The Seattle Drought Tolerant Plants That Needed Nothing

Jackie
2 days ago
9 min read

A mid August walk through my Phinney Ridge beds, from the Seattle drought tolerant plants that needed nothing all summer to the vegetables that needed me every evening.

We have not had real rain since May, and by the middle of August that shows up in every single bed I have. The Seattle drought tolerant plants in my garden got through it without any help from me. Everything else survived only because I was out there with a hose every evening. That split is the most useful thing my garden has told me all year, so this week I want to walk you through it bed by bed.

Clear the Whole Bed, Not Just the Gaps

When a bed is finished, clear the whole thing and replant it in one pass instead of filling the holes one at a time as they open up. I did that with one of my beds in my front yard this week. The Vienna Purple kohlrabi produced nothing at all, so out it came, and the entire bed got emptied and started over. Thyme and oregano went back in, then about eight lettuce starts from Sky Nursery, twelve Feuer Kugel beets and twelve Touchstone Gold beets from my own transplants, and a row of Carnival Blend carrots direct seeded along the south side, covered with earthworm castings and a plank to hold the moisture in until they come up. This is the same work I described when I was starting the fall beds in August, just finally finished.

The new part is the seconf half of the raised bed, where I used the Seeding Square for three squares: White Lady turnips, watermelon radish, and Bloomsdale spinach, sixteen seeds each. I still plant tight, that has not changed and it works fine as long as I keep feeding the bed with compost and castings. What changed is that the seeds now go in on a grid instead of scattered across the surface, so I can actually tell what came up and what did not. Scattering was making my own record keeping impossible, and I have been doing it for years.

One of my backyard raised beds taught me the other half of the same lesson. The kale is three feet tall and so productive that it shaded out everything behind it, and the beans planted there failed completely. Interplanting under kale can work, but only if the kale is already big when you plant, and only if whatever goes behind it does not need full sun. Beans need full sun. That one is on me.

A weathered wooden plank laid flat over a row of newly sown carrot seeds in a raised bed to hold moisture in the soil. — *The plank stays on the carrot row until they germinate. Dry soil and carrot seed do not get along.*

Young lettuce transplants with pale green leaves growing in dark soil under a green plastic mesh net stretched over hoops, with thyme at the left edge and small oregano seedlings in the corner. — *Lettuce starts from Sky Nursery.*

There Is a Free Orchard on Your Sidewalk Right Now

Go and ask your neighbors for their fruit. This is the best free food in the city and almost nobody takes it. Walk any block in this neighborhood and look up, because the apples are coming in on those old trees along the sidewalks and hanging over fences, the Italian prune plums are dropping right now, and most of that fruit is going to rot on the pavement where it lands. The people who own those trees are not hoarding anything. They are looking at a sticky mess on their walkway and wondering who is going to deal with it. Knock on the door and offer to pick.

Then use it properly, because the whole point is that this food does not go to waste. Apples go into cake, sauce, a galette, or canned slices for the winter. Prune plums are the easy ones, they halve cleanly, the pits come right out, and they freeze on a tray without any fuss at all. If you end up with three grocery bags and a full freezer, City Fruit harvests residential trees across Seattle and gets the fruit to food banks and meal programs, and you can also call your local food bank directly to ask whether they take fresh produce, because some can and some cannot.

Apples ripening among leaves on the branches of a large apple tree, with blue sky and the roofline of a house visible behind. — *There is a whole free orchard in this neighborhood and most of it ends up on the pavement.*

Apples with a red blush over green skin hanging from a branch, surrounded by broad green leaves. — *Knock on the door and ask. Most people are relieved somebody wants the fruit.*

The Artichoke Bloomed, and Now Is When You Plant for Spring

The artichoke is blooming for the very first time. It does not have many leaves and it clearly wants more food, but there is the flower, after all this waiting. The dahlia is is going bananas again. The sunflowers are the question mark, and I am not sure they will finish in time.

Here is the part worth acting on. Plant your flowers now, not in spring, because fall is the better planting window in this climate. The soil is still warm, the roots keep growing after the top of the plant stops, and the October and November rain does the watering for you instead of you doing it.

Perennials and shrubs go in from now through October.

Spring bulbs, the tulips and daffodils and alliums and crocus, go in during October and November, and you want to buy them in September while the selection is still good.

The one that surprises people is direct seeding hardy annuals in fall for early spring flowers. In September and October you can sow larkspur, bachelor buttons, calendula, nigella, California poppies, and sweet peas straight into the ground and leave them there over winter. Our winters are mild enough that they sit through the cold, get the chill they actually need to germinate well, and come up earlier and stronger than anything you plant in April. I am collecting sweet pea and nasturtium seeds off my own plants right now for exactly this. Do not buy seed you can harvest yourself.

A vivid purple artichoke flower fully open in a spiky crown on a thick stalk, with a wooden fence and green foliage behind it. — *First bloom ever from this plant. Not many leaves and it clearly wants more food, but I will take it.*

Too Many Nasturtiums Is Just an Aphid Nursery

Pull your aphid covered plants instead of trying to rescue them. Most of my nasturtiums are coated, front yard and back, and they are coming out this week. A few nasturtiums work as a trap crop and pull aphids away from the plants you actually care about. I planted far too many, and what I have now is an aphid nursery with a nice orange flower on top.

