By Oscar Parry
Macedon Ranges farmers have been challenged by low water levels in private dams and creeks, following a winter of reduced soil moisture.
Wildwood Farm owner Benjamin Dunn said as the property does not have access to municipal water mains, the irrigation for his farm is sourced from the Bolinda Creek, dam water, surface water and bore water.
He said his dams have dried and the Bolinda Creek level is low, leading to various growing challenges this summer.
“The creek’s not flowing, so the algae tends to bloom – and that blocks our filters,” Mr Dunn said.
“It becomes a daily management practice, and sort of takes you away from the actual growing of vegetables … because your whole day is taken up with water management,” he said.
Mr Dunn said he has had to ration water, meaning that some of his crops have gone without water or had reduced water input, and those crops have not produced as well.
This was especially an issue during the weekend of hot weather from February 1–2.
“Lettuce is the main one … because in this hot weather, if you’re not watering lettuce two times a day it will get stressed out really easily, and once it does that it tends to bolt or go to seed and you can lose hundreds or thousands of heads of lettuce in a day,” he said.
While there are still storms in summer, Mr Dunn said not many have passed over his farm, and that due to the irregular nature of these storms, the rainfall in winter and spring is critical for summer growing.
A Department of Agriculture spokesperson said across the state, most pasture sites are currently less than 25 per cent which is typical for this time of year, but the spring depletion of moisture started earlier.
“Last year, there was reduced time during winter … when soil moisture was [less than 75 per cent], which is traditionally the conditions that enable runoff into catchment dams, which explains why dams in some areas are drier than normal,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said monitoring deep stored social moisture is a valuable dry season tool to make informed decisions regarding climate change and season variability, which can be performed with moisture probes.
They said that the SoilWater app and the Bureau of Meteorology are also useful resources for soil moisture monitoring.
