By Clint Thompson
Increased drought in North Alabama has farmers concerned about decreasing pond levels. Ponds are a major source of irrigation during the production season. But the lack of rain this fall has caused those sources to dry up considerably, says Eric Schavey, regional Extension agent in Northeast Alabama.
“They’re down because the water table is so low. We’re probably four feet down at ours. My neighbors all around me are the same,” Schavey said. “As you move west in the state, they’re even worse than we are, especially getting down towards Demopolis and over in that area. They have that high shrink swell soil so they really don’t need it; it’s drying up, cracking and everything else. They need that to keep those ponds base correct.
“We need the rain. Eight-tenths of an inch of rain is not going to help us. We need that eight-tenths of a rain over about a day and a half, not two and a half hours.”
La Niña Looms
The dry conditions could worsen in some areas with the looming La Niña that’s expected to bring drier and warmer weather conditions.
“We’re eight weeks away thinking about, maybe I need to pull some beds and get plastic laid. If we go into a dry winter with already dry soil, you’re going to have to be sitting on go when we do get some soil moisture to make beds and then you’re going to have to maintain that,” Schavey said. “You never know when we’re going to turn around and have a wet March. There you are stuck with 10,000 tomato plants to go in the ground and no beds made because it rained for six days straight.”