The zucchini in the east bed is a different problem. It keeps setting fruit and then dropping every one, which usually means the female flowers are not getting pollinated. You can do that job yourself. Go out in the morning while the flowers are open, pick a male flower, which is the one on a plain thin stem with no baby fruit behind it, tear the petals off, and brush the pollen directly onto the center of a female flower, which is the one with the little zucchini already attached. It takes about a minute per plant. While you are at it, give the plant a deep soak instead of a daily splash and work some compost in around the base, because inconsistent water and hungry soil also make squash drop fruit. Be realistic about the calendar though. It is late August, so anything setting now needs to size up fast.

Nasturtium plants with round green leaves and orange flowers sprawling across a raised garden bed. — *This is what too many nasturtiums looks like in August. A few work as a trap crop. This many is a nursery.*

lose view of a round nasturtium leaf densely covered with hundreds of small black aphids, with more aphids crowded along the stems behind it and kale and broccoli growing in the background. — *Here is the honest version. Hundreds on one leaf, and the stems behind it are worse. Nothing I spray is going to fix that, so the plant comes out.*

Which Seattle Drought Tolerant Plants Actually Delivered

Here is what a summer with no rain since May sorted out for me. The lavender in the berry patch thrived. The rose hips are fine and so are the red flowering currants. The Jerusalem artichokes tolerated the dry spells with nothing but an occasional deep soak, and the ashwagandha looks fantastic and green with almost no attention from me at all, which is a good argument for where to start with medicinal herbs if you have been thinking about it. Everything else, meaning most of the vegetables, needed water every day just to stay alive.

If you want to plan around this properly, use Great Plant Picks, which is run out of the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden here in Seattle and keeps drought tolerant lists chosen specifically for our maritime climate rather than for the country as a whole. Seattle Public Utilities publishes a choosing the right plants guide for exactly this problem, and the free Garden Hotline will answer a specific question about your own yard. One honest warning about all of them: those lists are ornamental. Nobody has published a good drought tolerant vegetable list for this region, because most vegetables simply are not drought tolerant. Herbs and perennials are where the water savings live.

That is pushing me toward a different shape for next year. Weight the season toward spring and fall, when this climate hands you rain and mild temperatures for free, and run a lighter summer with fewer thirsty crops in the ground. A Seattle summer is not the productive season people assume it is. It is the expensive one.

A rose shrub with pinnate green leaves on arching stems growing in dry soil in a garden bed, with small yellow flowers low at its base. — *The rose has had no supplemental water since May and it is still pushing out new growth. It asked nothing of me all summer.*

Seattle drought tolerant plants in a home garden bed, with a lavender shrub showing silvery grey toothed foliage growing in dry soil. — *Lavender in the berry patch. This is the plant that made me rethink next summer, because it did better on no water than most of my vegetables did on a hose every evening.*

A red flowering currant shrub with pale green lobed leaves on upright stems growing in a dry garden bed. — *Red flowering currant is a Pacific Northwest native, which is the whole reason it shrugs off a summer like this one. It was built for our rain pattern, not against it.*

Order Garlic Now and Buy Starts Instead of Seed

Order your garlic now. Planting happens in October and November, but the good varieties from the small growers sell out long before then, and if you wait until planting time you will be choosing from whatever nobody else wanted. It belongs on the rest of the August task list with everything else.

If you are still filling gaps for fall, Sky Nursery and Swanson's both had starts when I last looked, including leeks, brassicas, lettuce, and herbs. Buying starts instead of seeding is the right call this late in August for anything that needs a head start. A week ago I would have told you to direct sow. Now I would rather you buy the plant.

And if you would rather have the whole fall plan in one place than work it out bed by bed the way I just did, that is what the Fall Garden Guide is for. It is 30% off with the code FALL30 through Labor Day, September 7.

👉 https://www.palatinogardenadventures.com/product-page/seattle-fall-garden-guide

What went into my raised bed

People always ask which varieties, so here they are. Nothing exotic. When you are sowing this late, days to maturity is the only number on the packet that really matters, so check it before you buy and not after.

Carrot, Carnival Blend (Botanical Interests, organic). 65 to 75 days. Purple, yellow, and orange in one packet, and the color is the reason my family actually eats them.
Turnip, White Lady (Botanical Interests). 30 to 40 days, which makes it the fastest thing in the bed. Best pulled small and eaten raw, closer to a radish than to what you are probably imagining when someone says turnip.
Spinach, Abundant Bloomsdale (Hudson Valley Seed Co, bred through the Organic Seed Alliance). The savoyed leaves hold up in cold weather.
Watermelon Radish (Hudson Valley Seed Co). Plain green outside, bright pink inside. Needs the cool weather to size up properly, so it goes in now and not in June.
Beet, Feuer Kugel (Deep Harvest Seeds, Whidbey Island). Organic and open pollinated, 60 days. Smooth dark red roots with good tops, and the packet says adapted for the Pacific Northwest grower, which is the whole reason I bought it.
Beet, Touchstone Gold (Uprising Seeds, Bellingham). Certified organic, 55 to 60 days. Golden roots, sweeter than the red ones, and they do not bleed all over everything else on the cutting board.

The two beets went in as my own transplants rather than direct seeded, so they were already growing before the rest of the bed went in. Both of them come from Washington seed companies, which matters more than people assume. Seed selected and trialed in this region has been picked under our light, our rain, and our cool nights, not under Midwest summer heat.

Four vegetable seed packets laid out on weathered grey deck boards: Carnival Blend carrot and White Lady turnip from Botanical Interests, Abundant Bloomsdale spinach and Watermelon Radish from Hudson Valley Seed Co. — *Everything that went into my raised bed this week. The turnip is the fastest at 30 to 40 days, the carrots the slowest at 65 to 75.*

Closing

That is the week. Dry, a little ragged in places, but the beets are in and the artichoke finally bloomed. Let me know what your apples turn into.

Jackie

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