here.”  

Understanding your plants response to drought – The wilting and eventually browning that you see is actually a fascinating plant response aimed at preserving life in the plant. 

• Curling – When the plant senses excess heat or a dry period, the first thing it does is to make itself as small as possible. This is the reason for the curling leaves on broadleaf grasses, cucumbers, corn, etc.  The more leaf surface that is exposed to the sun, the more the plant loses moisture to a process known as transpiration. Secondarily, the more sunlight the plant receives the more it generates a photosynthetic responses.  In the ‘mind’ of the plant it is ‘thinking’ “Look, I don’t have enough moisture to support the growth I have, why do I need to get any bigger or add any more leaves/fruit.”  So, the plant simply curls up to slow these two processes down. To our eye it looks as if the plant is dying, when in fact it is doing everything it can to survive and conserve moisture and energy. 

• Wilting – Plants do need a certain amount of moisture to survive, and if it is not getting it from the sky or a water hose it will eventually start to cannibalize itself; that is, take the moisture and nutrients from it farthest extremities to make sure the fruit already formed and the core of the plant itself, survives.   When this happens, moisture and chlorophyll is withdrawn from the outer leaves first in the absence of liquid, the veins and capillaries collapse. Once these systems are no longer turgid, the leaves grow limp and wilting occurs. 

• Browning –  In the absence of chlorophyll the green color leaves, leaving behind the yellow-brown coloration of the plants infrastructure. As a last defense, the plant closes down all of the pores from which it formerly ‘breathed’ and exchanged nutrients, moisture, and oxygen with the environment. As the pores close off, the plant becomes very tight, rigid, and brittle, this is combination is what causes the crunching sound as you walk across a drought-stricken lawn.

• Death – If the drought is not relieved, the plant will continue to same process, working from the outside in until finally the last of the roots and the crown of the plant (the growing point just about soil level) also succumbs.  At this point, the plant is truly dead and there is no hope for revival.

• A quick word about your soil – Similar reactions are also taking place within the soil:  the top few inches dry out first, a hard crust is formed to retain as much sub-soil moisture as possible, organic matter is forced deeper into the soil to survive and the soil cells, once plump with moisture and pliable are now hard, crusty, collapsed, and will eventually crack (depending on the volume of clay).  Those cracks are signs that the soil did all it could to hold out as long as possible, but eventually shrunk too much to hold its former shape and volume.

Fortunately, droughts do not happen all at once, neither does the plant respond immediately.   Because of that, with a basic understanding of what the plant is trying to accomplish, you can intervene until all but the very last stages and still salvage your lawns or gardens with some pretty basic steps.  In our next blog, we’ll discuss how to deal with drought and how to help your plants survive and resume production.

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