Drought after the Floods

We're off to the property this weekend to see what has become of the seeds we planted and the asparagus and potatoes we re-planted after they were washed-out. There was some rain around the 25th of May, but nothing much since then. Flood or drought, but nothing in between. We have been watering our garden and tomatoes at home for about a week. It is supposed to be dry all weekend in WVa.

We have a 110 gallon stock tank with a drain plug to collect rain, set above the garden so that the water will flow easily downhill and we won't have to pump it. This weekend, we plan to rig a 10'x10' tarp to collect a greater amount of water than the tub can by itself. If you do the math, one inch of rainfall onto a 100 sq. ft. tarp is more than 60 gallons of water. That is over 500 lbs. of water, a prohibitive amount to haul uphill to the garden with an ATV. Even a five gallon pail of water weights more than 40 lbs. Our biggest concern is the survival of the tarp in big winds, although summer winds are much less vigorous than in the fall and winter. We would have set the collection system up earlier this spring, but given the near continuous and voluminous rain during April and May, we never imagined we would need collected water in early June.