Low-effort vegetable garden: the plan that promises food without watering

Low-effort vegetable garden: eating from your plot with barely any work

Dig in autumn, sow broad beans and peas, and don't step on the bed again until spring. That is the core of the so-called equinox system, a method for making maximum use of the land, designed for areas with no summer irrigation but winter rain, which has become the focus of one of the densest discussions on food self-sufficiency. The proposal starts from an uncomfortable premise: most gardening work is concentrated in summer, precisely when water is scarce and weeds run rampant. Shifting the effort to the wetter months changes the calculation.

The approach is simple to state and hard to argue with without data. Broad beans and peas are sown in autumn, withstand the cold, make use of the rain and bear fruit in spring. Broad beans need staking with a stick and string because the pods weigh them down; peas are sown in a block, in diagonal lines forming a square, and left to grow into a compact mass waist-high. If the heat arrives early and ruins the pea crop, there are always the broad beans, which can be eaten dried like beans after rehydrating them. Two crops, zero watering, one harvest guaranteed by redundancy.

What can be planted after broad beans and peas

With irrigation available, summer allows green beans, tomatoes, peppers and other familiar crops. Without it, you have to wait. The second part of the system comes when the garden lies empty: cabbage, kale, leek, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, white cabbage, escarole, onion, spring onion, red cabbage, radishes, turnip, beetroot. All are transplanted from seedlings started in spring and watered now and then, because watering seven or eight wooden seed trays is easier than watering an entire garden, and it also saves weeding out the summer weeds. In winter, plant competition is minimal.

Transplanting requires one condition many overlook: the weather after planting must be damp enough that the seedlings don't dry out. With irrigation they can go in as soon as the tomatoes come out, and they grow faster, but they need more attention. Without it, you have to wait for the sky to cooperate.

Plants that grow on their own and plants that demand watering

Classifying crops by their water demand is one of the most practical points of the whole approach. In the group of those that only ask for water on the weekend is the courgette, which without plenty of manure won't cope and won't deliver the expected surprise every seven days. Also oregano, which is cut when the flower appears or just before.

At the opposite end, the self-sufficient ones. The sunchoke produces rhizomes that never quite run out: a piece the size of a thumb generates a plant over two metres tall if given full sun all day. Rosemary is perennial, can be cut all year round and seasons any dish. The prickly pear, a cactus that bears orange-red fruit covered in tiny spines whose tender pads are also eaten, thrives in sunny, sandy soil.

Chickpeas, lentils and potatoes: dryland farming that doesn't always forgive

Typical Spanish dryland crops —chickpeas, lentils, beans— work with little water, though beans are more demanding than the rest. Potatoes deserve their own section: with plenty of manure and deep digging they can give an acceptable harvest, but relying on them as a staple food is a risky bet because the result can be disastrous. With irrigation, on the other hand, the harvest is practically guaranteed except for the beetle, which is fought by spraying sulphur in warm weather. Blight, so often cited in manuals, is almost impossible in Spain except in the humid areas of the north, because it requires leaves to be wet most of the time.

Cereals —wheat, barley, oats, rye, sorghum and a black maize variety said to withstand drought well— complete the picture. The black maize hasn't been tested yet; it is taken on hearsay.

The walnut tree, the almond tree and the fruit trees that give without being cared for

Trees enter the equation with concrete figures. A walnut tree with very little care can yield around 200 nuts, a perfectly usable amount. Apple trees are also of interest: if the apples are wrapped one by one in newspaper and stored in cardboard boxes, a damaged piece doesn't infect the rest and storage lasts much longer. The almond tree is hardier than the walnut, but suffers from late frosts depending on area and variety. And you have to watch out for codling moth, which attacks apple and walnut trees alike and can worm-eat a high percentage of the harvest.

Chayote appears as a low-maintenance crop: you plant it once, it climbs the trees and drops its fruit when wind and rain pick up. It is eaten raw, mashed or stuffed. Its flavour is fairly neutral. The warning comes from another corner: a plant resembling chayote, with fruit covered in fine hairs and seeds that burst when touched, has been identified as invasive and can latch onto trees until it dries them out.

Protein, wild plants and the problem of hours

Vitamins are easy to find in the wild; protein is not. It is found in roots, starchy fruits —chestnut, acorn, beechnut, walnut— and in the meat of animals. For planned survival, hens and rabbits in a pen are a reliable protein source, though rabbits draw criticism for how easily they fall ill. If there is space, the goat gives milk. Duckweed, which multiplies until it covers any surface within days and reaches up to 38% protein in its biomass, is raised in a basin in the sun, though the risk of it becoming a mosquito nursery is solved by adding fish.

The counterpoint comes with the effort. Man with a garden, dead man, sums up a gardener who points out that without machinery a kilo of tomatoes costs two euros. Against that, those who argue that two almond trees, a lemon tree, two apple trees and a few metres of tomato plants yield harvests that rot because they can't be eaten. And those who note that potatoes, in perforated buckets with good soil, grew on their own and profusely. The discussion isn't closed: yields depend on the soil, the water and how many hours you're willing to bend your back.